@@stevencooper4422 To be fair, small children arent the target audience for every single movie. Some of their movies are all ages, some are geared towards tweens and early teens, etc. Moreover, at least where I was, a lot of kids were prohibited from watching the early Disney movies because the villains were considered too scary. I do think Disney needs to crank out some actual villains again, but the fact that kids will be watching it isnt really an accurate reasoning for that.
Tbh I also love how puss never defeated death, just postponed it. He accepted his fate that was sure to come at some point and death came to respect him and let him enjoy his last life. Disney could learn from having a undefeated but retreating and compelling villain
A retreating villain maybe good but I think going back to the root of just making them irredeemable to the point that you have to kill them, might be kinda refreshing
Cruella de Vil was literally just a upper class lady in a really expensive fur coat with a really nice car. Yet she still had such raw emotion and pure livid rage in her being that she's more intimidating to see on screen than a lot of comic book villains that can destroy planets. Just rewatch that chase scene from 101 dalmations and bask in how well they animated her pure rage.
If I remembered correctly, the part where her car ran off the bridge into the ditch was the last straw because she had enough of the dalmatians evading her. Once she threw the car into full drive forward, Cruella showed she isnt playing around anymore and with her car bursting out from the ditch with tons of pieces tearing off, she no longer cared for anything else aside from killing those puppies for her fur coat. Take note of the full stripped glory of her once shes burst out from the ditch: her eyes have the scary psycho red lines in them, the engine is fully exposed and theres no longer a roof over her head. In a way, you could view it as the full rage of Cruella exposed. No longer caring for looks right now because she only wants her dalmatian coat and if she needs to run a truck off the road containing them, she'll do it
@@Thomasmemoryscentral I've just noticed that its similarity was preceded by a darker version of it like The Great Mouse Detective with the London clock tower scene. As Ratigan realized that his second plan to kidnap Olivia is going to fail completely (his other plan to perform a coup at Buckingham Palace was foiled by Basil), he frees himself from the clock gears, tearing his suit and revealing that he's pursuing the main character while not in a professor-like clasiness but as a madman hell bent on killing Basil by the very least. Which to say in conclusion, Disney reinvented the rivalry of Holmes vs Moriarty on that one.
@@jeffreygao3956 He is a rat, which in real life would be bigger than a mouse Basil was. The true self was hidden inside those pair of white gloves too, pure elegance covering the claws that were ready to strike.
“Death is the personification of Puss’s anxieties.” YES. Yes. That’s how you make any villain freaking great. You take everything one character stands for, their weakness, flaws, fears, and then make the villain those things.
"I am Anxiety. And I don't mean metaphorically, or poetically, or thematically, or rhetorically, or in any other fancy way. I am Anxiety, straight up."
It doesn't even have to be literally either like in PiB, if the hero has fear of being so strong it can harm his loved ones, make the villain be a building-sized monster that just wants to smash things.
Amazing how the Shrek franchise went from clapping back at Disney by incoprorating gross-out humor, innuendos, and pop culture references, to clapping back at Disney by including 3 compelling villains in 1 movie.
I'm pretty sure they made him to be a parody of the "sympathetic villain" trend. The conscience bug literally wants to find some freudian excuse for why he's evil, and Jack's just like "nope I'm just evil lol".
I find it so ironic that Disney as a company won't hesitate to capitalize off of their legacy villains by slapping them on any shirt, board game, scented candle or whatever they can get their branding on but Disney as an animation studio seems terrified of creating a new villain in the same vein as those same ones that seem to populate every Hot Topic or BoxLunch.
I've been in Hot Topic dozens of times and never seen any classic Disney villain merch, I mostly just see anime stuff now. I did see Twilight and Justin Beeber merch once though.
I was initially taken aback by the fact that Jack Horner was a stereotypical one-dimensional villain. But then it hit me. He doesn't NEED to have some sad backstory or a twist reveal, Jack Horner is evil and he LIKES it. A lot of humor comes from just how much he enjoys being a villain.
He does have a bit of a backstory though, and I would say the idea of it is a bit sad (a kid who merely wants to be liked but is overlooked). But I do agree with your overall point
@@sarahvalerie4307 All he wants is to be given love and attention... at first. Which quickly spirals from "Pinocchio is loved because magic, so I want magic" to "fuck it let's nuke the world with baby unicorn horns". To me, that's absolutely hilarious and fun for a villain.
Big Jack Horner is a perfect example of "if you have a one-dimensional villain, they better be entertaining". Having a one-dimensional villain that only talks about how evil they are and about their evil plan is just boring. This mf on the other hand is someone you just love to see come up on the screen, even if they are a horrible monster.
@@cadhla2989 Yeah, he has reasons, but like, they’re only reasonable to a villain. When he described his wish as having all magic in the world and leaving none for anyone else and continuing by saying “Is that so much to ask?” To which the cricket responds “YES!” Jack retorting with “Agree to disagree.” Before continuing to go on and kill his entire crew via negligence, is what gets to the heart of this character. A truly 1 dimensional evil cause evil character would be one without really a character or motive, it would essentially work as a force of nature for the protagonists to overcome, but Jack HAS character AND motive, just not heroic or even neutral ones, just straight up villainous!
You know, I like the fact that Puss was unable to beat death. And it's not like he's as fearless as he was with 9 lives, he simply faced his fear which is why death immediately lost interest. Puss even breathed a sigh of relief when death let him go, showing that he still had his fear of death despite the bravado. He was glad that he's alive.
He technically didnt beat Death, Death leave him be because he was teaching Puss a lesson about how valuable life. Puss has been careless with using his 8 lives because he thinks he just gonna come back again the next day.
@@socriabbas454 Death didnt actually want to teach puss a lesson, he just wanted to be finally rid of him. but he just couldn't justify taking someones life early when that person now values and respects their life. Notice how the chase only started again when puss once again tried to disrespect the gift of life
@@bastik.3011 When puss and perrito enter Big Jack Horners factory puss falls out of a window. Its never mentioned but a huge shard of glass nearly kills puss. Its only after that moment death shows up.
This is why i will forever praise The Hunchback of Notre Dame as a movie. It has a nuanced protagonist who is so fucked up from constant abuse that he struggles to do the right thing, and it has one of the nastiest, most monstrous, most downright irredeemable villains ever. Frollo is a hideously awful person. And his awfulness makes him a FANTASTIC villain. After he quite literally sings a song about how his disgusting thoughts were the fault of someone else (yikes), watching him get defeated by the one he systematically abused for years is so satisfying. Quasimodo wouldn’t have such a strong arc to his character without having such a horrific abuser in his life. Could you imagine if disney tried to tell this story without Frollo? It would be so empty.
They went all out with Frollo. BTW I love how this movie shows a hero that does not "get the girl" at the end like other movies, that really stood out to me as a child
Or worse, tried to tell the story with Frollo but went out of their way to show that he's bad because of other reasons, so we as the audience should feel bad for him and maybe cut him some slack on the things he did.
Abril4014: Of course, they had to do that with a disfigured character and give it a heap of unfortunate implications. But luckily for Quasimodo, all of that was fixed in the sequel.
As much as I hated that movie, I do have to agree. He was so goddamn disgusting and horrifying that he was the PERFECT villain. By far, that was one of the best villains I’ve seen, before better ones came along.
This video makes me think about how Coco had both generational trauma and a well-executed twist villain who was responsible for the family's generational trauma.
I also really liked how Coco approached this and how fucked it up was for Ernesto to practically be the cause of an entire family’s suffering for so many years. 😧
@@Lauren_210 what makes it worse is that he technically won. He got his fame and fortune in life and in death. Even after the truth was revealed, his impact on the world guarantees that no one will forget him for a long time.
@@FrahdChikun Also, I don’t know if it was intentional or not (like if they were inspired or not), but Ernesto killing Hector really reminded me a lot of the Selena tragedy since both Hector and Selena were Hispanic musicians/singers and were murdered by someone close to them and died way too soon (in Selena’s case, being shot by Yolanda Saldívar). 😔
@@FrahdChikun true, but on the bright side, no one will also ever let him forget the kind of person he is and the fact that the whole world--both dead and alive, will now remember him as a fraud and a murderer. And to add icing on the cake, he will still be there to witness the aftermath of his downfall for years to come. As Hector's family continues to thrive, Ernesto will remain in the shadows fading gradually with no one and nothing by his side. Arguably a fate worse than death imo.
Big jack horner's lines of "you wouldn't shoot a puppy, would you jack?" "Yeah, in the face, why" and also "its adorable how you think that would work. Don't you know I'm dead inside?". Really nailed home what his character is trying to be. No redeamability, no twist, just a simply and delightfully unhinged villain. That, along with the animation style, in-depth characters and compelling story really make the movie stand out. And, of course, death is the coolest charater in recent movies by a landslide Edit: big jack horners lines
yep, wanna know why Frieza is still active in the Dragon Ball series? Cuz people love how irredeemably evil he is, his cunningness and cruelty makes you want to hate the guy but his charisma makes him your favorite (presumably) we need more of those, they don't need to be super deep so long as you make them fun to watch and a legit threat, just like Jack Horner
"Ah you know I never had much as a kid just loving parents and stability in a mansion and a thriving baked goods enterprise for me to inherent useless crap like that"
yeah, i think forget about her (or tangled in general). she was straight up evil, no redemption arc or anything lol, just using her excuses to keep her trapped and using her.
What I liked most about DEATH in Puss In Boots 2 is how he was acting chiefly out of a personal vendetta. Most of the time, the Grim Reaper is portrayed as either sympathetic or emotionally distant to those he (or she) comes to collect. So, it was an interesting change of pace to see this Death come after Puss just to make him pay for eight lives of mockery.
A common depiction of death, across cultures, is that he likes to make wagers and essentially “play” with people’s lives. Death Wolf could have reaped Puss’ soul at any time, but lost his chance bc he just _had_ to turn it into a hunt. Very consistent portrayal.
@@anerrorhasoccurred8727I mean both are frequent portrayals of death, you have 1. The calm and reassuring death, who helps those who pass along accept their passing, and help them find closure 2. The cheeky asshole death, who makes it into a challenge or plays a rigged game, usually offering eternal life, or similar, if you win
@@hitthere7722 And the book, Reaper Man included both. The original Death being the calm/emotionally distant one, and a protagonist. While the New Death was cocky, saying things like "lesser lives", and "you never wanted to rule" and literally wearing a crown. It also included a comedic death, the Death of Rats. And a cosmic, detached-from-everything death, Azrael. And a more human incarnation of death, Bill Door.
It's crazy to me how Puss In Boots, of all things, came out of freaking nowhere and was so damn good it's making us question other franchises/animation studios. Big W for DreamWorks Edit: How does a positive comment on DreamWorks accomplishment devolve into a political argument? :(
specially because dreamworks is prioritizing good storytelling and character development unlike disney who's prioritizing woke gay agendas and minority representation instead, and thus flopping hard at the box office because of it like what happened with lightyear and strange world recently
@@Finozzi96 disney doesn't prioritize that shit, they only do it for the money while they fund anti-LGBTQ politicians in the background. there's no "gay agenda" to incorporate gay and minority representation into everything, and if it does exist then it exists only in niche parts of the world. all this pandering and representation you see is mostly a reputation stunt, and sure if they do representation well and not for greed then that's a good thing, but it's clear when they only do it for the money.
was thinking the same lol, and ironically he could have been a good sympathetic villiain, even if made not to be redeemed. I can totally see magnifico as getting progressively paranoid and careful about wishes, show us some past wishes being granted and then misfiring terribly, or some ouright damaging wishes that a person would never say out loud, but he gets to see in the orbs. or just, different wishes being mutually contradictory, so you cannot grant both, and which makes him question people's intentions when given all they seemingly wanted. There was overflowing rational for him to not grant all the wishes in the world lol. or be wary of some individuals actually pursuing certain wishes even if on their own and not aided by magnifico (not every wish is an overal good for the world, i don't know why disney chose to boil it down to the most bare bones depiction of this....when even aladdin so many years ago handled the idea of wishes in a better way...), more than reasonable. And it would become a little overwhelming to filter it all once you established yourself as this king who embraces everyone's wishes at 18, it would very easily feed on his inner concerns.
Jack Horner and Death were a breath of fresh air in the animation industry. One was an irredeemable psychopath. The other was a terrifying force of nature.
Jack Horner is a wonderful throwback to old-school villains: He has a larger than life personality, is having a lot of fun through the entire film, is vaguely queer coded (xD) and is irredeemable evil. Just so entertaining to watch
I work at the movies n this was out next to strange world. A family with a 3-4 year old was debating which kid movie to see n i told them that while puss in boots was my favorite n a very good movie i wouldnt recommend taking a young child to it with how intense n terrifying the villians are
I wouldn’t say Jack Horner was a Psychopath, but rather a Sociopath. A Sociopath has no feelings of empathy or remorse for anyone around them and are perfectly fine and willing to do some heinous things. A Psychopath on the other hand doesn’t even have any feelings for themselves let alone others and are even happier doing some of the most heinous (often violent and murderous) acts imaginable. I wish that terms such as “Socio” and “Sociotic” existed alongside “Psycho” and “Psychotic”.
Man, I really didn’t realize how much I’ve missed good animated villains until I saw Puss in Boots: The Last Wish. The fact that it manages to have three villains (one of whom becoming one of the most intimidating and iconic villains of all time overnight) that fit three different archetypes and execute them each FLAWLESSLY made me realize how much it sucks that most other animated movies lately don’t even have a single good one. I hope Dreamworks is entering a renaissance that inspires every animation studio to improve their craft.
I loved how DreamWorks managed to liberate Puss without defeating or humiliating a villain as good as Death. The fact that he's still out there and remains terrifying is awesome because we need to see more of Death in the Shrek universe.
They really handled the ending for that movie very well. At the end of the day, Death still could've dispatched Puss if he wanted to - he just stopped doing it because Puss finally learned to appreciate the life he has now rather squander it away.
When Death stated that he wasn't metaphorical, it was to inform the audience straight up that he wouldn't be defeated; as it reinforced everything else he said earlier in the film: That it wasn't bravado, it was simply inevitability.
6:35 "There are always going to be evil people in the real world." I think this right here is why we're all sorely missing the classic Disney villains of old. The whole "there's good in everyone" message kinda rings hollow in our world today, when a handful of billionaires are bleeding the rest of the world dry. We just want to escape into a fictional world where bad people get punished.
"There's good in everyone." And "You should love everyone." are both messages I will never teach my kids, because its true, not everyone has your best interests at heart, not everyone is trustworthy, and there are people who will use the image of being nice to manipulate and harm you. Which is why the message of "Raya and the Last Dragon" felt like a slap to the face.
I think Mother Gothel is the most "recent" example of a good villain in Disney movies who isn't a twist (keep in mind that Tangled released in 2011). She is shown to be evil from the start, she is extremely manipulative, AND the plot really only exists because of her kidnapping Rapunzel.
I think Disney has the same problem a lot of studios have nowadays. They'll take criticism at face value and try to remedy it with band aid solutions. They heard "We don't like the villain!" with Frozen, Big Hero 6, and Zootopia, and said "They must not like villains AT ALL anymore!" and opted to remove them rather than FIX them.
To be fair, I'm glad Encanto actually didn't have a villain. Good people... good family, can also have problems... The entire family had trouble because of a good grandmother who did an overall great job in raising her family and village...
And shit talk to fans who hate their movies like they did with Last Jedi. That for me was the last straw, and this was all the way back in 2017. Disney has been shit slinging it since.
One type of villain that I believe gets overlooked, was treasure planet’s John silver. We knew as audience that he would be the antagonist and as he bonds with the protagonist you see the conflicts in his character and his redemption in the final act becomes more organic
Yes he's an interesting one. In a way John Silver is the centre of the story, he's the one moving the plot to reach his goal, he gets the most development, and Jim is the one who causes him to change. While Jim is the 'good guy' and the protagonist, a lot of what makes him engaging comes from his relationship with John Silver. Definitely a good example of story that needed both a hero and a villain.
Yes but also Treasure Island was an adaptation like many other adaptations which had villains in them. Turns out when disney adapts stories with villains in them they have villains in them. Who knew? That's why they've made less and less villains. They've not adapted as much stories rather than making originals which kinda suck cause the original stories of the adaptations made them so much better and disney didn't need to narratively make them better by a lot.
I remember watching Treasure Island story as a young girl...I was surprised at how duplicitous he was...but you couldn't take your eyes off of him. Pinocchio had some villians also...
Oh my god Yzma is a CLASSIC and perfect villain in my eyes. She has the perfect blend of menacing, funny, and memorable moments that make her one of the best villains in the playbook.
From memories, the early 2000 Disney movies for all their flaws did give us good antagonists and villains: Yzma, Jumba, Long John Silver, Denahi, . I mean even the tepid Home of the Range gave us Alameda Slim who was the most memorable thing of the movie. (Of course there is also Rourke, who is pratically the prototype of the Disney Twist Villain. But We don't talk about Rourke...)
Yzma had enough charisma to carry throughout an entire Disney _series_ , something a lot of other villains didn't translate to when Disney tried printing more money from turning every film into a series after release!
@@amberhernandez this! I still wish Disney would reconsider making the first draft of empotres new grove. Snuff Out the Light has a lot of potential to be a memorable villain song
If you think about it, Puss n Boots isn't just antithetical to current Disney, Jack Horner himself is a direct personification of Disney itself as an entity. A charming little child that eventually develops into a remorseless giant churning things out in a factory, who has no means to produce or achieve anything meaningful on his own without the assistance of workers he abuses but are loyal to him anyway and a treasure trove of others' assets he explicitly misuses.
Add to that that his goal in life is to literally steal all of the magic in the world, so that others can have no access to it (has anyone seen Lucasfilm recently? Last I saw them with was talking to Dis- uh oh...) And they would have gotten away with it too if it wasn't for those pesky Dreamworks movies!
Horner is a deliberate contrast with Lord Farquaad, who was ALSO and explicit personification of Renaissance Disney and the problems the Dreamworks crew had with them. It's acknowledgement that Disney has changed from a totalitarian ruler to an abusive glutton.
Lightyear's villain could have been easily fixed. Just bring Buzz's dad in the game. Like, he was once a spaceranger, but one day he did something, that all the other spacerangers didn't approved off, or he always choose controversy methods. Then one day, he quit or got lost on a mission and now, he now takes finally revenge, because he want to save his son (which he always had a good conection too) from the bad spacerangers, to save him from them (in his perspective). Or he would seek revenge, because he thought they killed Buzz, with the project they made to leave the planet, while Buzz was actually just traveling through time. Boom, villain fixed!
How funny it is that the 2nd and 3rd Toy Story movies had better and more compelling twist villains than Lightyear. Not to mention those villains actually make sense and pushes the story well!
After watching Puss in Boots 2 I realized how much I missed villains that are just plain evil: no sad backstory, no tragical twist, nothing besides a person who is just rotten to the core, knows it and LOVES being evil!
@@andrewgreeb916 I'd argue Pure Evil villains aren't easy to write at all. Sure, their lack of tragic backstory or complicated motivation cuts down on some of the work but they have to make up for all of that with charisma and pizazz, and _that_ can be really difficult to write.
Another issue with the lack of prominent villains is the lack of villain songs. Having a song as dramatic as "Be Prepared" and as fun as "I Just Can't Wait to be King" and as romantic as "Can you feel the Love Tonight" in the same movie is a great amount of musical diversity. With Disney movies shying away from romance and villains we kind of just get the "fun song" a bunch of times. People love "Under the Sea" but I wouldn't want that to be played over every other song in The Little Mermaid
@@Kawaiikitten0211frl and without Part of Your World we wouldn’t have the “what the main character wants song”. It’s such a banger and it includes it’s light motif throughout the movie that reminds us of Ariel and her goal.
I think Disney needs to realise having a villain isn’t a bad thing. Showing kids that bad people exist isn’t a bad thing, it’s important for them to grow up and realise that not everybody has your best interest at heart
At the end of the day , they never said villains dont exist they just said nuance should be applied to the villains in your life. And people like you threw tantrums and denied that irrefutable fact. The movies didnt get worse. The fanbase is just underdeveloped and entitled.
@@no.9516 Nuance should be applied, but it doesn't mean that everything is a gray area. Just because most things are ambiguous doesn't mean that there is no clear black and white at all. There are irredeemable people and people who you don't have to give a second chance. We are just tired of the idea that 'we all can get along' when it clearly doesn't always work
@@no.9516 it's boring as hell to never have any actual villains. "Nuance" like this is just a lazy and pathetic justification for not making anything that's actually entertaining
@@no.9516 But it's not being nuanced. It is more an attempt to show victimisation on the villain as a excuse for any actions. I think Cruella is a prime example. Of this
I unironically want a show where a a steven universe style protagonist goes around redeeming everyone, only to come across someone completely irredeemable, and have an internal struggle where he has to come to terms with their realization of; "oh. I actually have to *kill* this one, don't i?"
Wanted that to be the finale. White diamond just being too evil to redeem and he learns why capital punishment is a thing and that some people cannot be reasoned with and are unwilling to change. At least pull an Ozai and take their position of power away before imprisoning until they do reform
Jack Horner in Puss in Boots 2 was such a breath of fresh air. Sure, we still had Death and Goldilocks and the Three Bears who were the morally grey force of nature and empathetic trio acting as antagonists, but then we had Jack Horner who was openly irredeemable and dead inside and the worst person imaginable.
I think Jack Horner is suppose to mock modern Disney villains, the conscience cricket tries to find something redeemable about him for most of his time. Also when talks about having a rough childhood but describes him having a mansion with loving parents and a business that gets to inherit
@@CertifiedSoapEater Also mocking a lot of “tragic villain,” motivation. Many of those villains are painted as sympathetic because they have a “greater purpose,” or “are missing that one thing they need to be happy,” and when the viewer thinks about the “sympathetic motive,” for more than a minute it gets clear that it either doesn’t line up with the villain’s previous actions or just plainly doesn’t make sense. When Jack talks about his wish the movie builds up towards a motive like I mentioned above but then just throws it away with the most selfish wish possible. Yes the more you think about it the more Jack is clearly just a giant middle finger towards modern Disney villains.
That’s stupid. Just because a story doesn’t have a villain doesn’t mean it’s bad storytelling. It just sounds like they lack the skills of storytelling is all.
“Well GEE, Disney! Sorry I want my movie based on the concept of adventure serials to have stakes and an actual villainous presence rather than the conflict just being a loop warm rehash of the familia strife that was done infinitely better in Encanto.” -Also Schaffrillas
you're really shooting yourself in the foot there, villains are a great narrative tool. When you are writing you can't afford to just throw away parts of your "tool belt".
I think the main issue Disney is currently facing is the fact that they want you to see everyone’s perspective. In real life, you don’t always understand everyone’s motives or perspectives, and it’s okay to do the same in movies. The audience doesn’t need to know the tragic backstory of the villain and feel sympathy for them. One thing that can make a villain so scary is your lack of understanding. Unpredictable villains are terrifying.
Also when you're trying to account for every single perspective, it muddles up the storytelling and ironically becomes a lot more boring. I think Song of the Sea does a really good job of getting us to understand everyone through a combination of keeping their motivations simple, and also using other characters to explore those existing aspects further.
It's also its own valuable lesson that, while it may be good to briefly try to understand why someone's the way they are, sometimes there's either no time or some people are just plain evil a-holes for no much reason~
@@stevenhiggins3055 Yup. Consider Captain Hook, whose motivations, fears, and general goals are outlined completely without detracting from the rest of the movie. He's fully respected by his crew, as well as being somewhat classy, so it's not like he's a one-dimensional villain, he's just...a pirate. In fact, considering Peter's personality, Hook might very well be the first instance of a not-quite-villainous antagonist.
Puss in Boots 2 legitimately helped me a lot personally. I went in without ever expecting to see my struggles with a debilitating fear of death represented and then _seeing_ the protagonist come to terms with it???????????????? Honestly, it made me tear up
In a weird way, I think that’s why Gravity Falls is such an amazing show: Bill Cipher was the catalyst that turned the series from great to profound. Because he attacks his victims through their psyche, Ford, Dipper, Mabel, and Stan are forced to confront issues they’ve pushed aside until then, things more dangerous than the weirdness they face every day - generational trauma, mistrust, and fear of the future. By the second season, all of them grow wiser, stronger, and more united as a result! In fact, the entire town grows in unity… because the heroes learn to overcome the villain that sparked the chaos in the first place!
Belos in Owl House as well. He’s the head of a long established order, a witch finder out of his own time and place irreversibly affected by the magic he detests so much. He knows how to play people, keep them on side by honeyed words or veiled threats and does so as a trusted public figure. His system is the norm, which Luz and her friends have to fight against.
Yeah that’s what I was going to say, Disney still knows how to do villains, they just put them in their shows, Belos, The Core and Bill are all fantastic to watch.
Dreamworks was created specifically to not be Disney, and very specifically out of outright spite towards Disney. There's something poetic about them more or less biding their time all these years and then just when Disney is letting their guard down and putting out subpar storytelling, Dreamworks strikes out with an absolute banger that puts Disney to shame because it's doing everything right that Disney always used to to right but doesn't anymore.
@@HighSlayerRalton Unfortunately, only Shrek seems to be super mainstream. I THEORIZE one of the reasons being Boss Baby (which iirc wasn’t well received at all) basically drawing all attention away from HTTYD and KFP until people stopped talking about them, but that’s just some dumb conspiracy theory since I heard Boss Baby being mentioned way more than HTTYD and KFP.
Disney hasn’t had subpar storytelling for majority of its films since Princess and the Frog. While most of Dreamworks’s from the era have been wildly inconsistent to be most generous. Some have been great and some abysmal. And they have not had the pop culture presence outside of franchises like How to Train Your Dragon and Puss in Boots. In any case Disney’s next film Wish will have a villain, Chris Pine as a king (hopefully he will sing, he was great in Into The Woods as the shallow Prince Charming).
Lilo and Stitch is an interesting one where there is no true irredeemable "villian" but plenty of fun entertaining antagonists. Stitch is initially framed as a monster, and Gantu and the Grand Councilwoman, Jumbaa and Plekely all have their antagonist moments complete with jump scares, and even Cobra Bubbles is framed as the big scary bad guy trying to rip the family apart even though the audience knows he's just doing his job trying to protect a child. I think it works better because conflicts are well defined with clear motivations?
Yeah rewatching lilo and stitch, I kinda find it weird that gantu is made into a villain in the later films/series, like all in all he’s just sorta doing his job. Frankly the grand council woman came off a bit more villainous then him
@@jbcatz5 And even then, he's not that bad. He's deeply offended by Stitch's existence--not entirely without reason--but his absolutism allows him to work as a foil to the far more reasonable Grand Councilwoman.
@@christopherauzenne5023 They’re both representing the law, but Gantu is the one who believes Experiment 626 will never not be a threat while the Councilwoman does see that Stitch has changed and is willing to use the loophole of the adoption shelter receipt to justify leaving the matter where it is.
I want to see a villain that embodies the concept of self doubt and anxiety. Something creepy that would talk to the main character at night and wouldn't let them sleep.
The funny thing is is that The Lion King had Simba go through a character arc about his father's death for the whole movie while also having one of the most memorable Disney villains. They've done it before, so they can do it again.
Exactly! That is why I consider the Disney Renaissance to be my favorite Disney era and also its best era in my opinion. They had that great balance of a strong lead protagonist AND also great villains!
Granted, the lion king isn't great in that regard, as the story and pacing really falls apart after Mufasa's death. And Scar is kind of turned into a joke.
A villain basically personifies everything the hero should AVOID in life choices. Like a villain is someone who dealt with their personal stuff in all the worst ways.
I wish the have a idea where the main character is the same as the villain not that they are same people but they have same motivations or same backstory but the main character tries to do whats right while the villain chooses the brutal way
@@khn4048 Then there wouldnt be a point to having to stop the villain? he wants to do the same thing that the protagonist, You would only need to nudge him into the right path and help the protagonist.
@@dylanzlol7293well it's complicated, I mean, if you're a protagonist fighting for equal rights in order to save your people from oppression, would you support someone who's willing to murder thousands of innocent people cold-bloodedly to reach the same goal?
I agree outside of the point with Luca I think the whole point of that movie is that it WASN'T dramatic. It was just two fish boys trying to find their place in a human civilization. The movie is just meant to be wholesome innocence with no real high stakes. I don't think Luca could have benefitted from a genuine, straight-up villain, and that a simple bully-type character fits perfectly with what Luca was trying to go for.
Yeah it a cut coming o age romance story in world where th point is that th build up mistrust ba basically everyone is th villain. And the unjustified fear and witchhunts. That even gt in thir relationship. The villain is bigotry and th point is to not let themslve ovrcome with fear of that.
They want to make a personal drama villain tragic? How about make them irredeemable? That'll feel more tragic, the fact that you had emotional connection to a villain, but you cannot redeem them anymore, you must learn to let them go. It's like growing up with a friend you grew to love throughout your childhood, only to see them degenerate and become criminal in your adult years. And just feel the agony of seeing how someone you loved turn into someone you don't want to be with anymore.
Even the less known Disney movies had strong villains, Oliver & Company per example had a very realistic, cruel and threatening villain, as well as his dogs. And it still managed to be a very sweet and wholesome movie at its core. Idk why they're so afraid of making villains nowadays
@@hassathunter2464 The Pensuke Files’s titular character, Pensuke is proof of that. Pensuke in my series is the biological father of Kyubey, and he created a system known as the Litch system. It’s a cruel system with no real escape and it’s system laid a foundation of magic that will lead to… other… cruel systems. (Yes, I’m talking about The Witch System and the ones that succeeded it.) The Woke see Pensuke as a “baby” hero that deserves praise.
Yes, Sykes have always been one of my favorites despite being generally unpopular amongst Disney fans. Yes, he isn't too much in the story and doesn't have a very unique motivation or personality, but man is he intimidating and an unusually realistic villain for a Disney movie. Not to mention that his car feels like it has more personality than anyone in "Cars", simply because how much the cinematography highlights it and how integrated it is to Sykes' character
Well, to be honest. It just seems like villain aren’t allowed to be “pure evil” anymore. Nowadays, they often get dismissed, because villains need to have “depth”, “ulterior motives”, or be “morally gray” now. I personally find villains who are just pure evil, horrible, and irredeemable to be more entertaining. Not that those with certain depth aren’t. Villains like the Joker, the Wicked Witch, Lord Voldemort, Hades (Disney), Bill Cipher, William Afton, etc. Villains who are just horrible and absolutely irredeemable, but they have fans who like them as a villain. Now of course, there are still pure evil villains whose backstory shaped them, but they’re still chaotic and irredeemable. Edit: Just thought I should clarify what I meant in case of any confusion. With the villains I’ve listed above and idea of villains who are pure evil, I am not saying that they do not have depth or motivation. It’s just that their depth and motivation are different from that of a villain who one would be considered gray. I feel like because of how evil certain types of villains can be, they sometimes get called one dimensional or not realistic. Even though we see from history and society itself that that type of evil does exist. Not saying that gray villains shouldn’t exist, I do enjoy those type of villains. I also feel like pure evil villains are good in their own right, but perhaps are not as appreciated anymore.
It's a shame because sometimes a character being pure evil is more fun in a fictionalized setting. The live-action Maleficent wasn't "bad" as a story per se, but Maleficent was always more entertaining and engaging when she was an all-powerful fairy who was known to be prickly and decided to take revenge on a child because she wasn't invited to a party (which for fairies is a huge slight). Cletus Cassidy from Spiderman is another character who is just better when he's allowed to be an unrepentant serial killer who is made much more dangerous when he bonds with an alien symbiote and lives up to his name Carnage. Trying to force a tragic backstory onto him just takes away what makes him interesting and terrifying. This is a villain that Spiderman needed the help of allies and other villains to stop, and Carnage being so simple and bloodthirsty is a great contrast against Venom, who is more complicated because Eddie Brock doesn't completely bond with the symbiote.
it's just important to remember that not every story needs a villain. and if the latest storytelling trend is to tell stories about conflicts between humans who love each other and how we fuck each other up and then how we repair that damage, a decrease in villains is just going to be a natural consequence of that, because those stories can work beautifully and be very well-told without a villain in sight. there's a conflict to drive the plot, but you don't need a villain for that. it's not because of some censorship, or villains not being "allowed" to be pure evil. pure evil villains just don't _work_ for every story. no character is good in a vaccuum; they're only as good as their ability to serve their story. this is true of every character, antagonists included. and good writers will know that, and disney, for all their crimes at the corporate level, hires a _lot_ of good writers. if you like super-evil villains a lot, that is fine, but that is a reflection of the type of story you like, and it is not a valid criticism of the types of story you _don't_ like. you can't judge one genre by the standards of another. plenty of movies and TV shows in the last five years have featured fun, not-super-nuanced, silly over-the-top villains if that is what you like. disney just hasn't been telling as much of that type of story, which is fine. some of us really enjoy it. it's ok that you don't enjoy it -- but make no mistake, they're doing it to appeal to an audience that wants that type of story. a lot of disney fans are growing up, so maybe that's part of it.
@@asterling4 I think you’re misinterpreting what I said. I wasn’t saying that every story needs a villain or that pure evil villains work for every story. My point was that nowadays, villains (like the ones I’ve listed before) get dismissed because it seems like people are looking for villains that are morally gray. And by not being allowed, I mean that people don't find pure evil villains as interesting as they were before. Not anything about censorship or any of the sort that you've mentioned. Also, no where was I criticizing stories that I supposedly don’t like. I like other types of villains, but I just find pure evil villains more interesting. I am also a bit confused on your last paragraph, because where was I judging different genres? I never said that I didn’t like other type of villains, I just pointed out the difference with how pure evil villains and morally gray villains are viewed now. I never said anything about not liking certain types of stories either. Pointing out how different type of villains are viewed doesn’t reflect on my own opinion on certain stories/characters. Me also pointing out the type of villains that I enjoy the most also does not mean that I don’t enjoy other types. It seems like you’re just making assumptions. I also do enjoy the different types of stories that Disney is making, never stated or implied otherwise.
Also, in real life, not all villains are morally gray. Some people do evil things because of trauma, or misguided goals, or some other sympathetic motive. But some people are just jerks.
I think Puss in Boots 2 has proven that the audience wants actual villains to comeback in animated feature films, specially Disney. It can work. I do like the generation trauma plot, but it’s about time to see an actual bad guy in these stories. Good written bad guys of course.
@@Disneyfan82 What those studios are doing that Disney is not is something that hearkens back to the age old saying: "A hero's a hero but everyone LOVES a great villain". Meaning while you can have compelling protagonists to root for, it wouldn't mean anything if they didn't have enemies to counterbalance off of that are just as compelling so you can root for their inevitable downfall.
You could still do generations trauma with, get this, a villain who isn’t the embodiment/representation/cause of the generational trauma! It’s almost like villains are central to the themes and obstacles faced by the heroes
I remember leaving the theater after watching puss in boots the last wish, and as I was walking out I heard death’s whistle theme from another theater and I genuinely got scared. That’s how intimidating death was and is
I think it's tied into the larger problem of Disney being too afraid to make anything different or unique anymore. Compare their recent version of Pinocchio to Del Toro's: they defanged and watered down all the original villains and it ended up being just a mess of a film, but Del Toro has several actual villains in there (and a lot of characters that aren't black or white but complex individuals). That's why people love Del Toro too, he gives us bad guys that are interesting and complicated but they are still *bad* without having some kind of dull backstory trope that lessens the impact. It is healthy for kids to read books or watch movies that have genuine bad people in them.
@@jstar3382 who was voiced by Tom Kenny of all people, which makes me laugh. That's how you do good political satire, you turn the bad guys into caricatures. I think Disney has the wrong idea about what kids should watch. Yes, there's a time and a place for more optimistic and hopeful movies, but kids aren't stupid and it does them a huge injustice to talk down to them the way so many movies do these days. Or they preach at them to try to indoctrinate them into whatever Disney wants them to think (and it's not just Disney but they are the worst when it comes to doing that sort of thing).
Disney watered down Pleasure Island by having the kids drink root beer instead of alcoholic beer while Del Toro's take (even though it's not explicitly called Pleasure Island) was more of a military camp. It goes to show how Guillermo never talks down to his audience.
I remember seeing a video on Jack Horner where someone asked, “Why doesn’t Disney make completely irredeemable villains anymore?” And some other guy responded, “Because they are one now.”
The Mitchell's vs The Machines is a great example of how Strange World could have been. The conflict between the family is realistic and explored throughout the film, and is tied into the villain and saving the world. It has high stakes, an adventure, and a really heartwarming but kind of dysfunctional family
@@Kaisona2017 Well, not all good jokes. There’s a few that admittedly are duds. One example I can think of is when PAL is dying and Katie has to interrupt it to remind us it’s similar to a funny animal video which is only an excuse to just shove in a live clip of a baboon opening and closing his mouth on loop and honestly doesn’t really contribute anything. Plus, the villain’s death is already supposed to be humorous anyways so we didn’t need any extra humor to it. There’s definitely some moments where director Mike Rianda needed to REEL in Lord and Miller on their humor and cut it down.
Idea: An evil villain like that, but their "hidden motive" amounts to "Ok this one bad thing you did was the straw that broke the camel's back, and I'm feeling at least twice as spiteful as usual today. Aside from that, this is all just for fun"
He had a motivation though. Everything was handed to him as a kid and when Pinocchio, a magical being got more attention than him he got mad and decided to take the magic.
That's why fireza from dragon ball is one of my favourite villans of all time he is pure evil he was laughing while he destroyed an entire planet while 99% of its population was there that's the type of villany that is missing from most modern movies imo
Encanto being responsible for the "personal drama" archetype in Disney despite being a good film has the same energy as the first Shrek movie being responsible for the wave of crude humor and pop culture references
@Rogue Slushy I guess they mean it being the main focus in a movie made by a big company, a lot of these things have been done by indie filmmaker WAY before these big companies, so I guess that's what they wanted to say
@@korinoriz I think they mean it’s one of the first big animated movies to focus on the family and it’s dynamics rather than have them fight a foe. Again all the problems were caused by the people living in the house so the plot was literally solving their own personal problems
My crackpot theory is that the "Disney is woke!!1!" thing is stupid, but in a different way than we think. I think that we live in such an accepting time that Disney, the huge corporation, thinks that it has to make *everybody* acceptable. It forgets that sometimes, there's just evil and selfish people. So, being the greedy money sink that it is, it tries to get people endeared to those villains because it's more "compelling". Also because merchandise. People that children actually like tend to sell a lot more as cute dolls and shit than irredeemable asses
Of course it is. The real villian is Disney itself. Why would they show up somewhere and het beaten up by good heroes that are actually rare nowadays too because most of todays protagonists are annoying and all If I think about it...
@@StarryxNight5 remember how twitter got angry that Clown from remake horror movie "It" was homophobic? Disney afraid of this thing more than anything. They gonna release blank unintertaining cartoons one after another until the competitors shows up, and they already here
The idea that there aren’t any truly bad people is a really bad message. Sometimes you have to accept that cutting people out of your life is for the best and that giving someone many chances to change is a terrible idea.
There are people who have completely given in to evil, but the only people who encounter them basically ever are murder and kidnapping victims. Remember, a person's ideology does not make the person pure evil or pure good. Hitler was without a doubt pure evil, but the average Nazi was just doing what he or she truly thought was right. One's ideology or beliefs is no reason to cut him or her out of your life.
@@adnaP_esreveR i mean, even when you get to the level of "these are traditions borne out of cultural trauma that are deeply flawed, have shown to be harmful and there's many people who still haven't fully grasped why they are harmful or that there is a better way", there's clearly MF'rs out here that are fully aware not only that their actions are harmful, want their actions to harm even more people, and clearly make sure that the better way never gets off the ground. while my cynicism tends to get in my way sometimes, i genuinely believe that's why the "climate change" proxies don't get off the ground in any meaningful way to pointing fingers, because Disney is already receiving cataclismic pushback from people like desantis, and the "FUCK IT" response only really works when you don't have anything to lose, which is why smaller corporations are able to do it while the big corporations just sort of fade into the background. it's why dreamworks as this smaller entity is able to meaningfully make art, while disney can only make money.
17:05 I really like the hero/villain dynamic in Emperor's New Groove. They're basically equally selfish and superficial jerks, but the main difference is that one of them actually learns from their mistakes, and hasn't ever tried to intentionally kill anyone to get what they want. And also the lovable henchman of the villain, who's often confused which side he should be on, and who's just working for the wrong person.😉
I love that, it like "damn I'm just working here for how it would look on my cv and now I have to make moral choices" vibes it gives, like Kronk is the best haha
Puss in Boots TLW literally does this with all of their villains, too! The crime family deals with Puss' own loner status, Jack Horner mirrors the rise of personal myth and self-aggrandizing (Horner lies to seem more evil, whereas Puss lied to seem more heroic), and Death is self-evidently the fear of it. Another #PussSweep moment
@@austinfletchermusicliterally how smart was it for Puss's fear of mortality to be personified so he has to confront it and come to terms with facing death itself
Having recently watched _The Hunchback of Notre Dame_ and _Hercules_ for the first time, I can confirm: I miss when Disney had a good, _bad_ villain. Hades is definitely in my top 5 Disney villains, and Frollo isn't too far behind.
That is exactly why I believe Frollo is the BEST villain in Disney. He is scarily realistic. Now Hades, he is very entertaining and is threatening when he wants. Can’t remember the actor’s name, but he amazing in that role.
@@CainCadeyrn04 James Woods. I was told that _Hercules_ had a lot of the same plot points to the 1978 Superman movie, and funny enough, Woods, in recent years, voiced Lex Luthor on the show Justice League Action.
My whole problem with Lightyear was how in the second Toy Story they had that “I am your father” moment. And I was hoping they’d follow through with that or something. But no, future version of himself…
In the cartoon, they do the whole “I am your father” routine and Zurg pulls a 180 and gains the upper hand in battle against Buzz. So the “I am your father” is nothing more than a joke and not to be taken seriously or as canon.
Buzz really didn't feel like a character in his own movie.....not only that, but having him be "his own villain" paints him as an actual villain, and I feel in my opinion they were trying to make Lizzie and Hawthorne the "true heroes" all along, like the movie was trying to say Buzz had to learn to value these characters because they are the ones that drove him to be who he is. I call bullshit. Andy would've gotten a "Buzz Lightyear" action fugure for the same reason a kid would get a "Batman" action figure, because they are cool looking figures that fight crime and for justice. To portray Buzz in such a light in his own movie was an insult and unbelievable. And before people say something about "OH, well you dont know what Andy likes", you saw how Andy thinks in the way he interacts with his toys, establishing his characters best traits while putting in action scenes
A big issue I had with the twist villains was how often the personality would 180. I just kinda like when the twist villain turns out to really have been the person they were presenting all along, but their goals don't align with the hero's. Like any emotional moment and human connection was real, but they're just evil.
King Candy/Turbo and Ernesto del la Cruz are good in that regard. Their personality stays the same over the movie and all their actions make sense from their manipulativ and selfish point of view.
@@QueenOfDarknes5 De la Cruz is so underrated imo. I really like how they took the idea of people working so hard to become famous that they'll do anything for it, and made it work
The villain from Up was also a good twist villain, IMO, because his affable nature wasn’t an act. He just gotten so obsessed with catching the bird to regain his standing that he had grown paranoid and assumed that anyone who got got involved was after his prize.
Disney's main issue in my opinion is their fear of just straight up scarring kids with some sorta horrifying element while the rest of the show is remembered fondly
@@michaelstrong5383 which is odd cause that one got a sequel, but they did enough damage with the first one that it made it so when I traveled to Paris as a kid the whole thing felt like a reference to the movie
Strange World needed to more focus on the wonder of actually exploring and appreciating the whole "We live on a giant living creature" plot. Less blatant generational trauma, more subtle learning about stuff in general.
King Candy is definitely my favorite Disney villain of the 3D era. And that's...not looking likely to change anytime soon. Also enjoy that he did have a "twist" about him, but it was foreshadowed well, and he was thoroughly antagonistic throughout the movie anyway, just in different ways.
@@anerrorhasoccurred8727 I feel like most villain twists are "wait, this sweet and lovable character has been secretly evil the whole time??" but that's not really king candys point. The twist is much more "wait, turbos still around???" It doesn't rely too much on the fact he's evil for shock value.
I’ll never stop being mad that Cruella exists when there was already an amazing live action adaptation of 101 Dalmations before I was even born. Cruella existing and being so bad is honestly so disrespectful 😔
I enjoyed Cruella but honestly I'm sick at tired of these movies trying to redeem their villains. Just give me something to be scared of, to marvel at how evil they are. I like it occasionaly like with Maleficent but they dont have to keep repeating the same tropes for every character.
I actually liked Cruella a lot, but it doesn’t feel like a Dalmatians prequel. Neither does Maleficent. I kind of see those movies as an “alternate reality” story that’s entertaining, but nothing like the original villains. I would rather have them stop making those movies and take the time to create new delightfully evil villains, though.
Disney's relationship with Disney Villains is fascinating because like... they KNOW that people like Disney villains because they're evil and fun. But they also don't want to make a movie where the main protagonist is actually evil and stays evil at the end. It doesn't fit their family friendly brand. But they ALSO want to profit off the Disney villains franchise by making solo movies. They don't want to commit to a story with a genuinely darker and more cynical tone (which is needed for a villain protagonist that actually stays villainous at the end) BUT they also want to profit off of the edginess of having a villain protagonist. They want cool posters of Maleficent or Cruella that say "This ain't your GRANDMOTHER'S DISNEY!"
I think crab boy is a very close villain but I feel thiugh either he is just mentioned prior to damn near meeting him as he is the collector of all things valuable or “shiny”. Even just leaving traces of his gold or giant leg prints could have been amazing to find
We hated the "twist villain phase" because it was a phase, not because of the villains. Disney will never understand that in order to actually be taken seriously in any other capacity than standing on their laurels, they have to actually do something different
I firmly believe that Ernesto de la Cruz, despite being a creation of Pixar, was the last great Disney villain. He was only revealed as such in the last third of the movie, but he still managed to be a threatening presence, kind of in the same way as Oogie Boogie in Nightmare Before Christmas. Disney villains may be dying out in this era, but at least they went out with a bang
Yeah. I felt the chill when he turned villain because the story sets Miguel's great great grandmother as the antagonist. I thought she was going to end the film by allowing Miguel to go back without giving up music. I didn't expect Miguel and everyone else to need her in the final act to play around de la Cruz to save Miguel and Hector.
The fact that he would just murder his best friend for fame... He's a truly evil and terrifying person. The fact that we see the generation trauma inflicted upon the Rivera family because of his selfish desire for fame and money is truly fascinating. They really went LENGTH to show how 1 persons death can impact a family across more then 3+ generations.
not to mention that bruno is a twist protagonist. like, you already get the vibe that he’s not actually evil too, but it follows the same structure as a twist villain, but delivers on it in a unique way
Since Studio Ghibli was shown a few times I have to say this about them. What I like about their films is that the "villains" aren't that way for the sake of it. They have realistic and relatable reasons unlike how Lightyear did it. Take Princess Mononoke for example. Lady Eboshi may come across as a pure villain until you see that her reasons are not purely selfish. She helps Iron Town develop and protects the innocent villagers from the aggressive boars while also freeing brothel girls from their old lives by hiring them to work the iron and also taking in Lepers when everyone else casts them away while also giving them purpose with work. On the flip side from the perspective of San (Mononoke) Eboshi is a cruel, beast that's destroying her home and killing the beasts that dwell in it yet San also commits villainous acts by doing exactly what the boars were doing and killing innocent people just trying to survive in Iron Town. So while both sides are doing good and bad things you can't condemn them as their reasons for doing what they do is not black and white and for the most part they are complete justified in their actions regardless of how they go about it.
@ashtimbo There's no meaningful "conflict" yes there has to be some form of conflict in a film to drive the plot be it through a villain or through an internal struggle but Disney as of late has been lazy in their storytelling. I'll now use Spirited Away as another example. There's not a war between factions and centred around Chihiro finding her inner strength and that she can be brave. Yababa serves as an antagonist but at the same time what is currently happening to Chihiro is actually down to her parents eating the spirits food which in Yababa's eyes was reason enough to justify them turning into pigs and she also does occasionally show that she can care for others. Again this serves as a fact that not everything is black and white. There's a reason older Disney films are better received than the new ones because as mentioned in the video often one of the most memorable parts of a film is the villain or proper conflict
I love how much I've been seeing Princess Mononoke brought up lately in discussions surrounding nuanced villainy. Ghibli movies are great examples, all around, of how to handle conflict with protagonists and antagonists. Howl's Moving Castle is a great example of how to use more extreme villains. The Witch of the Waste is the personification of Sophie's self-doubts and she even sets Sophie's entire growth into motion with the curse she puts on her. They have so much fun playing with the Witch as a villain through exploring her humanity, by forcibly allying her with the protagonists. She is essentially defeated at the midpoint by a side character, and even after she's stripped of her powers as a witch, the curse remains on Sophie with even less hope of finding a way to lift it outside of confronting her own insecurities. And even in her powerless state the Witch is still put to use as a villain to cause conflict through her selfish desires; even after the protagonists go so far as to start caring for her in her newfound disability. Sophie defeats The Witch of the Waste once and for all by speaking to her as if she were a mirror image of herself, easing her own insecurities from within her antagonist, realizing the fact they shared the same insecurities was the reason the Witch cursed Sophie in the first place. There's tons of room for any villain to have interesting dynamics and meaningful subversions of expectations that create space to go even deeper in exploring the themes of the central conflict, it doesn't matter how nuanced or extreme they are in the role.
The Wolf from puss in boots will most definitely go down as "oh ye, I remember how I was terrified by the wolf when I was younger" and i feel like every generation needs one of those characters
Bruh I’m 25 and I recently had a nightmare about him looking at me with those red eyes. I can’t imagine how many actual children he’s already scarred for life.
Exactly. Scary/threatening villains need to be a thing again. Bring back more Wheelers (Return to Oz) and Gmorks (on the topic of scary wolf villains) too. I know a couple of people who stated that they were frightened of even Mrs Tweedy (Chicken Run) as a kid.
I work with elementary age kids and when I asked them if they'd seen Puss in Boots, one 7 year old said "Yeah, I hated it!" When I asked why with confusion, they replied "The wolf terrified me!!" So, yeah. Kids will definitely remember being terrified of that wolf.
I took my 5 year old sister to see it and after the movie I asked if she thought the wolf was scary, and she said “yeah.. he was scary” “not too scary though right?” “Actually he was REALLY scary” so I am happy to report that gen alpha is going through the rite of passage as well
Remember when zurg said that he was his father? Even though that was a star wars joke it stuck to me. When they one day make a film about this character they'll use that joke again but nope, we get a villain who's from the future and turns out to be buzz all along, I am so glad I never seen this film and never will.
@@PowerRangersFanAntiDinoFury Thing is, they did make the joke, if only to then throw it away. Buzz's reaction to seeing the old him is "Dad?" only for the other guy to answer "Guess again" and drop this dumb twist.
Magnifico was only stealing the personalities and memories of all his subjects including his wife and was prepared to commit murder to stay in power. But yeah, that is not enough for people who seem to think that cults and dictatorships are good things.
@@noobmasterruben5167 Magnifico kept having his subjects lobotomized, had even had his wife brainwashed into serving him and almost murdered Star. How can you think that Asha is the villain?
There is one other thing I’ve noticed: Death in Puss of Boots is very much like Rattlesnake Jake from Rango. He’s cold, clever, and very intimidating . He not only looks dangerous, but his voice can range from a chilling whisper to a roaring yell within seconds. He represents death, and is the one character that exposes Rango for the flawed, prideful, and cowardly soul he is. Heck, Jake tests Rango to attack him in the same way Death tells Puss to pick up his sword. But the trope is flipped when Rango, like Puss, becomes the humbled, noble hero he was originally perceived as. Suddenly, he tests Rattlesnake Jake to see if Jake is willing to strike in for the kill! And instead of doing it, Rattlesnake Jake instead develops respect for Rango (just as how Death chooses to let Puss go to live the rest of his life).
You just made me realize how similar Puss In Boots was to Rango. Two great animated films about a man learning to overcome his fears and be a true hero
* Not only are the heroes and the villains animals, but meeting the villains force Puss and Rango to explore the parts of themselves that are vulnerable ( that is, their loneliness and search for meaning). It’s quite beautiful how the bonds they share with their allies is what gives them peace, and being there for them is worth living for.
I think the word you’re looking for is antagonist. A villain IS bad, but an antagonist just works against the protagonist, regardless of their morality. But I agree, there should be some motive behind the antagonist rather than just “I’m bad”
@@frogitude3106 there doesn’t have to be, I mean look at big jack Horner, he had little to no reason to do what he had done and yet he still pulled off the evil trope really well
@@frogitude3106 Worth note is that there are a handful of real life people not unlike Jack Horner (to add to Bubba's comment), such as de Sade. de Sade was a noble that didn't need to commit the atrocities that he did, but he wanted to. He simply enjoyed it, no matter how needlessly it complicated his life.
In my opinion, Hopper from A Bug's Life is Disney's most underrated villain (at least that I can think of as of me writing this). He's threatening, intimidating, and has a backstory that motivates his actions, that being he was attacked by a bird and that's why he's both afraid of birds and feels the need to look like the bigger person. Even though deep down he's afraid of the ants, and even mentions how they outnumber grasshoppers 100 to 1, he still finds a way to make all of them scared of him. And near the end of the film when he realizes that the ants aren't afraid of him anymore because of one singular ant, he tries to take that ant down with him with attempted murder instead of trying to regain their fear. He really is a Disney villain to be intimidated by whenever he's on screen and I can easily see little kids being afraid of him, but for some reason I don't hear a lot of people talk about him when it comes to memorable Disney villains
No matter what studio he belongs in, he is still hands down one of the most underrated animation villains. I know A Bug's Life isn't that special movie compared to Toy Story and other 90's classics, but it's still a very entertaining watch with an amazing villain!
@@pokedisney33 how'd you come to that conclusion at all. Its possible if it was after disney bought pixar, but saying ALL villain after bugs life? Man has never mentioned that.
I think the strangest thing about Disney movies is that they are extremely adverse to cliches, because they’re often seen as one dimensional. But that’s a horrible mindset to have when writing a story. Everything under the sun has already been written about. The difference is that certain people have the ability to refine a cliche, and make it as layered as it needs to be. It’s why Dreamworks does so well when messing around with fairy tales and children’s stories. They take storytelling cliches, and add extra layers to make them engaging.
@An Error Has Occurred sad thing is that I know lots of current writers and aspiring ones who absolutely worship that page. What happened to just "I have an idea for a story, I'm going for it?" One of my favorite games of the last decade was Xenoblade Chronicles (the first one) and it has almost every JRPG trope under the sun, but the cast of characters are so loveable that it doesn't even matter.
I think Hopper from Pixar's A Bug's Life is the perfect villain. Irredeemable, evil from the start, and he's relevant to the real world forcing you to reflect. I say that because he knows his flaws and so he uses intimidation and manipulation to not only hide his flaws but to make the ants do his bidding. And it's when the ants finally learn they can survive independently without Hopper is when they revolt and he loses control. It's just like how real world revolutions work with tyrannical governments. That's why I love Hopper. My favorite bit of dialogue from him describes it perfectly. "You let one ant stand up to us, then they all might stand up. Those puny little ants outnumber us 100 to 1. And if they ever figure that out, there goes our way of life! It's not about food. It's about keeping those ants in line."
I feel like this is a feature of the growing trend of attempts at realism in animation. Look at Disney's animation style, verging towards as real as possible. Their storylines are trying to tackle real issues and a feature of that is the idea that there are no big bads, only flawed people. Villains are viewed by storytellers as simple. We've forgotten how a simple story can still be compelling.
There are a lot of flawed people, but the idea of there being no bad people is quite dangerous a message to tell in all honesty. It might not be related entirely to what you're trying to point out about simple stories, but it's still a concern with the current narrative of many of the new projects releasing from Disney
That's why Disney and Pixar has been bland these days, they focus too much on relatibility in a way that their art design are too realistic, ending up with different movies yet the same-y feel because of similar character designs. Animation is supposed to be an escape from reality that happens to have compelling and relatable characters. It's amazing how Japan still makes amazing 2d Animations, everything in the west is all too focused on 3d animation that a film like into the spiderverse have to blend 2d and 3d to have an identity of itself.
I think saying there are no big bads undermines the real-world existence and significance of evil. You might not want to describe some people as evil, but it usually doesn't change the fact that their actions are, and sometimes those people will not be redeemed, either because they choose not to be or are killed before they can be. Like Palpatine, for example. He works because you can imagine a person like him existing, especially if you dig into his back story, personality, and motivations. Even if he did have a tragic backstory that would give you sympathy for him, you knew justice needed to find him. It's poetic that justice came at the hands of one of his most notable victims, Anakin. Yes, every big bad is a flawed person, but that doesn't mean they aren't a big bad. A certain mid-century Austrian comes to mind.
The Hades one got me. I would like to note that every version of Hades I know is this Charismatic son of a gun. They may have a few other qualities to make them different but that charisma is always there. Besides Hades’s Hades. But that simply because of the roll he plays.
After watching your kung Fu panda review and you talking about how tai lungs subtle facial expressions were amazing, I watch the movie and noticed something really neat. After Po tells Shifu how the reason he stayed and tried seriously to become the Dragon warrior was because he hated himself, the scene cuts to Tigress watching and listening. And I noticed after she overheard it, she looked genuinely upset, probably because she said all of those hurtful things without knowing about who he was, all because she was angry. Just a really cool little detail I found out
Honestly, the one complaint I have about KP1 is that we didn't get a scene of Po and Tigress interacting after that. It would have been neat to see Tigress talk to Po about feeling inadequate and how she can relate to that.
i think Bill Cipher is one of the best villains, he doesn't have a traumatic backstory or anything, he literally just loves hurting people, causing misery and chaos and generally making people suffer as much as he possibly can and enjoys every second of it. Just a straight up insane villain
I like how as the show goes on the depths of his evil become worse and worse Oh he's some kind of trickster Oh he's some kind of demon Oh he's a Lovecraftian Chaos God that has a couch made of living human flesh and a throne of frozen suffering
Hayao Miyazaki mastered this before Disney ever could, and their stories are so deep that they are widely appreciated by all age groups even without having to bring your kid to the theatre.
@@fruzsimih7214 The closest I can think is the king from The Cat Returns, and he's kinda just a flamboyant obstacle. Like he's evil, sure, but he doesn't command a presence like any of Disney's infamous rogue's gallery
@FastFox57 seeing how KH3 was obsessed with keeping the focus on the more newer movies at the time, it wouldn't surprise me if they pull that for KH4. Problem is that Disney's recent output has been so bland and forgettable that Square Enix would really need to carry those franchises to incorporate them into the story.
![[#2024MAMA] ROSÉ (로제), Bruno Mars - APT. | Mnet 241122 방송](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/dgGqD28J6aQ/mqdefault.jpg)
Fun fact: The wolf was the character with the least screentime and yet, he stole the entire audience
everyone loves cool villain
@@mitacestalia7532 El Lobo also sounds like lobotomy in English, making it still sound terrifying.
Correct, but replace “The wolf” with Jimny Cricket.
@@stevencooper4422 🤔
Reminds me of Senator Armstrong & Monsoon
I feel like disney needs to understand not every movie needs a villain, but some movies need one.
Especially if it's children who are the audience. Abstract notions don't really develop until after 11 years old.
@@stevencooper4422 To be fair, small children arent the target audience for every single movie. Some of their movies are all ages, some are geared towards tweens and early teens, etc. Moreover, at least where I was, a lot of kids were prohibited from watching the early Disney movies because the villains were considered too scary. I do think Disney needs to crank out some actual villains again, but the fact that kids will be watching it isnt really an accurate reasoning for that.
The problem is they don’t understand when to put twist villians, when no villian is needed, when a story needs a villain, and how to tell a story
@@stevencooper4422 It's for everyone, not just kids.
@@redpanda6497 Thats the problem.
Tbh I also love how puss never defeated death, just postponed it. He accepted his fate that was sure to come at some point and death came to respect him and let him enjoy his last life. Disney could learn from having a undefeated but retreating and compelling villain
🎯
A retreating villain maybe good but I think going back to the root of just making them irredeemable to the point that you have to kill them, might be kinda refreshing
Death was really just to represent the protagonist's coming to terms with his mortality. Not a threat the way Horner is.
@@galten7361 true
@@history-joviandude you can't kill death
Cruella de Vil was literally just a upper class lady in a really expensive fur coat with a really nice car. Yet she still had such raw emotion and pure livid rage in her being that she's more intimidating to see on screen than a lot of comic book villains that can destroy planets. Just rewatch that chase scene from 101 dalmations and bask in how well they animated her pure rage.
If I remembered correctly, the part where her car ran off the bridge into the ditch was the last straw because she had enough of the dalmatians evading her. Once she threw the car into full drive forward, Cruella showed she isnt playing around anymore and with her car bursting out from the ditch with tons of pieces tearing off, she no longer cared for anything else aside from killing those puppies for her fur coat.
Take note of the full stripped glory of her once shes burst out from the ditch: her eyes have the scary psycho red lines in them, the engine is fully exposed and theres no longer a roof over her head. In a way, you could view it as the full rage of Cruella exposed.
No longer caring for looks right now because she only wants her dalmatian coat and if she needs to run a truck off the road containing them, she'll do it
@@Thomasmemoryscentral I've just noticed that its similarity was preceded by a darker version of it like The Great Mouse Detective with the London clock tower scene. As Ratigan realized that his second plan to kidnap Olivia is going to fail completely (his other plan to perform a coup at Buckingham Palace was foiled by Basil), he frees himself from the clock gears, tearing his suit and revealing that he's pursuing the main character while not in a professor-like clasiness but as a madman hell bent on killing Basil by the very least.
Which to say in conclusion, Disney reinvented the rivalry of Holmes vs Moriarty on that one.
@@TheGamingMotionTGM So, Ratigan hulks out and tries to smash Basil?
@@jeffreygao3956 He is a rat, which in real life would be bigger than a mouse Basil was. The true self was hidden inside those pair of white gloves too, pure elegance covering the claws that were ready to strike.
Cruella does not need superpowers to be scary.
“Death is the personification of Puss’s anxieties.”
YES. Yes. That’s how you make any villain freaking great. You take everything one character stands for, their weakness, flaws, fears, and then make the villain those things.
*Schaffrillas brother is crying in hell because my content is better* 🤣
"I am Anxiety.
And I don't mean metaphorically, or poetically, or thematically, or rhetorically, or in any other fancy way.
I am Anxiety, straight up."
@@NTMonsty Lol 😆
The tried and true FOIL character. It's made great tales for thousands of years, it can still make great tales now.
It doesn't even have to be literally either like in PiB, if the hero has fear of being so strong it can harm his loved ones, make the villain be a building-sized monster that just wants to smash things.
Amazing how the Shrek franchise went from clapping back at Disney by incoprorating gross-out humor, innuendos, and pop culture references, to clapping back at Disney by including 3 compelling villains in 1 movie.
Is it possible to learn this power?
@@CountFab not from a Disney employee
Honestly some of the most iconic moments in animation history came from other studios and former Disney employees wanting to stick it to the mouse
Sad how gross-out humor became the norm for animation when it was special only because it broke the previous status quo of fantasy and Disney musicals
Exactly
big jack horner is such a good example of how to have a villain that's both extremely irredeemable and extremely entertaining
I'm pretty sure they made him to be a parody of the "sympathetic villain" trend. The conscience bug literally wants to find some freudian excuse for why he's evil, and Jack's just like "nope I'm just evil lol".
@Follow me, please are you?
@@talkinghoorse6936 "You're an irredeemable monster"
Took you long enough
You are not gonna shoot a puppy aren't you?
Yeah in the face, why?
Yeah
I find it so ironic that Disney as a company won't hesitate to capitalize off of their legacy villains by slapping them on any shirt, board game, scented candle or whatever they can get their branding on but Disney as an animation studio seems terrified of creating a new villain in the same vein as those same ones that seem to populate every Hot Topic or BoxLunch.
A Disney villain designed by committee to be on a Hot Topic t-shirt doesn’t necessarily sound great either
I've been in Hot Topic dozens of times and never seen any classic Disney villain merch, I mostly just see anime stuff now. I did see Twilight and Justin Beeber merch once though.
To the point that there's a literal board game called Villainous based on Classic Disney characters!
@@realJoeMavro The villains are used in stuff like the Dreamlight Valley game, or children's books and such. Still milked but in other areas.
@@Zoodude254
Is it any good, tho?
(And also, there’s the imageboard-borne Disney Villains Victorious)
I was initially taken aback by the fact that Jack Horner was a stereotypical one-dimensional villain. But then it hit me. He doesn't NEED to have some sad backstory or a twist reveal, Jack Horner is evil and he LIKES it. A lot of humor comes from just how much he enjoys being a villain.
He does have a bit of a backstory though, and I would say the idea of it is a bit sad (a kid who merely wants to be liked but is overlooked). But I do agree with your overall point
@@sarahvalerie4307 All he wants is to be given love and attention... at first. Which quickly spirals from "Pinocchio is loved because magic, so I want magic" to "fuck it let's nuke the world with baby unicorn horns". To me, that's absolutely hilarious and fun for a villain.
Big Jack Horner is a perfect example of "if you have a one-dimensional villain, they better be entertaining". Having a one-dimensional villain that only talks about how evil they are and about their evil plan is just boring. This mf on the other hand is someone you just love to see come up on the screen, even if they are a horrible monster.
@@sarahvalerie4307 I think he's like Eric Cartman in a way being so heavily spoiled that he becomes selfish and narcissistic
@@cadhla2989 Yeah, he has reasons, but like, they’re only reasonable to a villain. When he described his wish as having all magic in the world and leaving none for anyone else and continuing by saying “Is that so much to ask?” To which the cricket responds “YES!” Jack retorting with “Agree to disagree.” Before continuing to go on and kill his entire crew via negligence, is what gets to the heart of this character. A truly 1 dimensional evil cause evil character would be one without really a character or motive, it would essentially work as a force of nature for the protagonists to overcome, but Jack HAS character AND motive, just not heroic or even neutral ones, just straight up villainous!
You know, I like the fact that Puss was unable to beat death. And it's not like he's as fearless as he was with 9 lives, he simply faced his fear which is why death immediately lost interest. Puss even breathed a sigh of relief when death let him go, showing that he still had his fear of death despite the bravado. He was glad that he's alive.
DAS WHAT IM SAYINNN
He technically didnt beat Death, Death leave him be because he was teaching Puss a lesson about how valuable life. Puss has been careless with using his 8 lives because he thinks he just gonna come back again the next day.
@@socriabbas454yeah he said that "unable to beat death"
@@socriabbas454 Death didnt actually want to teach puss a lesson, he just wanted to be finally rid of him.
but he just couldn't justify taking someones life early when that person now values and respects their life. Notice how the chase only started again when puss once again tried to disrespect the gift of life
@@bastik.3011
When puss and perrito enter Big Jack Horners factory puss falls out of a window. Its never mentioned but a huge shard of glass nearly kills puss. Its only after that moment death shows up.
This is why i will forever praise The Hunchback of Notre Dame as a movie. It has a nuanced protagonist who is so fucked up from constant abuse that he struggles to do the right thing, and it has one of the nastiest, most monstrous, most downright irredeemable villains ever. Frollo is a hideously awful person. And his awfulness makes him a FANTASTIC villain. After he quite literally sings a song about how his disgusting thoughts were the fault of someone else (yikes), watching him get defeated by the one he systematically abused for years is so satisfying. Quasimodo wouldn’t have such a strong arc to his character without having such a horrific abuser in his life. Could you imagine if disney tried to tell this story without Frollo? It would be so empty.
They went all out with Frollo. BTW I love how this movie shows a hero that does not "get the girl" at the end like other movies, that really stood out to me as a child
Or worse, tried to tell the story with Frollo but went out of their way to show that he's bad because of other reasons, so we as the audience should feel bad for him and maybe cut him some slack on the things he did.
FROLLO KILLED ANTS! HE IS TOTALLY UNREDEEMABLE
Abril4014: Of course, they had to do that with a disfigured character and give it a heap of unfortunate implications.
But luckily for Quasimodo, all of that was fixed in the sequel.
As much as I hated that movie, I do have to agree. He was so goddamn disgusting and horrifying that he was the PERFECT villain. By far, that was one of the best villains I’ve seen, before better ones came along.
Anyone else impressed by the amount of different expressions Shaff pulls from an under 10-minute scene of a crab singing?
Me too
True
it kinda seems like he really liked him
Ever heard about Morshu?
@@ReAnnieMator “Lamp Oil”
This video makes me think about how Coco had both generational trauma and a well-executed twist villain who was responsible for the family's generational trauma.
I also really liked how Coco approached this and how fucked it up was for Ernesto to practically be the cause of an entire family’s suffering for so many years. 😧
@@Lauren_210 what makes it worse is that he technically won. He got his fame and fortune in life and in death. Even after the truth was revealed, his impact on the world guarantees that no one will forget him for a long time.
@@FrahdChikun Also, I don’t know if it was intentional or not (like if they were inspired or not), but Ernesto killing Hector really reminded me a lot of the Selena tragedy since both Hector and Selena were Hispanic musicians/singers and were murdered by someone close to them and died way too soon (in Selena’s case, being shot by Yolanda Saldívar). 😔
@@FrahdChikun true, but on the bright side, no one will also ever let him forget the kind of person he is and the fact that the whole world--both dead and alive, will now remember him as a fraud and a murderer. And to add icing on the cake, he will still be there to witness the aftermath of his downfall for years to come. As Hector's family continues to thrive, Ernesto will remain in the shadows fading gradually with no one and nothing by his side.
Arguably a fate worse than death imo.
GOD YES
Big jack horner's lines of "you wouldn't shoot a puppy, would you jack?" "Yeah, in the face, why" and also "its adorable how you think that would work. Don't you know I'm dead inside?". Really nailed home what his character is trying to be. No redeamability, no twist, just a simply and delightfully unhinged villain. That, along with the animation style, in-depth characters and compelling story really make the movie stand out. And, of course, death is the coolest charater in recent movies by a landslide
Edit: big jack horners lines
He said “yeah, in the face, why”, not “yes I will, want to see me do it”
yep, wanna know why Frieza is still active in the Dragon Ball series? Cuz people love how irredeemably evil he is, his cunningness and cruelty makes you want to hate the guy but his charisma makes him your favorite (presumably) we need more of those, they don't need to be super deep so long as you make them fun to watch and a legit threat, just like Jack Horner
@@PosiDoesMore you're absolutely right
"What did I do to deserve this?! I mean WHAT SPECIFICALLY?!"
"Ah you know I never had much as a kid just loving parents and stability in a mansion and a thriving baked goods enterprise for me to inherent useless crap like that"
Even though Tangle's mother Gothel isn't part of the classic Disney villains or Disney Renaissance villains, she's pretty evil to me.
kidnapping a baby and manipulating her into thinking you’re a good person is pretty diabolical
She's basically Frollo but without the lust
@@Simbala-bq5vyshe Frollo, but not racist, ableist, etc
Edit: actually she may be those things, but they don’t focus on that
She’s a good villain
yeah, i think forget about her (or tangled in general). she was straight up evil, no redemption arc or anything lol, just using her excuses to keep her trapped and using her.
What I liked most about DEATH in Puss In Boots 2 is how he was acting chiefly out of a personal vendetta. Most of the time, the Grim Reaper is portrayed as either sympathetic or emotionally distant to those he (or she) comes to collect. So, it was an interesting change of pace to see this Death come after Puss just to make him pay for eight lives of mockery.
A common depiction of death, across cultures, is that he likes to make wagers and essentially “play” with people’s lives. Death Wolf could have reaped Puss’ soul at any time, but lost his chance bc he just _had_ to turn it into a hunt. Very consistent portrayal.
@@anerrorhasoccurred8727I mean both are frequent portrayals of death, you have
1. The calm and reassuring death, who helps those who pass along accept their passing, and help them find closure
2. The cheeky asshole death, who makes it into a challenge or plays a rigged game, usually offering eternal life, or similar, if you win
@@hitthere7722 And the book, Reaper Man included both. The original Death being the calm/emotionally distant one, and a protagonist. While the New Death was cocky, saying things like "lesser lives", and "you never wanted to rule" and literally wearing a crown.
It also included a comedic death, the Death of Rats.
And a cosmic, detached-from-everything death, Azrael.
And a more human incarnation of death, Bill Door.
@@firelight4098 *_THERE MUST BE NO CROWN, ONLY THE HARVEST. WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT THE CARE OF THE REAPER MAN_*
Grim is a he, like it’s canon.
I like to imagine that the villains of the Renaissance films would bully the twist villains.
👍👍. The Renaissance Disney villains were awesome. The twist villains are mediocre jokes
Omg YES
Lmao yes
Jafar would make that prince mf from Frozen (forgot his name) look like a b**ch
That would be so hilarious (in an unironically good way)!
It's crazy to me how Puss In Boots, of all things, came out of freaking nowhere and was so damn good it's making us question other franchises/animation studios. Big W for DreamWorks
Edit: How does a positive comment on DreamWorks accomplishment devolve into a political argument? :(
A sequel to a fucking spin off as well
@@Deathmare235 Right?! That's gotta be a first or at least extremely rare
specially because dreamworks is prioritizing good storytelling and character development unlike disney who's prioritizing woke gay agendas and minority representation instead, and thus flopping hard at the box office because of it like what happened with lightyear and strange world recently
I always loved him
@@Finozzi96 disney doesn't prioritize that shit, they only do it for the money while they fund anti-LGBTQ politicians in the background. there's no "gay agenda" to incorporate gay and minority representation into everything, and if it does exist then it exists only in niche parts of the world. all this pandering and representation you see is mostly a reputation stunt, and sure if they do representation well and not for greed then that's a good thing, but it's clear when they only do it for the money.
The Monkey Paw curled and you got one of the most mid villains Disney ever created.
was thinking the same lol, and ironically he could have been a good sympathetic villiain, even if made not to be redeemed. I can totally see magnifico as getting progressively paranoid and careful about wishes, show us some past wishes being granted and then misfiring terribly, or some ouright damaging wishes that a person would never say out loud, but he gets to see in the orbs. or just, different wishes being mutually contradictory, so you cannot grant both, and which makes him question people's intentions when given all they seemingly wanted.
There was overflowing rational for him to not grant all the wishes in the world lol. or be wary of some individuals actually pursuing certain wishes even if on their own and not aided by magnifico (not every wish is an overal good for the world, i don't know why disney chose to boil it down to the most bare bones depiction of this....when even aladdin so many years ago handled the idea of wishes in a better way...), more than reasonable. And it would become a little overwhelming to filter it all once you established yourself as this king who embraces everyone's wishes at 18, it would very easily feed on his inner concerns.
Jack Horner and Death were a breath of fresh air in the animation industry. One was an irredeemable psychopath. The other was a terrifying force of nature.
Jack Horner is a wonderful throwback to old-school villains: He has a larger than life personality, is having a lot of fun through the entire film, is vaguely queer coded (xD) and is irredeemable evil. Just so entertaining to watch
don't forget Goldi, she was talking with a british accent and that scared me shitless
I work at the movies n this was out next to strange world. A family with a 3-4 year old was debating which kid movie to see n i told them that while puss in boots was my favorite n a very good movie i wouldnt recommend taking a young child to it with how intense n terrifying the villians are
I wouldn’t say Jack Horner was a Psychopath, but rather a Sociopath. A Sociopath has no feelings of empathy or remorse for anyone around them and are perfectly fine and willing to do some heinous things. A Psychopath on the other hand doesn’t even have any feelings for themselves let alone others and are even happier doing some of the most heinous (often violent and murderous) acts imaginable. I wish that terms such as “Socio” and “Sociotic” existed alongside “Psycho” and “Psychotic”.
@@MatameVideosJust a question, in what way is Jack queer coded? Even vaguely?
Man, I really didn’t realize how much I’ve missed good animated villains until I saw Puss in Boots: The Last Wish. The fact that it manages to have three villains (one of whom becoming one of the most intimidating and iconic villains of all time overnight) that fit three different archetypes and execute them each FLAWLESSLY made me realize how much it sucks that most other animated movies lately don’t even have a single good one. I hope Dreamworks is entering a renaissance that inspires every animation studio to improve their craft.
I’m assuming you mean death?
@@amusedapple4933 what
@@m4rcyonstation93 the op talked about one of the three villains becoming iconic overnight. I was asking if it was death
@@amusedapple4933 Oh ok i havent watched pb2 sorry
@@m4rcyonstation93 it’s a good movie
I loved how DreamWorks managed to liberate Puss without defeating or humiliating a villain as good as Death. The fact that he's still out there and remains terrifying is awesome because we need to see more of Death in the Shrek universe.
Death making a cameo in shrek 5 everytime that someone's in great danger?
They really handled the ending for that movie very well. At the end of the day, Death still could've dispatched Puss if he wanted to - he just stopped doing it because Puss finally learned to appreciate the life he has now rather squander it away.
I love how it’s inevitable that he wins. He just chose to let Puss live because there was no ego left hor him to take down.
Only as a cameo. Too much focus might muddy it.
When Death stated that he wasn't metaphorical, it was to inform the audience straight up that he wouldn't be defeated; as it reinforced everything else he said earlier in the film: That it wasn't bravado, it was simply inevitability.
6:35 "There are always going to be evil people in the real world."
I think this right here is why we're all sorely missing the classic Disney villains of old. The whole "there's good in everyone" message kinda rings hollow in our world today, when a handful of billionaires are bleeding the rest of the world dry. We just want to escape into a fictional world where bad people get punished.
"There's good in everyone." And "You should love everyone." are both messages I will never teach my kids, because its true, not everyone has your best interests at heart, not everyone is trustworthy, and there are people who will use the image of being nice to manipulate and harm you. Which is why the message of "Raya and the Last Dragon" felt like a slap to the face.
I like the trend of not always having a villain in Disney movies but I miss when we had classic, fun and really intimidating villains in Disney.
Agree
It just adds a wee bit of spice
Jack Horner was up there with the likes of Scar, Maleficent, etc.
@@somerandolad 👍👍Miss Scar, Hades and Maleficent
@Depressed Doggo You realize Schaff doesn’t care about the trolls?
I think Mother Gothel is the most "recent" example of a good villain in Disney movies who isn't a twist (keep in mind that Tangled released in 2011). She is shown to be evil from the start, she is extremely manipulative, AND the plot really only exists because of her kidnapping Rapunzel.
But even then that's not an original new story
holy hell how has it been 12 years since tangled released
I mean they stole her flower and doomed her to death so she is justified despite being the villain of the story.
I mean they stole her flower and doomed her to death so she is justified despite being the villain of the story.
2010*
I think Disney has the same problem a lot of studios have nowadays. They'll take criticism at face value and try to remedy it with band aid solutions.
They heard "We don't like the villain!" with Frozen, Big Hero 6, and Zootopia, and said "They must not like villains AT ALL anymore!" and opted to remove them rather than FIX them.
And what about the criticism about.... live action and the fuckery with the Chinese government with the movie I shant not name
"The people have spoken! They want no effort!"
-Chugga Sticks it to Sticker Star
Honestly I don’t think they care that much about fan opinion
To be fair, I'm glad Encanto actually didn't have a villain. Good people... good family, can also have problems...
The entire family had trouble because of a good grandmother who did an overall great job in raising her family and village...
And shit talk to fans who hate their movies like they did with Last Jedi. That for me was the last straw, and this was all the way back in 2017. Disney has been shit slinging it since.
"I'm done pissing on the moon. Now i'm pissing on Disney's wishing star"
-Dr. Eggman
One type of villain that I believe gets overlooked, was treasure planet’s John silver. We knew as audience that he would be the antagonist and as he bonds with the protagonist you see the conflicts in his character and his redemption in the final act becomes more organic
Yes he's an interesting one. In a way John Silver is the centre of the story, he's the one moving the plot to reach his goal, he gets the most development, and Jim is the one who causes him to change. While Jim is the 'good guy' and the protagonist, a lot of what makes him engaging comes from his relationship with John Silver. Definitely a good example of story that needed both a hero and a villain.
One of the reasons he worked while a redeemable villain was that it also had Scrop as an irredeemable villain.
Yes but also Treasure Island was an adaptation like many other adaptations which had villains in them. Turns out when disney adapts stories with villains in them they have villains in them. Who knew? That's why they've made less and less villains. They've not adapted as much stories rather than making originals which kinda suck cause the original stories of the adaptations made them so much better and disney didn't need to narratively make them better by a lot.
I remember watching Treasure Island story as a young girl...I was surprised at how duplicitous he was...but you couldn't take your eyes off of him. Pinocchio had some villians also...
*Schaffrillas brother is crying in hell because my content is better* 🤣
Oh my god Yzma is a CLASSIC and perfect villain in my eyes. She has the perfect blend of menacing, funny, and memorable moments that make her one of the best villains in the playbook.
Eartha Kitt was just an amazing woman🦸♀️
From memories, the early 2000 Disney movies for all their flaws did give us good antagonists and villains: Yzma, Jumba, Long John Silver, Denahi, . I mean even the tepid Home of the Range gave us Alameda Slim who was the most memorable thing of the movie.
(Of course there is also Rourke, who is pratically the prototype of the Disney Twist Villain. But We don't talk about Rourke...)
Yzma had enough charisma to carry throughout an entire Disney _series_ , something a lot of other villains didn't translate to when Disney tried printing more money from turning every film into a series after release!
PULL THE LEVER KRONK!!
@@amberhernandez this! I still wish Disney would reconsider making the first draft of empotres new grove. Snuff Out the Light has a lot of potential to be a memorable villain song
If you think about it, Puss n Boots isn't just antithetical to current Disney, Jack Horner himself is a direct personification of Disney itself as an entity. A charming little child that eventually develops into a remorseless giant churning things out in a factory, who has no means to produce or achieve anything meaningful on his own without the assistance of workers he abuses but are loyal to him anyway and a treasure trove of others' assets he explicitly misuses.
Jack Horner is honest
Add to that that his goal in life is to literally steal all of the magic in the world, so that others can have no access to it (has anyone seen Lucasfilm recently? Last I saw them with was talking to Dis- uh oh...)
And they would have gotten away with it too if it wasn't for those pesky Dreamworks movies!
Horner is a deliberate contrast with Lord Farquaad, who was ALSO and explicit personification of Renaissance Disney and the problems the Dreamworks crew had with them. It's acknowledgement that Disney has changed from a totalitarian ruler to an abusive glutton.
I 100% believe the Ethical bug talking about Ethical business practices was a jab at Disney
More like lots of companies.
Lightyear's villain could have been easily fixed. Just bring Buzz's dad in the game. Like, he was once a spaceranger, but one day he did something, that all the other spacerangers didn't approved off, or he always choose controversy methods. Then one day, he quit or got lost on a mission and now, he now takes finally revenge, because he want to save his son (which he always had a good conection too) from the bad spacerangers, to save him from them (in his perspective). Or he would seek revenge, because he thought they killed Buzz, with the project they made to leave the planet, while Buzz was actually just traveling through time. Boom, villain fixed!
That’s also a callback to Toy Story 2, where Zurg was Buzz’s father.
@@erickpoorbaugh6728 That was intentional from my side. I know the Toy Story 2 scene. That's why i said it should have been his dad.
Disney ruins what made their villains great in the first place. Disney corrupts everything that it touches. Fuck Disney.
How funny it is that the 2nd and 3rd Toy Story movies had better and more compelling twist villains than Lightyear.
Not to mention those villains actually make sense and pushes the story well!
i thougt that lightyear was a great movie ( yes i sed it FIGHT ME )
After watching Puss in Boots 2 I realized how much I missed villains that are just plain evil: no sad backstory, no tragical twist, nothing besides a person who is just rotten to the core, knows it and LOVES being evil!
Same
Agreed!
Unrepentant evil, the easiest way to write a villain, and the most fun.
As much as I love a redemption arc one villain has to stay the course.
@@andrewgreeb916 I'd argue Pure Evil villains aren't easy to write at all. Sure, their lack of tragic backstory or complicated motivation cuts down on some of the work but they have to make up for all of that with charisma and pizazz, and _that_ can be really difficult to write.
What ever do you mean?? Jack had a backstory! He had a really good childhood and inherited so much wealth, but he just wanted magic! Lol.
Another issue with the lack of prominent villains is the lack of villain songs. Having a song as dramatic as "Be Prepared" and as fun as "I Just Can't Wait to be King" and as romantic as "Can you feel the Love Tonight" in the same movie is a great amount of musical diversity.
With Disney movies shying away from romance and villains we kind of just get the "fun song" a bunch of times. People love "Under the Sea" but I wouldn't want that to be played over every other song in The Little Mermaid
You’re SO right! “Under the Sea” is awesome! But so are “Kiss the Girl” and “Poor Unfortunate Souls”
@@Kawaiikitten0211frl and without Part of Your World we wouldn’t have the “what the main character wants song”. It’s such a banger and it includes it’s light motif throughout the movie that reminds us of Ariel and her goal.
Its 2023, we cant have love stories anymore bcus men are literally evil
@@TheFinalGate_ they may not be evil but they sure are whiny lmao
@@TheFinalGate_ I dislike romance being everywhere
Everywhere everywhere. It's good but it, dropping is nice
I think Disney needs to realise having a villain isn’t a bad thing. Showing kids that bad people exist isn’t a bad thing, it’s important for them to grow up and realise that not everybody has your best interest at heart
I mean that’s what they did with the twist villains. “There are some bad people in the world and sometimes they look just like good people”.
At the end of the day , they never said villains dont exist they just said nuance should be applied to the villains in your life. And people like you threw tantrums and denied that irrefutable fact. The movies didnt get worse. The fanbase is just underdeveloped and entitled.
@@no.9516 Nuance should be applied, but it doesn't mean that everything is a gray area. Just because most things are ambiguous doesn't mean that there is no clear black and white at all. There are irredeemable people and people who you don't have to give a second chance. We are just tired of the idea that 'we all can get along' when it clearly doesn't always work
@@no.9516 it's boring as hell to never have any actual villains. "Nuance" like this is just a lazy and pathetic justification for not making anything that's actually entertaining
@@no.9516 But it's not being nuanced. It is more an attempt to show victimisation on the villain as a excuse for any actions. I think Cruella is a prime example. Of this
I unironically want a show where a a steven universe style protagonist goes around redeeming everyone, only to come across someone completely irredeemable, and have an internal struggle where he has to come to terms with their realization of; "oh. I actually have to *kill* this one, don't i?"
I mean How To Train Your Dragon 2 kinda does this?
@@cartoonishidealism582shit ur right
Wanted that to be the finale. White diamond just being too evil to redeem and he learns why capital punishment is a thing and that some people cannot be reasoned with and are unwilling to change. At least pull an Ozai and take their position of power away before imprisoning until they do reform
OH MY GOD YES VALIDATION THANK YOU FINALLY
You mean like Aquamarine?
Jack Horner in Puss in Boots 2 was such a breath of fresh air. Sure, we still had Death and Goldilocks and the Three Bears who were the morally grey force of nature and empathetic trio acting as antagonists, but then we had Jack Horner who was openly irredeemable and dead inside and the worst person imaginable.
He’s the best Non Disney villain ever😊
I think Jack Horner is suppose to mock modern Disney villains, the conscience cricket tries to find something redeemable about him for most of his time. Also when talks about having a rough childhood but describes him having a mansion with loving parents and a business that gets to inherit
@@CertifiedSoapEater Definitely
@@CertifiedSoapEater Also mocking a lot of “tragic villain,” motivation.
Many of those villains are painted as sympathetic because they have a “greater purpose,” or “are missing that one thing they need to be happy,” and when the viewer thinks about the “sympathetic motive,” for more than a minute it gets clear that it either doesn’t line up with the villain’s previous actions or just plainly doesn’t make sense.
When Jack talks about his wish the movie builds up towards a motive like I mentioned above but then just throws it away with the most selfish wish possible. Yes the more you think about it the more Jack is clearly just a giant middle finger towards modern Disney villains.
You could say that he's an irredeemable monster.
"If Disney executives genuinely think that there's no room for a villain, then that's just bad storytelling."
-Schaffrillas
That’s stupid. Just because a story doesn’t have a villain doesn’t mean it’s bad storytelling. It just sounds like they lack the skills of storytelling is all.
“Well GEE, Disney! Sorry I want my movie based on the concept of adventure serials to have stakes and an actual villainous presence rather than the conflict just being a loop warm rehash of the familia strife that was done infinitely better in Encanto.”
-Also Schaffrillas
you're really shooting yourself in the foot there, villains are a great narrative tool.
When you are writing you can't afford to just throw away parts of your "tool belt".
Aunestly I would hang that note to be reminded there’s always a time to make a villan
Exactly. A hero is only as good as the villain.
I think the main issue Disney is currently facing is the fact that they want you to see everyone’s perspective. In real life, you don’t always understand everyone’s motives or perspectives, and it’s okay to do the same in movies. The audience doesn’t need to know the tragic backstory of the villain and feel sympathy for them. One thing that can make a villain so scary is your lack of understanding. Unpredictable villains are terrifying.
Yea, understanding leads to lack of fear and less threats from the villain
Also when you're trying to account for every single perspective, it muddles up the storytelling and ironically becomes a lot more boring.
I think Song of the Sea does a really good job of getting us to understand everyone through a combination of keeping their motivations simple, and also using other characters to explore those existing aspects further.
Not to mention that some people really are just motivated by greed and selfishness. A lot like the classic Disney villains.
It's also its own valuable lesson that, while it may be good to briefly try to understand why someone's the way they are, sometimes there's either no time or some people are just plain evil a-holes for no much reason~
@@stevenhiggins3055 Yup. Consider Captain Hook, whose motivations, fears, and general goals are outlined completely without detracting from the rest of the movie. He's fully respected by his crew, as well as being somewhat classy, so it's not like he's a one-dimensional villain, he's just...a pirate. In fact, considering Peter's personality, Hook might very well be the first instance of a not-quite-villainous antagonist.
Puss in Boots 2 legitimately helped me a lot personally. I went in without ever expecting to see my struggles with a debilitating fear of death represented and then _seeing_ the protagonist come to terms with it???????????????? Honestly, it made me tear up
In a weird way, I think that’s why Gravity Falls is such an amazing show: Bill Cipher was the catalyst that turned the series from great to profound. Because he attacks his victims through their psyche, Ford, Dipper, Mabel, and Stan are forced to confront issues they’ve pushed aside until then, things more dangerous than the weirdness they face every day - generational trauma, mistrust, and fear of the future. By the second season, all of them grow wiser, stronger, and more united as a result! In fact, the entire town grows in unity… because the heroes learn to overcome the villain that sparked the chaos in the first place!
Belos in Owl House as well. He’s the head of a long established order, a witch finder out of his own time and place irreversibly affected by the magic he detests so much. He knows how to play people, keep them on side by honeyed words or veiled threats and does so as a trusted public figure. His system is the norm, which Luz and her friends have to fight against.
At least Disney Animated Show care for giving us great villains
Yeah that’s what I was going to say, Disney still knows how to do villains, they just put them in their shows, Belos, The Core and Bill are all fantastic to watch.
@@Jaydee-wd7wr Although in the case of the Core I wish we got more screentime with it as the Core itself. Or saw the other minds assimilated into it.
@@jbcatz5 He even knows how to manipulate a literal god (The Collector) and nearly took over it's body.
Dreamworks was created specifically to not be Disney, and very specifically out of outright spite towards Disney. There's something poetic about them more or less biding their time all these years and then just when Disney is letting their guard down and putting out subpar storytelling, Dreamworks strikes out with an absolute banger that puts Disney to shame because it's doing everything right that Disney always used to to right but doesn't anymore.
always loved dreamworks
Biding their time? What about shrek, Kung Fu Panda, and How To Train Your Dragon?
@@HighSlayerRalton All before Disney started putting out garbage. They've not really had an opportunity to show up Disney properly until recently.
@@HighSlayerRalton Unfortunately, only Shrek seems to be super mainstream. I THEORIZE one of the reasons being Boss Baby (which iirc wasn’t well received at all) basically drawing all attention away from HTTYD and KFP until people stopped talking about them, but that’s just some dumb conspiracy theory since I heard Boss Baby being mentioned way more than HTTYD and KFP.
Disney hasn’t had subpar storytelling for majority of its films since Princess and the Frog. While most of Dreamworks’s from the era have been wildly inconsistent to be most generous. Some have been great and some abysmal. And they have not had the pop culture presence outside of franchises like How to Train Your Dragon and Puss in Boots.
In any case Disney’s next film Wish will have a villain, Chris Pine as a king (hopefully he will sing, he was great in Into The Woods as the shallow Prince Charming).
Lilo and Stitch is an interesting one where there is no true irredeemable "villian" but plenty of fun entertaining antagonists. Stitch is initially framed as a monster, and Gantu and the Grand Councilwoman, Jumbaa and Plekely all have their antagonist moments complete with jump scares, and even Cobra Bubbles is framed as the big scary bad guy trying to rip the family apart even though the audience knows he's just doing his job trying to protect a child. I think it works better because conflicts are well defined with clear motivations?
There’s Gantu, but he’s only relevant at the start of the film and to facilitate a climax.
@@jbcatz5 yeah one could view the no real villain in the first film to be early installment weirdness as the later tv series we do get real villains
Yeah rewatching lilo and stitch, I kinda find it weird that gantu is made into a villain in the later films/series, like all in all he’s just sorta doing his job. Frankly the grand council woman came off a bit more villainous then him
@@jbcatz5 And even then, he's not that bad.
He's deeply offended by Stitch's existence--not entirely without reason--but his absolutism allows him to work as a foil to the far more reasonable Grand Councilwoman.
@@christopherauzenne5023 They’re both representing the law, but Gantu is the one who believes Experiment 626 will never not be a threat while the Councilwoman does see that Stitch has changed and is willing to use the loophole of the adoption shelter receipt to justify leaving the matter where it is.
I want to see a villain that embodies the concept of self doubt and anxiety. Something creepy that would talk to the main character at night and wouldn't let them sleep.
The worst part about the "Zurg is Buzz from the future" twist is that anyone who's seen Toy Story 2 knows that, canonically, Zurg is Buzz's father.
Conclusion: Buzz is his own father
@@mariak5096 but thats just a theory, a film theory"
"butbutbut it's just a Star Wars reference!"
so? you think this new development is better? those people are annoying.
I liked the way the cartoon played with that, having him state the lines to Buzz just to mess with his head a little.
Cartoon Zurg was a delight.
@@mariak5096
Buzz cucked his own dad. Legend.
The funny thing is is that The Lion King had Simba go through a character arc about his father's death for the whole movie while also having one of the most memorable Disney villains. They've done it before, so they can do it again.
Hamlet was a great play.
Not only they can have both, having both is actually great for their pockets, TLK still is the highest grossing animated movie of all time
Exactly! That is why I consider the Disney Renaissance to be my favorite Disney era and also its best era in my opinion. They had that great balance of a strong lead protagonist AND also great villains!
They have done it before, but I doubt the “creative” team at Disney now has the ability or drive to make a good villain
Granted, the lion king isn't great in that regard, as the story and pacing really falls apart after Mufasa's death.
And Scar is kind of turned into a joke.
A villain basically personifies everything the hero should AVOID in life choices. Like a villain is someone who dealt with their personal stuff in all the worst ways.
Or has a same motivation with hero but with radical methods
I wish the have a idea where the main character is the same as the villain not that they are same people but they have same motivations or same backstory but the main character tries to do whats right while the villain chooses the brutal way
@@khn4048 Then there wouldnt be a point to having to stop the villain? he wants to do the same thing that the protagonist, You would only need to nudge him into the right path and help the protagonist.
@@dylanzlol7293 good point
@@dylanzlol7293well it's complicated, I mean, if you're a protagonist fighting for equal rights in order to save your people from oppression, would you support someone who's willing to murder thousands of innocent people cold-bloodedly to reach the same goal?
What if this is Disney way of answering the complaint of twist villains?
"OH, people don't like our villians? Fine! Then no more villians for them."
I agree outside of the point with Luca
I think the whole point of that movie is that it WASN'T dramatic. It was just two fish boys trying to find their place in a human civilization. The movie is just meant to be wholesome innocence with no real high stakes. I don't think Luca could have benefitted from a genuine, straight-up villain, and that a simple bully-type character fits perfectly with what Luca was trying to go for.
Yeah it a cut coming o age romance story in world where th point is that th build up mistrust ba basically everyone is th villain. And the unjustified fear and witchhunts.
That even gt in thir relationship. The villain is bigotry and th point is to not let themslve ovrcome with fear of that.
@Maro Cat what?
@@marocat4749bruh what are you saying?
@@marocat4749 Huh?
@@marocat4749 ? It not a romantic story
They want to make a personal drama villain tragic? How about make them irredeemable? That'll feel more tragic, the fact that you had emotional connection to a villain, but you cannot redeem them anymore, you must learn to let them go. It's like growing up with a friend you grew to love throughout your childhood, only to see them degenerate and become criminal in your adult years. And just feel the agony of seeing how someone you loved turn into someone you don't want to be with anymore.
See also Char Aznable.
Or abusive parent who cannot be redeemed
@@Otval_bashky Athalie from Muted.
@@Otval_bashky Yeah, some people never change.
😂
Even the less known Disney movies had strong villains, Oliver & Company per example had a very realistic, cruel and threatening villain, as well as his dogs. And it still managed to be a very sweet and wholesome movie at its core. Idk why they're so afraid of making villains nowadays
Cause what we call a villain... is their "hero".
@@hassathunter2464 The Pensuke Files’s titular character, Pensuke is proof of that.
Pensuke in my series is the biological father of Kyubey, and he created a system known as the Litch system. It’s a cruel system with no real escape and it’s system laid a foundation of magic that will lead to… other… cruel systems. (Yes, I’m talking about The Witch System and the ones that succeeded it.)
The Woke see Pensuke as a “baby” hero that deserves praise.
Yes, Sykes have always been one of my favorites despite being generally unpopular amongst Disney fans. Yes, he isn't too much in the story and doesn't have a very unique motivation or personality, but man is he intimidating and an unusually realistic villain for a Disney movie. Not to mention that his car feels like it has more personality than anyone in "Cars", simply because how much the cinematography highlights it and how integrated it is to Sykes' character
@@hassathunter2464 So true.
@@orrorsaness5942 is that a real show?
Well, to be honest. It just seems like villain aren’t allowed to be “pure evil” anymore. Nowadays, they often get dismissed, because villains need to have “depth”, “ulterior motives”, or be “morally gray” now.
I personally find villains who are just pure evil, horrible, and irredeemable to be more entertaining. Not that those with certain depth aren’t. Villains like the Joker, the Wicked Witch, Lord Voldemort, Hades (Disney), Bill Cipher, William Afton, etc.
Villains who are just horrible and absolutely irredeemable, but they have fans who like them as a villain. Now of course, there are still pure evil villains whose backstory shaped them, but they’re still chaotic and irredeemable.
Edit: Just thought I should clarify what I meant in case of any confusion.
With the villains I’ve listed above and idea of villains who are pure evil, I am not saying that they do not have depth or motivation. It’s just that their depth and motivation are different from that of a villain who one would be considered gray. I feel like because of how evil certain types of villains can be, they sometimes get called one dimensional or not realistic. Even though we see from history and society itself that that type of evil does exist. Not saying that gray villains shouldn’t exist, I do enjoy those type of villains. I also feel like pure evil villains are good in their own right, but perhaps are not as appreciated anymore.
It's a shame because sometimes a character being pure evil is more fun in a fictionalized setting. The live-action Maleficent wasn't "bad" as a story per se, but Maleficent was always more entertaining and engaging when she was an all-powerful fairy who was known to be prickly and decided to take revenge on a child because she wasn't invited to a party (which for fairies is a huge slight).
Cletus Cassidy from Spiderman is another character who is just better when he's allowed to be an unrepentant serial killer who is made much more dangerous when he bonds with an alien symbiote and lives up to his name Carnage. Trying to force a tragic backstory onto him just takes away what makes him interesting and terrifying. This is a villain that Spiderman needed the help of allies and other villains to stop, and Carnage being so simple and bloodthirsty is a great contrast against Venom, who is more complicated because Eddie Brock doesn't completely bond with the symbiote.
I mean, anything or person who is immortal and has powers, eg: Bill Cipher, Hades, has nothing to stop them from being evil
it's just important to remember that not every story needs a villain. and if the latest storytelling trend is to tell stories about conflicts between humans who love each other and how we fuck each other up and then how we repair that damage, a decrease in villains is just going to be a natural consequence of that, because those stories can work beautifully and be very well-told without a villain in sight. there's a conflict to drive the plot, but you don't need a villain for that.
it's not because of some censorship, or villains not being "allowed" to be pure evil. pure evil villains just don't _work_ for every story. no character is good in a vaccuum; they're only as good as their ability to serve their story. this is true of every character, antagonists included. and good writers will know that, and disney, for all their crimes at the corporate level, hires a _lot_ of good writers.
if you like super-evil villains a lot, that is fine, but that is a reflection of the type of story you like, and it is not a valid criticism of the types of story you _don't_ like. you can't judge one genre by the standards of another. plenty of movies and TV shows in the last five years have featured fun, not-super-nuanced, silly over-the-top villains if that is what you like. disney just hasn't been telling as much of that type of story, which is fine. some of us really enjoy it. it's ok that you don't enjoy it -- but make no mistake, they're doing it to appeal to an audience that wants that type of story. a lot of disney fans are growing up, so maybe that's part of it.
@@asterling4
I think you’re misinterpreting what I said. I wasn’t saying that every story needs a villain or that pure evil villains work for every story. My point was that nowadays, villains (like the ones I’ve listed before) get dismissed because it seems like people are looking for villains that are morally gray. And by not being allowed, I mean that people don't find pure evil villains as interesting as they were before. Not anything about censorship or any of the sort that you've mentioned.
Also, no where was I criticizing stories that I supposedly don’t like. I like other types of villains, but I just find pure evil villains more interesting. I am also a bit confused on your last paragraph, because where was I judging different genres? I never said that I didn’t like other type of villains, I just pointed out the difference with how pure evil villains and morally gray villains are viewed now. I never said anything about not liking certain types of stories either. Pointing out how different type of villains are viewed doesn’t reflect on my own opinion on certain stories/characters. Me also pointing out the type of villains that I enjoy the most also does not mean that I don’t enjoy other types. It seems like you’re just making assumptions. I also do enjoy the different types of stories that Disney is making, never stated or implied otherwise.
Also, in real life, not all villains are morally gray. Some people do evil things because of trauma, or misguided goals, or some other sympathetic motive. But some people are just jerks.
I think Puss in Boots 2 has proven that the audience wants actual villains to comeback in animated feature films, specially Disney. It can work. I do like the generation trauma plot, but it’s about time to see an actual bad guy in these stories. Good written bad guys of course.
Yeah, at least DreamWorks and Illumination know how to create a real bad guy that we know is already the bad guy with a motivation.
Being honest, I'm starting to get a little tired of the Generational Trauma plot-
@@Disneyfan82 What those studios are doing that Disney is not is something that hearkens back to the age old saying: "A hero's a hero but everyone LOVES a great villain". Meaning while you can have compelling protagonists to root for, it wouldn't mean anything if they didn't have enemies to counterbalance off of that are just as compelling so you can root for their inevitable downfall.
@@williehampton3855 Without villains, there are no heroes.
You could still do generations trauma with, get this, a villain who isn’t the embodiment/representation/cause of the generational trauma! It’s almost like villains are central to the themes and obstacles faced by the heroes
I miss when villains were evil because they were straight up just bad people, not simply "misguided"
like Death
@@ahmedmaklad6527 death is just doing his job. You mean jack horner
@@ahmedmaklad6527 More like Big Jack Horner.
@@ahmedmaklad6527 Death isn't evil, he's just doing his job (and having fun at it).
@@ahmedmaklad6527 Death isn't a villain, his motivation was never to kill Puss, just push him to value his past lives.
I remember leaving the theater after watching puss in boots the last wish, and as I was walking out I heard death’s whistle theme from another theater and I genuinely got scared. That’s how intimidating death was and is
I think it's tied into the larger problem of Disney being too afraid to make anything different or unique anymore. Compare their recent version of Pinocchio to Del Toro's: they defanged and watered down all the original villains and it ended up being just a mess of a film, but Del Toro has several actual villains in there (and a lot of characters that aren't black or white but complex individuals). That's why people love Del Toro too, he gives us bad guys that are interesting and complicated but they are still *bad* without having some kind of dull backstory trope that lessens the impact. It is healthy for kids to read books or watch movies that have genuine bad people in them.
Del Toro made that one as a passion project, it's no surprise it's better. And they had Mussolini!
@@jstar3382 "I likea da puppets"
Mussolini: A True Cinematic Icon
@@jstar3382 who was voiced by Tom Kenny of all people, which makes me laugh. That's how you do good political satire, you turn the bad guys into caricatures.
I think Disney has the wrong idea about what kids should watch. Yes, there's a time and a place for more optimistic and hopeful movies, but kids aren't stupid and it does them a huge injustice to talk down to them the way so many movies do these days. Or they preach at them to try to indoctrinate them into whatever Disney wants them to think (and it's not just Disney but they are the worst when it comes to doing that sort of thing).
I agree...
Today it seems to make just what is in trending... Not doing somenthing unique.
Disney watered down Pleasure Island by having the kids drink root beer instead of alcoholic beer while Del Toro's take (even though it's not explicitly called Pleasure Island) was more of a military camp. It goes to show how Guillermo never talks down to his audience.
I remember seeing a video on Jack Horner where someone asked, “Why doesn’t Disney make completely irredeemable villains anymore?” And some other guy responded, “Because they are one now.”
LMAOOOOOOO
D A M N
How ironic. In trying to rid of irredeemable villains, they gave us their greatest one yet.
I don’t get it?
@@cjtimmons5498 Disney is evil.
The Mitchell's vs The Machines is a great example of how Strange World could have been. The conflict between the family is realistic and explored throughout the film, and is tied into the villain and saving the world. It has high stakes, an adventure, and a really heartwarming but kind of dysfunctional family
Not to mention, some really good jokes.
@@Kaisona2017 Well, if you’ve got Lord and Miller in your writing team, then you’re in for one heck of a comedy
OMG love that movie!!! We need more great, original stories like that one.
@@Kaisona2017 Well, not all good jokes. There’s a few that admittedly are duds. One example I can think of is when PAL is dying and Katie has to interrupt it to remind us it’s similar to a funny animal video which is only an excuse to just shove in a live clip of a baboon opening and closing his mouth on loop and honestly doesn’t really contribute anything. Plus, the villain’s death is already supposed to be humorous anyways so we didn’t need any extra humor to it. There’s definitely some moments where director Mike Rianda needed to REEL in Lord and Miller on their humor and cut it down.
i hated mitchells vs the machines it made me cringe so much lmao
17:40 oh how that aged
Jack Horner made me realize how much I missed evil villains, no plottwist, no hidden motives, just evil.
"Yeah, in the face, why?" alone makes him a better villain than anything Disney has barfed out.
Idea: An evil villain like that, but their "hidden motive" amounts to "Ok this one bad thing you did was the straw that broke the camel's back, and I'm feeling at least twice as spiteful as usual today. Aside from that, this is all just for fun"
He had a motivation though. Everything was handed to him as a kid and when Pinocchio, a magical being got more attention than him he got mad and decided to take the magic.
That's why fireza from dragon ball is one of my favourite villans of all time he is pure evil he was laughing while he destroyed an entire planet while 99% of its population was there that's the type of villany that is missing from most modern movies imo
@@redpanda6497 The commenter means some hidden secret motive that makes him sympathetic
Encanto being responsible for the "personal drama" archetype in Disney despite being a good film has the same energy as the first Shrek movie being responsible for the wave of crude humor and pop culture references
True
"Personal drama" has always kinda been a thing though, can you really pin it on Encanto?
@Rogue Slushy I guess they mean it being the main focus in a movie made by a big company, a lot of these things have been done by indie filmmaker WAY before these big companies, so I guess that's what they wanted to say
@@korinoriz I think they mean it’s one of the first big animated movies to focus on the family and it’s dynamics rather than have them fight a foe. Again all the problems were caused by the people living in the house so the plot was literally solving their own personal problems
And Shrek being responsible for stunt casting celebrities as voice actors
It’s actually insane that we live in a time where having a villain in a movie is different and refreshing.
Indeed! My series is about to show inevitabilis (Who’s long dead), and another pure evil villain that exists in the present!
I actually just love villain characters so much though. They're fr just great
My crackpot theory is that the "Disney is woke!!1!" thing is stupid, but in a different way than we think. I think that we live in such an accepting time that Disney, the huge corporation, thinks that it has to make *everybody* acceptable. It forgets that sometimes, there's just evil and selfish people. So, being the greedy money sink that it is, it tries to get people endeared to those villains because it's more "compelling". Also because merchandise. People that children actually like tend to sell a lot more as cute dolls and shit than irredeemable asses
Of course it is.
The real villian is Disney itself.
Why would they show up somewhere and het beaten up by good heroes that are actually rare nowadays too because most of todays protagonists are annoying and all If I think about it...
@@StarryxNight5 remember how twitter got angry that Clown from remake horror movie "It" was homophobic? Disney afraid of this thing more than anything. They gonna release blank unintertaining cartoons one after another until the competitors shows up, and they already here
The idea that there aren’t any truly bad people is a really bad message. Sometimes you have to accept that cutting people out of your life is for the best and that giving someone many chances to change is a terrible idea.
Sometimes there really AREN'T any truly bad people, however that shouldn't be the message of every single movie out there.
There are people who have completely given in to evil, but the only people who encounter them basically ever are murder and kidnapping victims. Remember, a person's ideology does not make the person pure evil or pure good. Hitler was without a doubt pure evil, but the average Nazi was just doing what he or she truly thought was right. One's ideology or beliefs is no reason to cut him or her out of your life.
@@adnaP_esreveR i mean, even when you get to the level of "these are traditions borne out of cultural trauma that are deeply flawed, have shown to be harmful and there's many people who still haven't fully grasped why they are harmful or that there is a better way", there's clearly MF'rs out here that are fully aware not only that their actions are harmful, want their actions to harm even more people, and clearly make sure that the better way never gets off the ground. while my cynicism tends to get in my way sometimes, i genuinely believe that's why the "climate change" proxies don't get off the ground in any meaningful way to pointing fingers, because Disney is already receiving cataclismic pushback from people like desantis, and the "FUCK IT" response only really works when you don't have anything to lose, which is why smaller corporations are able to do it while the big corporations just sort of fade into the background. it's why dreamworks as this smaller entity is able to meaningfully make art, while disney can only make money.
@@adnaP_esreveR yeah, agreed. Plus, they don't have to be evil to need some distance from them, or to see them as antagonistic to you.
17:05 I really like the hero/villain dynamic in Emperor's New Groove. They're basically equally selfish and superficial jerks, but the main difference is that one of them actually learns from their mistakes, and hasn't ever tried to intentionally kill anyone to get what they want. And also the lovable henchman of the villain, who's often confused which side he should be on, and who's just working for the wrong person.😉
We love Kronk!! 💪
I love that, it like "damn I'm just working here for how it would look on my cv and now I have to make moral choices" vibes it gives, like Kronk is the best haha
@@ange76prkr imagine a world where the only company you could work for is Nestle
Personal struggle doesn't mean you can't have a villain. In fact, best villains DIRECTLY REFLECT heroes' personal struggles.
And better yet, it can be a mirror into how the hero can turn out if they don't deal with their struggles in a healthy way.
Puss in Boots TLW literally does this with all of their villains, too! The crime family deals with Puss' own loner status, Jack Horner mirrors the rise of personal myth and self-aggrandizing (Horner lies to seem more evil, whereas Puss lied to seem more heroic), and Death is self-evidently the fear of it. Another #PussSweep moment
@@austinfletchermusicliterally how smart was it for Puss's fear of mortality to be personified so he has to confront it and come to terms with facing death itself
Having recently watched _The Hunchback of Notre Dame_ and _Hercules_ for the first time, I can confirm: I miss when Disney had a good, _bad_ villain. Hades is definitely in my top 5 Disney villains, and Frollo isn't too far behind.
The scariest thing about Frollo is how realistic he is.
That is exactly why I believe Frollo is the BEST villain in Disney. He is scarily realistic.
Now Hades, he is very entertaining and is threatening when he wants. Can’t remember the actor’s name, but he amazing in that role.
@@CainCadeyrn04 James Woods. I was told that _Hercules_ had a lot of the same plot points to the 1978 Superman movie, and funny enough, Woods, in recent years, voiced Lex Luthor on the show Justice League Action.
In my opinion you're the best Disney villain but ok
@@CainCadeyrn04 James Woods. He literally jumps at the chance to voice hades again from cartoons to video games.
My whole problem with Lightyear was how in the second Toy Story they had that “I am your father” moment. And I was hoping they’d follow through with that or something. But no, future version of himself…
Maybe Pixar in 1999 just wanted to do haha funny ahh star wars reference
In the cartoon, they do the whole “I am your father” routine and Zurg pulls a 180 and gains the upper hand in battle against Buzz. So the “I am your father” is nothing more than a joke and not to be taken seriously or as canon.
Buzz really didn't feel like a character in his own movie.....not only that, but having him be "his own villain" paints him as an actual villain, and I feel in my opinion they were trying to make Lizzie and Hawthorne the "true heroes" all along, like the movie was trying to say Buzz had to learn to value these characters because they are the ones that drove him to be who he is.
I call bullshit.
Andy would've gotten a "Buzz Lightyear" action fugure for the same reason a kid would get a "Batman" action figure, because they are cool looking figures that fight crime and for justice.
To portray Buzz in such a light in his own movie was an insult and unbelievable.
And before people say something about "OH, well you dont know what Andy likes", you saw how Andy thinks in the way he interacts with his toys, establishing his characters best traits while putting in action scenes
I really dig this new type of content youre doing expanding to talking about certain aspects of companies instead of just reviewing movies, thats cool
Omg the bots spelled wow…
@@impidimpproductions7648 Thought they were doing a kung pow penis for a sec ngl
A big issue I had with the twist villains was how often the personality would 180. I just kinda like when the twist villain turns out to really have been the person they were presenting all along, but their goals don't align with the hero's. Like any emotional moment and human connection was real, but they're just evil.
King Candy/Turbo and Ernesto del la Cruz are good in that regard. Their personality stays the same over the movie and all their actions make sense from their manipulativ and selfish point of view.
One villain I liked was how Commander Lyle went against Milo in Atlantis. There was a lot of clever foreshadowing when you rewatch the film.
@@QueenOfDarknes5 De la Cruz is so underrated imo. I really like how they took the idea of people working so hard to become famous that they'll do anything for it, and made it work
LIKE REVERSE FLASH IN THE FLASH SHOW. Prove me wrong
The villain from Up was also a good twist villain, IMO, because his affable nature wasn’t an act. He just gotten so obsessed with catching the bird to regain his standing that he had grown paranoid and assumed that anyone who got got involved was after his prize.
Disney's main issue in my opinion is their fear of just straight up scarring kids with some sorta horrifying element while the rest of the show is remembered fondly
Which is stupid because scarring kids with deep psychic damage is exactly how you make lifelong fans.
Which is why they will never make a film like Hunchback of Notre Dame ever again.
@@michaelstrong5383 which is odd cause that one got a sequel, but they did enough damage with the first one that it made it so when I traveled to Paris as a kid the whole thing felt like a reference to the movie
@OminousIntrusiveThoughts Don't even get me started on The Hunchback of Notre Dame 2. Easily one of Disney's absolute worst direct-to-video sequels.
@@michaelstrong5383 frl, I know I watched it, but it's nothing but a ghost in my memory, I couldn't tell you a thing that happens
Strange World needed to more focus on the wonder of actually exploring and appreciating the whole "We live on a giant living creature" plot. Less blatant generational trauma, more subtle learning about stuff in general.
King Candy is definitely my favorite Disney villain of the 3D era. And that's...not looking likely to change anytime soon. Also enjoy that he did have a "twist" about him, but it was foreshadowed well, and he was thoroughly antagonistic throughout the movie anyway, just in different ways.
King Candy’s twist doesn’t even feel like a “isn’t that shocking?” moment *(cough cough* Hans.) It feels like a natural escalation of the plot.
@@danielkiran8174 The film also literally starts with her kidnapping Rapunzel.
@@anerrorhasoccurred8727 hard agree, it doesn’t come out of nowhere, it’s more just like “yeah that makes sense I can see that being how things go”
@@anerrorhasoccurred8727 I feel like most villain twists are "wait, this sweet and lovable character has been secretly evil the whole time??" but that's not really king candys point. The twist is much more "wait, turbos still around???" It doesn't rely too much on the fact he's evil for shock value.
Agreed. One of my favorite villians
I’ll never stop being mad that Cruella exists when there was already an amazing live action adaptation of 101 Dalmations before I was even born. Cruella existing and being so bad is honestly so disrespectful 😔
I enjoyed Cruella but honestly I'm sick at tired of these movies trying to redeem their villains. Just give me something to be scared of, to marvel at how evil they are. I like it occasionaly like with Maleficent but they dont have to keep repeating the same tropes for every character.
I actually liked Cruella a lot, but it doesn’t feel like a Dalmatians prequel. Neither does Maleficent. I kind of see those movies as an “alternate reality” story that’s entertaining, but nothing like the original villains. I would rather have them stop making those movies and take the time to create new delightfully evil villains, though.
cruella made sense she has an obsession of skinning dogs
for clothes
If you ignore that it’s supposed to be a Dalmatians prequel and just treat it like an absurdist comedy Cruella is honestly pretty good imo
Disney's relationship with Disney Villains is fascinating because like... they KNOW that people like Disney villains because they're evil and fun. But they also don't want to make a movie where the main protagonist is actually evil and stays evil at the end. It doesn't fit their family friendly brand. But they ALSO want to profit off the Disney villains franchise by making solo movies.
They don't want to commit to a story with a genuinely darker and more cynical tone (which is needed for a villain protagonist that actually stays villainous at the end) BUT they also want to profit off of the edginess of having a villain protagonist. They want cool posters of Maleficent or Cruella that say "This ain't your GRANDMOTHER'S DISNEY!"
It's hillarious that Puss in Boots 2 has more good villains than the entire last 10 years of disney AND pixar films combined.
I'd argue wreck it Ralph, but then I realised 2012 was 11 years ago, not 10.
@@jugemujugemugokonosurikire4735 Exactly
i'd make the argument that pixar isn't really leaning towards villains, but mainly antagonists
@@Born_to-Die1989 Well that would be fine if their antagonists were good. But they also suck.
Puss in Boots 2 only had 2 villains in it lol
I think crab boy is a very close villain but I feel thiugh either he is just mentioned prior to damn near meeting him as he is the collector of all things valuable or “shiny”. Even just leaving traces of his gold or giant leg prints could have been amazing to find
We hated the "twist villain phase" because it was a phase, not because of the villains. Disney will never understand that in order to actually be taken seriously in any other capacity than standing on their laurels, they have to actually do something different
I firmly believe that Ernesto de la Cruz, despite being a creation of Pixar, was the last great Disney villain. He was only revealed as such in the last third of the movie, but he still managed to be a threatening presence, kind of in the same way as Oogie Boogie in Nightmare Before Christmas. Disney villains may be dying out in this era, but at least they went out with a bang
Yeah. I felt the chill when he turned villain because the story sets Miguel's great great grandmother as the antagonist. I thought she was going to end the film by allowing Miguel to go back without giving up music. I didn't expect Miguel and everyone else to need her in the final act to play around de la Cruz to save Miguel and Hector.
He's an example of doing a Twist Villain right. It doesn't come out of left field, its not a last minute ass pull and it has stakes.
Agreed, i find quite charming of Ernesto del a Cruz was a real villain and the last of Disney villains
Every time I'm reminded of Coco, I'm fighting the urge to drop everything and go watch it again. That movie was so good.
The fact that he would just murder his best friend for fame... He's a truly evil and terrifying person. The fact that we see the generation trauma inflicted upon the Rivera family because of his selfish desire for fame and money is truly fascinating. They really went LENGTH to show how 1 persons death can impact a family across more then 3+ generations.
not to mention that bruno is a twist protagonist. like, you already get the vibe that he’s not actually evil too, but it follows the same structure as a twist villain, but delivers on it in a unique way
He's not a protagonist, but he could qualify as a "twist hero".
i love the whistling (lietmotif?) that Death has. Such a "Huh, whats that? OH SHITS GOTTEN REAL" trigger to escalate a scene
Since Studio Ghibli was shown a few times I have to say this about them. What I like about their films is that the "villains" aren't that way for the sake of it. They have realistic and relatable reasons unlike how Lightyear did it. Take Princess Mononoke for example. Lady Eboshi may come across as a pure villain until you see that her reasons are not purely selfish. She helps Iron Town develop and protects the innocent villagers from the aggressive boars while also freeing brothel girls from their old lives by hiring them to work the iron and also taking in Lepers when everyone else casts them away while also giving them purpose with work. On the flip side from the perspective of San (Mononoke) Eboshi is a cruel, beast that's destroying her home and killing the beasts that dwell in it yet San also commits villainous acts by doing exactly what the boars were doing and killing innocent people just trying to survive in Iron Town. So while both sides are doing good and bad things you can't condemn them as their reasons for doing what they do is not black and white and for the most part they are complete justified in their actions regardless of how they go about it.
So the problem is that there isn't enough conflict in disney movies? Not just that there's no villain?
@ashtimbo There's no meaningful "conflict" yes there has to be some form of conflict in a film to drive the plot be it through a villain or through an internal struggle but Disney as of late has been lazy in their storytelling.
I'll now use Spirited Away as another example. There's not a war between factions and centred around Chihiro finding her inner strength and that she can be brave. Yababa serves as an antagonist but at the same time what is currently happening to Chihiro is actually down to her parents eating the spirits food which in Yababa's eyes was reason enough to justify them turning into pigs and she also does occasionally show that she can care for others. Again this serves as a fact that not everything is black and white. There's a reason older Disney films are better received than the new ones because as mentioned in the video often one of the most memorable parts of a film is the villain or proper conflict
Fuck I loved that movie so much
I love how much I've been seeing Princess Mononoke brought up lately in discussions surrounding nuanced villainy. Ghibli movies are great examples, all around, of how to handle conflict with protagonists and antagonists.
Howl's Moving Castle is a great example of how to use more extreme villains. The Witch of the Waste is the personification of Sophie's self-doubts and she even sets Sophie's entire growth into motion with the curse she puts on her. They have so much fun playing with the Witch as a villain through exploring her humanity, by forcibly allying her with the protagonists. She is essentially defeated at the midpoint by a side character, and even after she's stripped of her powers as a witch, the curse remains on Sophie with even less hope of finding a way to lift it outside of confronting her own insecurities. And even in her powerless state the Witch is still put to use as a villain to cause conflict through her selfish desires; even after the protagonists go so far as to start caring for her in her newfound disability. Sophie defeats The Witch of the Waste once and for all by speaking to her as if she were a mirror image of herself, easing her own insecurities from within her antagonist, realizing the fact they shared the same insecurities was the reason the Witch cursed Sophie in the first place.
There's tons of room for any villain to have interesting dynamics and meaningful subversions of expectations that create space to go even deeper in exploring the themes of the central conflict, it doesn't matter how nuanced or extreme they are in the role.
One of my favourite Ghibli antagonists have to be Enyaba tbh
The Wolf from puss in boots will most definitely go down as "oh ye, I remember how I was terrified by the wolf when I was younger" and i feel like every generation needs one of those characters
Bruh I’m 25 and I recently had a nightmare about him looking at me with those red eyes. I can’t imagine how many actual children he’s already scarred for life.
Exactly. Scary/threatening villains need to be a thing again. Bring back more Wheelers (Return to Oz) and Gmorks (on the topic of scary wolf villains) too. I know a couple of people who stated that they were frightened of even Mrs Tweedy (Chicken Run) as a kid.
I work with elementary age kids and when I asked them if they'd seen Puss in Boots, one 7 year old said "Yeah, I hated it!" When I asked why with confusion, they replied "The wolf terrified me!!" So, yeah. Kids will definitely remember being terrified of that wolf.
I took my 5 year old sister to see it and after the movie I asked if she thought the wolf was scary, and she said “yeah.. he was scary” “not too scary though right?” “Actually he was REALLY scary” so I am happy to report that gen alpha is going through the rite of passage as well
X
As someone who hasn't seen Lightyear my jaw dropped when you dropped the plot twist. Mostly because I lost some brain cells from how dumb that is.
Why didn't they just go with Zurg?
I think Lightyear is a mess and I agree.
GOD YEAH
WHYYYYY
Remember when zurg said that he was his father? Even though that was a star wars joke it stuck to me. When they one day make a film about this character they'll use that joke again but nope, we get a villain who's from the future and turns out to be buzz all along, I am so glad I never seen this film and never will.
@@PowerRangersFanAntiDinoFury Thing is, they did make the joke, if only to then throw it away. Buzz's reaction to seeing the old him is "Dad?" only for the other guy to answer "Guess again" and drop this dumb twist.
watching the ending of this video after seeing wish is like seeing a message about half-hearted hope painted in blood on a cave wall
Magnifico was only stealing the personalities and memories of all his subjects including his wife and was prepared to commit murder to stay in power.
But yeah, that is not enough for people who seem to think that cults and dictatorships are good things.
If you ask me, Asha was more of the villain than Magnifico
@@noobmasterruben5167 Magnifico kept having his subjects lobotomized, had even had his wife brainwashed into serving him and almost murdered Star.
How can you think that Asha is the villain?
@@Furienna she less interesting. at least lobotomies are cool.
Bill Cipher was honestly one of the greatest villains, although he wasn’t a twist villian, he was one of those that was executed perfectly.
Belos....
@@N.G.H. Belos too, only modern Disney villains that are actually good
@@ed_cmntonlyalso King Andrias!
@courtlinsellers-sd6scbill: hahahahahahahahahahahahaha
*SUPER LAZER ATACK*
And Dr. Doofenshmirtz
Reminds me of a Phineas and Ferb quote that has stayed with me the longest. “A hero is a hero, but everybody loves a great villain.”
There is one other thing I’ve noticed: Death in Puss of Boots is very much like Rattlesnake Jake from Rango. He’s cold, clever, and very intimidating . He not only looks dangerous, but his voice can range from a chilling whisper to a roaring yell within seconds. He represents death, and is the one character that exposes Rango for the flawed, prideful, and cowardly soul he is. Heck, Jake tests Rango to attack him in the same way Death tells Puss to pick up his sword. But the trope is flipped when Rango, like Puss, becomes the humbled, noble hero he was originally perceived as. Suddenly, he tests Rattlesnake Jake to see if Jake is willing to strike in for the kill! And instead of doing it, Rattlesnake Jake instead develops respect for Rango (just as how Death chooses to let Puss go to live the rest of his life).
You just made me realize how similar Puss In Boots was to Rango. Two great animated films about a man learning to overcome his fears and be a true hero
* Not only are the heroes and the villains animals, but meeting the villains force Puss and Rango to explore the parts of themselves that are vulnerable ( that is, their loneliness and search for meaning). It’s quite beautiful how the bonds they share with their allies is what gives them peace, and being there for them is worth living for.
Give me another villain like Dr. Faciler (Princess and the Frog) that made a deal with *literal demons*.
villains arent just bad guys, they're plot devices that enhances the protagonists journey and development.
I think the word you’re looking for is antagonist. A villain IS bad, but an antagonist just works against the protagonist, regardless of their morality. But I agree, there should be some motive behind the antagonist rather than just “I’m bad”
@@frogitude3106 there doesn’t have to be, I mean look at big jack Horner, he had little to no reason to do what he had done and yet he still pulled off the evil trope really well
@@BubbaMassacre a thriving baked good enterprise and wealth. Who needs useless crap like that?
Exactly
@@frogitude3106 Worth note is that there are a handful of real life people not unlike Jack Horner (to add to Bubba's comment), such as de Sade. de Sade was a noble that didn't need to commit the atrocities that he did, but he wanted to. He simply enjoyed it, no matter how needlessly it complicated his life.
In my opinion, Hopper from A Bug's Life is Disney's most underrated villain (at least that I can think of as of me writing this). He's threatening, intimidating, and has a backstory that motivates his actions, that being he was attacked by a bird and that's why he's both afraid of birds and feels the need to look like the bigger person. Even though deep down he's afraid of the ants, and even mentions how they outnumber grasshoppers 100 to 1, he still finds a way to make all of them scared of him. And near the end of the film when he realizes that the ants aren't afraid of him anymore because of one singular ant, he tries to take that ant down with him with attempted murder instead of trying to regain their fear. He really is a Disney villain to be intimidated by whenever he's on screen and I can easily see little kids being afraid of him, but for some reason I don't hear a lot of people talk about him when it comes to memorable Disney villains
Hopper is by Pixar, not Disney.
Likely because he was a Pixar villain before Pixar was bought and corrupted by Disney, turning Pixar into Disney Lite.
@@peteryeeterson5766 so i take it you don't think the rest of pixar's catalogue is any good after Bug'sLife?
No matter what studio he belongs in, he is still hands down one of the most underrated animation villains.
I know A Bug's Life isn't that special movie compared to Toy Story and other 90's classics, but it's still a very entertaining watch with an amazing villain!
@@pokedisney33 how'd you come to that conclusion at all. Its possible if it was after disney bought pixar, but saying ALL villain after bugs life? Man has never mentioned that.
I think the strangest thing about Disney movies is that they are extremely adverse to cliches, because they’re often seen as one dimensional. But that’s a horrible mindset to have when writing a story.
Everything under the sun has already been written about. The difference is that certain people have the ability to refine a cliche, and make it as layered as it needs to be. It’s why Dreamworks does so well when messing around with fairy tales and children’s stories. They take storytelling cliches, and add extra layers to make them engaging.
Like ogres
Yes -- expand on what we think is cliche with more depth and nuance. Don't just subvert our expectations with something stupid and call it a day lol.
It’s like they used TV Tropes as a writing guide instead of a helpful index.
@An Error Has Occurred sad thing is that I know lots of current writers and aspiring ones who absolutely worship that page. What happened to just "I have an idea for a story, I'm going for it?"
One of my favorite games of the last decade was Xenoblade Chronicles (the first one) and it has almost every JRPG trope under the sun, but the cast of characters are so loveable that it doesn't even matter.
What do you mean?
17:38 hearing this now that wish has been released and the villain apparently sucks is extremely funny
I love how Shaff said “took the fall.” While Bruno was falling. That’s such a nice detail.
His editing is on point
I think Hopper from Pixar's A Bug's Life is the perfect villain. Irredeemable, evil from the start, and he's relevant to the real world forcing you to reflect. I say that because he knows his flaws and so he uses intimidation and manipulation to not only hide his flaws but to make the ants do his bidding. And it's when the ants finally learn they can survive independently without Hopper is when they revolt and he loses control. It's just like how real world revolutions work with tyrannical governments. That's why I love Hopper. My favorite bit of dialogue from him describes it perfectly. "You let one ant stand up to us, then they all might stand up. Those puny little ants outnumber us 100 to 1. And if they ever figure that out, there goes our way of life! It's not about food. It's about keeping those ants in line."
🥵👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Perfect metaphor for Patriarchy
@@Jimmy94411 Um, no. It's about communism.
@@eri_noemi1462 umm no. It could be interpreted many ways. But you have fun with that, hon!
@@Jimmy94411 no, women does not outnumber men 100 to 1, so really that's not accurate at all. That may be about many things, but not that one.
I feel like this is a feature of the growing trend of attempts at realism in animation. Look at Disney's animation style, verging towards as real as possible. Their storylines are trying to tackle real issues and a feature of that is the idea that there are no big bads, only flawed people. Villains are viewed by storytellers as simple. We've forgotten how a simple story can still be compelling.
Old Pixar better
There are a lot of flawed people, but the idea of there being no bad people is quite dangerous a message to tell in all honesty. It might not be related entirely to what you're trying to point out about simple stories, but it's still a concern with the current narrative of many of the new projects releasing from Disney
That's why Disney and Pixar has been bland these days, they focus too much on relatibility in a way that their art design are too realistic, ending up with different movies yet the same-y feel because of similar character designs.
Animation is supposed to be an escape from reality that happens to have compelling and relatable characters. It's amazing how Japan still makes amazing 2d Animations, everything in the west is all too focused on 3d animation that a film like into the spiderverse have to blend 2d and 3d to have an identity of itself.
Yeah like I like villains that struggle through hardships and stuff but I feel like it’s getting quite a bit over saturated these days
I think saying there are no big bads undermines the real-world existence and significance of evil. You might not want to describe some people as evil, but it usually doesn't change the fact that their actions are, and sometimes those people will not be redeemed, either because they choose not to be or are killed before they can be. Like Palpatine, for example. He works because you can imagine a person like him existing, especially if you dig into his back story, personality, and motivations. Even if he did have a tragic backstory that would give you sympathy for him, you knew justice needed to find him. It's poetic that justice came at the hands of one of his most notable victims, Anakin.
Yes, every big bad is a flawed person, but that doesn't mean they aren't a big bad. A certain mid-century Austrian comes to mind.
The Hades one got me.
I would like to note that every version of Hades I know is this Charismatic son of a gun. They may have a few other qualities to make them different but that charisma is always there.
Besides Hades’s Hades. But that simply because of the roll he plays.
After watching your kung Fu panda review and you talking about how tai lungs subtle facial expressions were amazing, I watch the movie and noticed something really neat. After Po tells Shifu how the reason he stayed and tried seriously to become the Dragon warrior was because he hated himself, the scene cuts to Tigress watching and listening. And I noticed after she overheard it, she looked genuinely upset, probably because she said all of those hurtful things without knowing about who he was, all because she was angry. Just a really cool little detail I found out
shift
@@pjdixon6199 It's clearly either auto-correction or a typo.
Damn I never noticed that. Guess it’s time for my 34th rewatch.
Honestly, the one complaint I have about KP1 is that we didn't get a scene of Po and Tigress interacting after that. It would have been neat to see Tigress talk to Po about feeling inadequate and how she can relate to that.
1:39 Encanto
3:04 Strange World
3:49 Ralph Breaks the Internet
4:16 Frozen 2
7:31 Raya and the Last Dragon
10:25 Pixar
11:05 Luca
11:24 Lightyear
13:39 Puss in Boots
15:35 Moana
17:39 Wish
18:20 conclusion
Thank you!! 😊
I'll only argue with Frozen 2 slightly. If the Grandfather wasn't a villain (albiet an absent one) I'll eat my hat.
i think Bill Cipher is one of the best villains, he doesn't have a traumatic backstory or anything, he literally just loves hurting people, causing misery and chaos and generally making people suffer as much as he possibly can and enjoys every second of it.
Just a straight up insane villain
“Just a straight up insane villain”
I think you mean *Pure Cosmic Nightmare*
What show/movie is bull cipher from?
@@angrycrab5501 "Gravity Falls" its a Disney cartoon series
There's a detail/theory suggesting Bill did have a bit of a sad backstory.
I like how as the show goes on the depths of his evil become worse and worse
Oh he's some kind of trickster
Oh he's some kind of demon
Oh he's a Lovecraftian Chaos God that has a couch made of living human flesh and a throne of frozen suffering
Man, that prediction about the villain in Wish and Elemental was on point.
Wish was a bad example, but at least elemental was the last good Disney movie.
Hayao Miyazaki mastered this before Disney ever could, and their stories are so deep that they are widely appreciated by all age groups even without having to bring your kid to the theatre.
Doesn't Ghibli make successful movies without villains?
@@planetarysolidarity Ghibli movies do have antagonists, but no villains in the proper sense.
@@fruzsimih7214 The closest I can think is the king from The Cat Returns, and he's kinda just a flamboyant obstacle. Like he's evil, sure, but he doesn't command a presence like any of Disney's infamous rogue's gallery
I like spirited away,it's terrifying and therapeutic at the same time idk
I mean, Ghibli also made that Earwig movie with no true villain and that was absolutely shit
would be funny having a *Disney* game where a boss fight would be against the Encanto Grandma
Kingdom Hearts 4, please... make it happen
@FastFox57 seeing how KH3 was obsessed with keeping the focus on the more newer movies at the time, it wouldn't surprise me if they pull that for KH4. Problem is that Disney's recent output has been so bland and forgettable that Square Enix would really need to carry those franchises to incorporate them into the story.
@@KetsubanSolo Probably just use the worlds as settings for original characters to thrive
@@fastfox57 If it ends up being anything like KH3, we're getting nothing but Heartless bosses.
@@fastfox57 Bruno's Tower would make a perfect Kingdom Hearts level