So if you follow me on Twitter, then you
know that when I'm not being cranky, or angry, or sad at the state of the world, or ceaselessly disappointed in James Woods, or... ... cranky, Y'know, I really did love Moana! MAUI: ♫ There's no need to pray,
it's okay, you're welcome~♪ Moana was probably my favorite movie to come
out of Disney Animation Studios since the 90s. It was, y'know, a simple movie, buddy comedy,
but y'know, tight and well done and I loved it. And you know what else I love? Disney villains. Y'know, that thing Moana didn't really have? TAMATOA: ♫ Well, Tamatoa hasn't
always been this glam~♪ I mean it kinda did, but not in that, like,
classic Disney villain kinda way. MALEFICENT: ... thinking you could defeat
me? Me! The Mistress of All Evil! Disney villains are probably my favorite
aspect to all of Disney animated canon, and I'm not alone, Disney has noticed this... I went to Disney World last year and probably my favorite
thing I did was this new thing called Club Villain, and it was great, it was hosted by Dr. Facilier and we
got to chill and hang out with all these classic villains, and they brought out their A team as
far as the villains were concerned, only complaint is that it wasn't long enough. Unfortunately, just... gone and left most of
my villain merchandise in a different state. I have a bunch of pins though! Like, yes, I have fallen down the deep,
deep well of Disney pin trading... And yes, the vast majority of my pins are villain pins. This one was Halloween 2016, it's one of my favorites because it was an exclusive to Disney Visa
card holders and I had just gotten one, and I was like "well, I have to!" It's an exclusive! There's Maleficent... Yzma... Kronk... Gaston... This one is one of my absolute favorites. Here is Ratigan coveting an ice cream sundae... I try to grab Hades whenever I can... And Hades is actually the only Disney villain
who is voiced by an actual heartless person! This one's another one of my favorites, 'cuz... They're such ex-boyfriends. More of the bitter ex-boyfriends... Villains are a branded thing in the same
way that princesses are a branded thing, and Fuck Yes. Only thing is, they're making new princesses,
they aren't really making new villains. I mean, considering the ones that
we've gotten the last five years, would we add to the ranks of, y'know,
the Evil Queen and Maleficent... the likes of Hans, or... Assistant Mayor Bellwether... or even Tamatoa, who I think is the closest
we've seen to a classic Disney villain in a while, but y'know, he's only in the movie for like five minutes? The thing about Disney villains, and movie villains
in general as opposed to, say, real-world villains is that we - we like Disney villains!
That's kind of the point. Disney villains are fun, they're designed to
hold your attention, to keep you engaged, but they aren't designed to be repulsive. Like sure, they're bad, and maybe
they want to own this lady, but hey, at least they give her a choice in the matter. FROLLO: Choose me, or the fire. Or maybe they killed a brother, but y'know,
they're not THAT bad, they wouldn't kill a kid! They'd outsource that, y'know, they let the hyenas do it! SCAR: Kill him. Or the crocodiles do it, or their well-meaning
lunkhead assistant do it, or okay, maybe they do kill a kid, but it's only implied
and offscreen and hey, it was war, China! SHAN YU: The little girl will be missing her doll... Really, the worst we've seen from a Disney villain is that
time that Dr. Facilier squished Jim-Cummings-fly. Oh, movie... you wanted this to be such a moment. Disney villains are getting a bit of a makeover. Here's an entire spinoff dedicated to the complex
inner lives of the children of Disney villains! Shere Khan has this tragic backstory, Maleficent is no longer a one-dimensional
spiteful Mistress of All Evil, but a misunderstood Justice Fairy
who's the victim of a rape allegory... MALEFICENT: [howling in misery] And Beauty and the Beast isn't out yet, but
I think we can probably safely assume that Gaston isn't gonna get much of
a makeover or a tragic backstory, but even then Gaston is more of
a villain in the vein of Hans than the likes of, say... Ursula, or
the Evil Queen, or George C. Scott. And despite being a total villain stan, or hell, maybe
even because of it, I actually like Maleficent. Like yes, it was hot garbage, but
y'know, it was MY hot garbage. Point is I'm not opposed to this trend, y'know,
and that's all it really is, it's a trend, y'know, black and white villains are out and
dimensionality and tragic backstories are in. But what I've noticed is that we don't really see
the clear, coded, brandable villain anymore, so much as... plot twists. When it comes to nostalgia, Disney will
always have their catalog to fall back on, just like it always trots out its older
films, but what about going forward? Are Disney villains... going extinct? So classic Disney movies, with some exceptions
like Pinocchio and Alice in Wonderland, have a very simple story: A young princess, some
sort of villain who hates her for some reason, and then we meet a prince, and...
love conquers all, the end. When Eisner and Katzenberg were hearing
pitches from their animators in the mid 80s, this was part of the reason why they were more keen on
The Little Mermaid than Treasure Island in SPPAAACCEE (besides the fact where it sounded kinda stupid) Little Mermaid harkened back to the classic Disney staples that were still huge draws to the theme parks. A beautiful princess, good vs. evil, love conquers all. These were the elements that
built the old Disney movies. But when Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg took charge of the company and studio respectively, they added one crucial element that has superseded
the original and persists to this day, and that is the search for Identity! MULAN: ♪ When will my reflection
show who I am inside~♫ ALADDIN: ♪ There's so much more to me~ ♫ HERCULES: ♪ To find where I belong~ ♫ QUASIMODO: ♪ Give me one day
out there, all I ask is one~ ♫ This brought the basic conflict from external to internal. Classic Disney protagonists, again with the
exception of Pinocchio, were pretty passive. Things just kind of happened to them, and they
weren't searching for anything at the outset, other than maybe their one true love and also...
I guess not being a slave would be nice. Renaissance Disney protagonists, on the other hand, might have been looking for their one true love, sure but usually the true love thing was incidental, and what they really wanted was a
coming-of-age sense of identity. They wanted to figure out their place in the world. So how do Disney villains tie in? TAMATOA: ♪ Did your granny say listen to your heart? Be who you are on the inside? ♫ TAMATOA: ♪ I need three words to tear
her argument apart: Your granny lied! ♫ Making a conflict about self-identity rather than a simple
battle of good vs. evil makes the story more complex. A one-dimensional villain can
exist in a more complex story, Scar's manipulations work really well as a contrast
to Simba's insecurity in The Lion King, but it can also hamper a story too: Take the inclusion
of Governor Ratcliffe in Pocahontas, easily the worst thing in an already not-that-great movie. RATCLIFFE: ♪ ... they see how I glitter~ ♫ See, we got this history of fear, violence, bigotry and genocide... eh, let's just pin it on this one guy. Who is easily disposed of. Ehhh... problem solved? And Pocahontas
never even meets the guy! BEN: Just loadin' the last bit of cargo. A strong narrative ties its elements in neatly; The
Lion King is a strong narrative with a flat villain because the villain's motivation ties in
directly with the hero's internal conflict. Same with Hunchback of Notre Dame, only here
the villain has a sliiightly more dimension... slightly. CLOPIN: ♪ Frollo felt a twinge of fear for his immortal soul~♫ FROLLO: What must I do? Quasimodo spends his entire life being gaslit by Frollo into believing that he cannot
survive in the outside world. Villain's villainy directly ties into hero's internal
conflict as well as their external conflict. Now compare this to Hercules: Hades
applies to Hercules' external conflict, but not at all to his internal conflict. Hades doesn't care about Hercules, except
as an obstacle foretold by prophecy. Hercules doesn't even know that Hades exists, and Hades doesn't even meet Hercules
until the end of the movie. Like, they TRY to force this thing... HADES: Now you know how it feels
to be just like everybody else! HADES: Isn't it just peachy? ... but it doesn't make sense that Hades cares at all
about Hercules wanting to find his place in the world, because they don't know each other! The villain is also one of the weakest
elements in The Princess and the Frog. Dr. Facilier is motivated by greed and has no connection
to Tiana, except through her love interest, Prince Naveen. So this mandatory villain formula that worked
so well during the early Renaissance that it became basically mandatory by
the time Pocahontas rolled around, started to make the movies feel stale when it felt like we
were just watching the same movie over and over again. Because Disney villains are a brand unto themselves, an element which can be decoupled from
its property and sold as its own entity. So up until Tangled, sometimes villains were just jammed in because that's what you do. And once or twice we have a movie where
the villain is the best part of the movie, while also weakening the movie as a whole. Hades is the best part of Hercules, but
his evil plan is contrived and stupid. Dr. Facilier is fun and he has a great villain song! But his motivation is weak and his
connection to the plot is tenuous! Or Governor Ratcliffe, see, he's greedy.
And he is the only greedy. But if you get rid of the greedy,
then everyone gets along! But in this newer era of Disney
movies, audiences respond to... ... more complex narratives that
are less about good vs. evil, and more about... character development. Look at The Great Mouse Detective, which
is... a good little movie, but simple. The central conflict of The Great Mouse
Detective is Basil vs. Ratigan. Good guy, bad guy. They know each other, they hate each other, we
don't really know why, we don't need to know. The central conflict in Wreck-It Ralph is Ralph vs... ... society's expectation for his prescribed role which he wants to break out of in society? I mean, there's a character who's the embodiment
of that, yeah, but I don't remember his name either. This new era of Disney started
with the success of Tangled, and with Tangled we got the last real Disney villain, and not a well-loved one at that. Like sometimes I'll get a Mother Gothel in
my pins, like in one of the villain pin bags, and you better believe she is
the first thing that gets traded. Wreck-It Ralph breaks away from the
Renaissance Disney mold even further by not only having an older protagonist, but
by actively subverting these villain tropes, examining villainous motivations
and creating a scenario where, and with the right incentive,
the villain becomes the hero. Big Hero 6 follows a more Marvel
mold than Disney mold, with the villain now allowed to have a tragic
backstory with a family and everything. It is not automatically clear that this character
will be the villain when we meet him, but by that point, that was already a thing. And the whole thing culminates with... ... Lord of All, Frozen. ELSA: ♫ Let it go, let it go~
And I'll rise like the break of dawn~ ♪ Frozen takes a page from Enchanted, and
also subverts a lot of old Disney tropes, a major plot point being Anna's
eagerness to get married. In the earliest drafts Elsa was the villain, but in one
of the more brilliant branding moves of all time, they decide: Hey, let's make Elsa the heroine's sister, make it a story about sisterhood
and reconnecting with family - Hey theme park tie-in, book your Disney World
vacation today, reconnect with that family! Yeah, I'll see you guys Labor Day weekend. And also we have a love interest
that turns out to be the villain. Hans is a bait-and-switch villain,
that will also become a thing. Similar to Gaston, yeah, sort of, but
look at how Gaston is introduced: His first action in the movie is killing an animal, and he's introduced with his sinister,
dominating visage in shadow. GASTON: I know! In Frozen, it isn't until the end of Act 2 that... HANS: If only there was someone
out there who loved you. GAAAASSSPPP... snap. Zootopia does this too, and we see Disney moving
even further away from the Disney villain formula as the story and conflict of Zootopia is
almost entirely between Judy and Nick. It's a buddy cop movie where
the villain really doesn't matter, and the villain ends up being like... an Alex
Jones fever dream false flag sheep. JUDY: Prey fears predator, and you stay in power?
BELLWETHER: Yeah, pretty much. We've reached something of a culmination to the
bait-and-switch villain with the resolution to Moana, wherein the evil lava monster
we have to defeat at the end, it turns out is basically under an evil enchantment
after Maui stole the MacGuffin from her. And I honestly think this resolution works really well without being predictable. MOANA: Let her come to me. The resolution to Moana is directly tied in
to Moana's quest to figure out who she is. She spends the entire movie trying to figure
out why the ocean chose her for this quest, and the bait-and-switch bad guy
at the end directly ties in to that. Moana's compassion for the
monster makes her unique. So the two villains for 2016 were False Flag
Sheep and Red Herring Lava Monster. This also ties in with a new but important marketing
move, the need for strong male AND female leads, and the result is that these movies just
don't really have room for Disney villains. But who knows what remains to be seen, in 2018 we're going to see a Jack and
the Beanstalk adaptation called... Gigantic... Disney, we really need to have a sit-down about these
adjective titles because they're getting kind of sil- So you can't have Jack and
the Beanstalk without a giant, and that should lay the groundwork for,
y'know, a traditional Disney villain, Although I'm giving this like an 80-90% chance
that it's gonna be like some, y'know, BFG-style... Like, the giant is misunderstood and, like, there's
like an entire, like, giant economy up there, and there's like a good giant and a bad- like,
it's gonna be about, like, overthrowing the... ... y'know, blood-of-an-englishman-
based economy, or something. Just sayin', Disney's been real big on
the whole subversion thing lately. Maybe a lil'... too big. Ya only got so many tropes to subvert, Didney! Ya gonna have to git back to just makin'
stories that aren't, y'know, meta. MAUI: If you start singin', I'm gonna throw up. So now we are living in an age of plots that are
less predictable than earlier Disney-er movies, so new Disney movies are almost fighting against
the studio's past as much as they're building on it. And I kind of wonder how quickly
people are going to get tired of this, the same way they got tired of the villain vs.coming-of-
age teenager narrative that - as they did in the 90s. I mean, look at how quickly people got sick
of M. Night Shyamalan in the early 2000s, doing more or less the same thing! So, I guess Disney villains... y'know, they'll continue
to be a brandable associated property. They aren't necessarily going yet extinct, but... they could be an endangered species.
She lost me when she started playing show and tell with the Disney villain collectibles. I'm all for a villain revival though.
Start the video at 2:07.
What she says is true, but it's been happening since the early 2000's. So, Clayton from "Tarzan" was my last real favorite villain with motive & purpose. After which, they just felt empty & just unnecessary.
So nearly turned off after the first 30 seconds. Glad i didn't though, that was a well put together video with some really interesting points. Have to say I don't agree with her though. Her point was basically that she doesn't like the new villains because they're more interesting but less marketable. wut