Disney Villains

Recently I heard some discussions about people's favorite Disney villain. Which, of course, got me thinking. And I don't have a definite answer. Partly because there are so many different ways to judge a villain. For example, which is the scariest villain? Or has the best design? Or is just has that attitude. So I'll talk about villains in terms of categories. And I'm only focusing on proper villains in this posts - not merely antagonists.

Best surprise villain: Te Ka. I'm usually pretty good at spotting the surprise villain before they reveal themselves. But man, this one really got me. And wow, what a reveal. 

Villains that are just cool and full of attitude, of varying types: Scar (Lion King), McLeach (Rescuers Down Under), and Barbosa (Curse of the Black Pearl - his role becomes more confusing in the following movies, so for this post I'm just referring to the first film). I might also put Zira on this list (Lion King 2). Probably Mother Gothel too (Tangled). 

Scariest Villain: Apparently when this movie came out, it was voted to have the scariest film villain. Which is fascinating, because you never even see them. And this movie also gets made fun of for being so cutesy. But I think I'm going to agree and say "Man," in Bambi. Damn, that scene where Man is first introduces is pretty powerful.

Cool animation: Ursula. Man, all those tentacles. How long did she take to draw? They seem to avoid drawing the tentacles as much as possible by focusing on her top half. But it's still impressive.

I had written down a category for "most evil villain." But I've mostly been looking at the animations, and generally cartoons don't get too evil since they're aimed at kids. But as I thought about it, I think the most evil Disney villain (at least in the animated features) might be Frolo, from Hunchback of Notre Dame. I suppose some of the early Disney Villains could be considered pretty evil, like in Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. But they're more or less stock characters.

Then there are a couple characters that start out as villains, but end up veering toward good. For those, I like Long John Silver (Treasure Planet-and I suppose Treasure Island too) and Vitani (Lion King 2).

 

And just a quick nod to my favorite villain, who is not actually from a Disney movie. He also falls in that last category.