Top Five Miscast Disney Villains
Hello I'm ZeldaQueen, and if there's snark, I'll take it.
None of us are strangers to the wonderful world of Disney villains. You get your pretty, sparkly princess, your boring male love interest, your incredibly annoying talking animals...and then you get them. Terrifying, snarky, and guaranteed to scare the crap out of your six-year-old self. Thanks a lot, Disney.
As many people have noted throughout the years though, Disney has been rather...lax when it comes to adapting books and fairy tales into movies. This is understandable in some cases.
Doesn't do very well for a G-rating
Still, it can be a bit galling when one knows that the fire-breathing, demonic witch on the screen was a kindly old lady in the source material. So today, I'm going to name the top five miscast Disney villains. Why Top Five? Erm, deal with it.
Number Five...
Kaa, from The Jungle Book
Now technically Kaa isn't the main villain of the movie, which is why he's at the bottom of the list here. But he still warrants mention, considering how vastly different his character was. In movie, Kaa is a goofy snake who can hypnotize his prey and continues to try to subdue and eat Mowgli. And he nearly pulls it off twice, both times with incredibly creepy pedophilia undertones that, judging by the amount of fan art online, hit a ton of fetish fuel buttons.
In the book, Kaa is a mentor to Mowgli and only ever tries to help the kid. He saves him from the monkeys and even provides some advice for battle.
Kaa - downgraded from slippery friend to comic child eater.
Number Four...
The Queen of Hearts, from Alice in Wonderland
Just about every child remembers this ax-crazy queen and her cries of "OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!", all while playing croquet with flamingos and hedgehogs (hey, in Wonderland all things are possible). She was larger than life, scary as heck, but also kind of bipolar, swinging between being quite pleasant and being full-on nutso.
While almost all adaptations of Alice in Wonderland use the Queen of Hearts as the villainous, in the book, she actually was no worse than a number of other inhabitants of the world. While she did constantly order beheadings, it's made quite clear that her husband secretly pardons everyone and the Griffin implies that that everyone is only humoring her, while she never seems to notice the difference. Disney's Queen of Hearts, interestingly, was actually a blend of three characters from the books. She carries the name and catchphrase of the QoH, but her mood swings were a characteristic of the usually unknown Duchess (the owner of the Cheshire Cat, and a woman who switches alarmingly between hating Alice and thinking she's fantastic). Oh, and that line she utters, "All ways are mine"? It is actually the catchphrase of the Red Queen from the sequel, who is the queen piece of a chess board. These things make sense in context.
The Queen of Hearts - she never seems to get any love
Number Three...
Ursala, from The Little Mermaid
Okay, seriously, who here does not know about Ursala? The creepy sea witch who basically makes a living performing Faustian deals for unsuspecting merfolk? Yeah. Thought so. With her terrifying demeanor, weirdly seductive methods, and kickass villain song, why wouldn't she be considered one of the greatest Disney villains of all time?
In the fairy tale, the sea witch (as she is only ever referred) is still unnerving, but more neutral than actually evil. She shows up only once to make the deal with the mermaid, cuts out her tongue, gives her legs, and that's it. There are no additional plots or schemes and she only makes one other deal in it (she sells the mermaid's sisters a magic knife in exchange for their hair). Of course, she also never sings "Poor Unfortunate Souls", so Disney kind of improved on the character.
Ursala - no good deal goes unpunished.
Number Two...
Hades, from Hercules
One of the problems that tends to arise when one goes for a culture that lies outside of their comfort zone is that things get a little...mixed up in translation. This is what happened in the Disney film, Hercules. In it, Hades is a snarky, Devil-like bastard who wants to kidnap baby Hercules because...the kid'll eventually ruin his plans for world domination. Or something. I don't know. He also owns the soul of the love interest and enjoys making Faustian deals, much like Ursala. And his blue, fiery hair is awesome.
In the mythology...Hades was actually a pretty cool guy. He pretty much stayed in the Underworld and judged the dead. The really important and good guys went to the Elysian fields, the really horrible guys were given karmic punishments, and most everyone else just sort of wandered around. He never had any plans to conquer the Olympians and was one of the few deities that actually didn't go out raping countless mortal women. Aside from the kidnapping Persephone thing, he was pretty well behaved. Of course, the Disney movie also ignores the fact that Zeus had children left and right, who were all crazy powerful and heroic. Or the fact that Zeus was a jealous bastard who would have rammed a bolt of lightning up Hades' ass for even thinking about overthrowing him. So yeah...
Hades - Dealing with the dead got him a bad rep
And the Number One Miscast Disney Villain is...
Judge Claude Frollo, from The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Man, this dude just keeps popping up on this site, doesn't he? And no, don't pretend you don't know him. Scary dude, murdered a woman and tried to drop her baby down the well in his first ten minutes of screen time? Creepily sniffed the hair of a woman he tried to kill not moments before? Makes a damned good effort to burn Paris to the ground, just to deal with his lust? Lies to Quasimodo and belittles the poor guy at the same time? Ring any *ahem* bells?
Believe it or not, in Victor Hugo's novel, Frollo was actually more of a sympathetic villain than a complete monster. Far from murdering an innocent gypsy woman and a baby, Frollo's first act in the book was to take in the abandoned, misshapen child left on his doorstep. All while he himself was an orphan taking care of his slacker sixteen-year-old brother. He falls into villain territory later, when he falls in lust with Esmeralda. Having taken a vow of celibacy and suffering from an extreme and irrational fear of women, Frollo begins to go increasingly insane, paving the way for the tragic ending that Disney unsurprisingly omitted.
Judge Claude Frollo - a man of God who inevitably was demonized.
And those are my top five miscast Disney villains. Hope you all enjoyed this, and I'll come up with a snappy ending just as soon as I think it up
Note: All movies mentioned are property of Disney. I do not own any of the pictures used. They are the property of Lewis Carroll, Rudyard Kipling, Hans Christian Anderson, Victor Hugo, and Disney.
Back to Medival-Pirate Reviews
None of us are strangers to the wonderful world of Disney villains. You get your pretty, sparkly princess, your boring male love interest, your incredibly annoying talking animals...and then you get them. Terrifying, snarky, and guaranteed to scare the crap out of your six-year-old self. Thanks a lot, Disney.
As many people have noted throughout the years though, Disney has been rather...lax when it comes to adapting books and fairy tales into movies. This is understandable in some cases.
Doesn't do very well for a G-rating
Still, it can be a bit galling when one knows that the fire-breathing, demonic witch on the screen was a kindly old lady in the source material. So today, I'm going to name the top five miscast Disney villains. Why Top Five? Erm, deal with it.
Number Five...
Kaa, from The Jungle Book
Now technically Kaa isn't the main villain of the movie, which is why he's at the bottom of the list here. But he still warrants mention, considering how vastly different his character was. In movie, Kaa is a goofy snake who can hypnotize his prey and continues to try to subdue and eat Mowgli. And he nearly pulls it off twice, both times with incredibly creepy pedophilia undertones that, judging by the amount of fan art online, hit a ton of fetish fuel buttons.
In the book, Kaa is a mentor to Mowgli and only ever tries to help the kid. He saves him from the monkeys and even provides some advice for battle.
Kaa - downgraded from slippery friend to comic child eater.
Number Four...
The Queen of Hearts, from Alice in Wonderland
Just about every child remembers this ax-crazy queen and her cries of "OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!", all while playing croquet with flamingos and hedgehogs (hey, in Wonderland all things are possible). She was larger than life, scary as heck, but also kind of bipolar, swinging between being quite pleasant and being full-on nutso.
While almost all adaptations of Alice in Wonderland use the Queen of Hearts as the villainous, in the book, she actually was no worse than a number of other inhabitants of the world. While she did constantly order beheadings, it's made quite clear that her husband secretly pardons everyone and the Griffin implies that that everyone is only humoring her, while she never seems to notice the difference. Disney's Queen of Hearts, interestingly, was actually a blend of three characters from the books. She carries the name and catchphrase of the QoH, but her mood swings were a characteristic of the usually unknown Duchess (the owner of the Cheshire Cat, and a woman who switches alarmingly between hating Alice and thinking she's fantastic). Oh, and that line she utters, "All ways are mine"? It is actually the catchphrase of the Red Queen from the sequel, who is the queen piece of a chess board. These things make sense in context.
The Queen of Hearts - she never seems to get any love
Number Three...
Ursala, from The Little Mermaid
Okay, seriously, who here does not know about Ursala? The creepy sea witch who basically makes a living performing Faustian deals for unsuspecting merfolk? Yeah. Thought so. With her terrifying demeanor, weirdly seductive methods, and kickass villain song, why wouldn't she be considered one of the greatest Disney villains of all time?
In the fairy tale, the sea witch (as she is only ever referred) is still unnerving, but more neutral than actually evil. She shows up only once to make the deal with the mermaid, cuts out her tongue, gives her legs, and that's it. There are no additional plots or schemes and she only makes one other deal in it (she sells the mermaid's sisters a magic knife in exchange for their hair). Of course, she also never sings "Poor Unfortunate Souls", so Disney kind of improved on the character.
Ursala - no good deal goes unpunished.
Number Two...
Hades, from Hercules
One of the problems that tends to arise when one goes for a culture that lies outside of their comfort zone is that things get a little...mixed up in translation. This is what happened in the Disney film, Hercules. In it, Hades is a snarky, Devil-like bastard who wants to kidnap baby Hercules because...the kid'll eventually ruin his plans for world domination. Or something. I don't know. He also owns the soul of the love interest and enjoys making Faustian deals, much like Ursala. And his blue, fiery hair is awesome.
In the mythology...Hades was actually a pretty cool guy. He pretty much stayed in the Underworld and judged the dead. The really important and good guys went to the Elysian fields, the really horrible guys were given karmic punishments, and most everyone else just sort of wandered around. He never had any plans to conquer the Olympians and was one of the few deities that actually didn't go out raping countless mortal women. Aside from the kidnapping Persephone thing, he was pretty well behaved. Of course, the Disney movie also ignores the fact that Zeus had children left and right, who were all crazy powerful and heroic. Or the fact that Zeus was a jealous bastard who would have rammed a bolt of lightning up Hades' ass for even thinking about overthrowing him. So yeah...
Hades - Dealing with the dead got him a bad rep
And the Number One Miscast Disney Villain is...
Judge Claude Frollo, from The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Man, this dude just keeps popping up on this site, doesn't he? And no, don't pretend you don't know him. Scary dude, murdered a woman and tried to drop her baby down the well in his first ten minutes of screen time? Creepily sniffed the hair of a woman he tried to kill not moments before? Makes a damned good effort to burn Paris to the ground, just to deal with his lust? Lies to Quasimodo and belittles the poor guy at the same time? Ring any *ahem* bells?
Believe it or not, in Victor Hugo's novel, Frollo was actually more of a sympathetic villain than a complete monster. Far from murdering an innocent gypsy woman and a baby, Frollo's first act in the book was to take in the abandoned, misshapen child left on his doorstep. All while he himself was an orphan taking care of his slacker sixteen-year-old brother. He falls into villain territory later, when he falls in lust with Esmeralda. Having taken a vow of celibacy and suffering from an extreme and irrational fear of women, Frollo begins to go increasingly insane, paving the way for the tragic ending that Disney unsurprisingly omitted.
Judge Claude Frollo - a man of God who inevitably was demonized.
And those are my top five miscast Disney villains. Hope you all enjoyed this, and I'll come up with a snappy ending just as soon as I think it up
Note: All movies mentioned are property of Disney. I do not own any of the pictures used. They are the property of Lewis Carroll, Rudyard Kipling, Hans Christian Anderson, Victor Hugo, and Disney.
Back to Medival-Pirate Reviews