Disney’s Female Villains and Beauty

Disney’s female protagonists are always beautiful. Even in stories which stress the importance of inner beauty, such as Beauty and the Beast and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the female character is never the subject of this lesson. This correlation between female characters and beauty applies to villains too. A quick look at many of Disney’s most famous female villains reveals that their motivations generally have one thing in common—they revolve around physical appearance. Today, we’re breaking down the question; Why are Disney’s female villains obsessed with beauty?

Top 10 Animated Villain Songs

Since their conception, animated films have been associated with music. In part, this is because of Disney, whose genre of escapist fairytales has ensured the studio’s success when it comes to movie-musicals. Many of their animated films have been transformed into stage shows (Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, The Little Mermaid), and this popularity has led other animation studios to incorporate musical numbers into their own films, such as 20^th Century Fox’s Anastasia (1997) and DreamWorks Animation’s The Prince of Egypt (1998).

These musical films usually have one thing in common; the villain’s song is almost always the coolest. So today, I’m counting down my top 10 animated villain songs.

Lord Shen: When Character Design Meets Character

Character design is an often-underrated aspect of character development. While personality is, without a doubt, the most crucial factor, design is surprisingly important to the way a character is perceived. This is particularly true of animation, where filmmakers are not limited by real-world biology. In animation, if you want a character to have green skin and bat wings, it can be done. If you want them to be twenty feet tall and have hair made out of octopus tentacles, it can be done. And, if you want them to be a murderous, knife-throwing, albino peacock with the voice of Gary Oldman, that can be done too. Yes, it’s finally time to talk about Lord Shen, from DreamWorks Animation’s 2011 film, Kung Fu Panda 2.

Dissecting Disney’s Twist Villains

There was once a time when the term “Disney Villain” meant one thing; a moustache twirling antagonist, swathed in darkness (literally), probably a witch or sorcerer, and almost always accompanied by a comedic, but still wicked, sidekick. I’m talking about the likes of the Evil Queen (Snow White and the Seven Dwarves), Maleficent (Sleeping Beauty), Ursula (The Little Mermaid), and Jafar (Aladdin). There’s another thing these characters had in common; They were all unapologetically evil, and their villainy was obvious to almost everyone.

But, things have changed.

If you’re a fan of Disney films and have been keeping up with their releases since 2010, you’ve probably noticed a new trend in the kinds of villains the studio has given us. Gone are the dramatic cloak-wearing, magic staff-wielding fiends of old, and in are the unassuming, manipulative tricksters who are able to hide in plain sight. Today, we’re talking about twist villains.

Rasputin: Can Creative License go too Far?

When adapting history into fiction, the use of creative license is expected. Reality doesn’t follow a narrative structure, so it’s natural for elements to be omitted, tweaked or even added for the sake of telling a good story within a limited amount of time. But, when does creative license go too far? When does it cross the line from harmless, to harmful? Well, it just so happens that the perfect film exists to answer this question. This week, we’re talking about 20th Century Fox Animation’s Anastasia.

Pitch: Do all Villains Need a Tragic Backstory?

I feel like we have an obsession with giving villains tragic backstories. From Maleficent to Gaston, it seems that audiences no longer want straight cut bad guys. And, why should they? Backstories give a character depth, and in the case of villains, allow us to delve into their mindset and understand why they do what they do. But is a tragic backstory imperative to a villain’s characterisation? Today, we’re going address this question by taking a look at one of my favourite animated films, DreamWorks Animation’s Rise of the Guardians.