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zelda_queen) wrote2010-08-22 12:40 am
Top Five Miscast Disney Villains
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
Back to Medival-Pirate Reviews
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3. Ursula: Yeah, I remember the first time that I read the original "Little Mermaid" and being surprised on how mundane the sea witch was. It was after I had watched the Disney version, of course, and while Hans Christian Andersen version that I read didn't mention all that nasty stuff about the mermaid's feet causing her to feel pain and all that, I was surprised that that was the only role the witch had: give the mermaid legs and take away her voice and that's it (as well as make an exchange with her sisters later on).
2. Hades: Ah, yes, I know all about this. *groans* Don't get me wrong, Hades was certainly a charismatic villain in the Disney version, but boy, did they get his character wrong. And Disney hasn't been the only one. In "Clash of the Titans" and in "Percy Jackson and the Olympians," Hades was also depicted as a villain. I personally think it's just Hollywood's increasingly irritating goal to Christianize everything. In their eyes: Zeus, lord of the heavens, must equal God, who's also the lord of the heavens. Since Hades is Lord of the Underworld, and in Christian lore, the Devil is the Lord of the Underworld (a.k.a. Hell), then Hades must be bad. And since the Devil tried to overthrow God when he was still Lucifer (in Miltonic folklore), and since Hades = Devil, then Hades must try to overthrow Zeus in every adaptation of Greek mythology that Hollywood tries to make. Even though in no Greek myth that I've read (and believe me, I've read a *lot*) does Hades ever attempt to overthrow Zeus. *sighs irritably* Hollywood, stop trying to Christianize my culture. Seriously. My ancestors' religion predated Christianity by more than a thousand years. I'm sorry if you don't think that kids can handle Greek mythology if there isn't a "familiar" Christian spin on it, but just stop it.
1. Yes, Frollo did get shafted, but at least he got a pretty cool song. The whole business with him and Esmeralda in the book seemed to me to be a tragic tale of two utterly deluded people. Frollo was convinced that he was in love with Esmeralda and that he was the one who was truly suffering even though he had done all of these terrible things to her. He convinced himself that he was in love with her and he barely knew her! The same thing was true with Esmeralda. She was in love with Phoebus and was desperate to do anything to save him even though he was nothing more than a lecherous, insensitive rake. She was too blind to see that Phoebus was a terrible person who wasn't worth all of the suffering that she had gone through and Frollo was too blind to see that Esmeralda was nothing more than a silly, single-minded girl who was too stupid to see that her boyfriend was a jerk.
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Also when I first watched 'Hercules,' I got a crush on Hades' voice. Heck, that's the only reason I've been playing Kingdom Hearts (aside from the nerdgasm of FINAL FANTASY MEETS DISNEY OMFG).
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THANK YOU FOR INCLUDING HADES HERE.
My mother, a Greek mythology buff, absolutely hates the Disney movie, and the villainification of Hades is one of the reasons. I just...Why is it that Hollywood, when using members of a pantheon as characters, always go for the god of death (who in many cases is neutral) to be their villain? Hades, Anubis...And he ain't a death-god, but I notice Loki gets the treatment a lot too. Poor gods...:<
(On another note, I read the Hercules artbook a few years back--apparently, early scripts had Ares as the villain!)
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(Anonymous) - 2013-03-10 14:36 (UTC) - Expandno subject
Also about the evil stepmother thing Hera was the sister of Zeus in Greek Mythology although it does not mention it in the firm and Hades was Herakles uncle as Hades is Zeus, which is also not mention in Disney's. I read some of Greek Mythology and I aware that Hades is not evil although evil uncles are also comment as there is a trope about them on tvtropes. And Hera is Herakles stepmother as well as aunt as she is Zeus's sister, which would make her Herakles aunt and some juvenile graphic novels that tells the Greek Myth about the twelve labors Herakles got away with mentioning this. Although why is he called Hercules instead of Herakles as Hercules is his Roman Mythology equivalent. Also Cronus is Herakles grandfather not father or were you saying that he was Zeus father although I do not know that many grandfathers who are evil in media. There is also Gaia as also an enemy of the Olympians for imprisoning the Titans (although not all of the Titans sided with Cronus as Rhea didn't) even though there imprison was well deserve as they support Cronus in battling his children despite the fact that he ate his own children out of fear they would rebell against him. Anyway they probably do not use Gaia as a villain in 'Disney's Hercules' because she is the personification of earth meaning she has a significant connect to the environment, and children are taught to cherish the environment.
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(Anonymous) 2012-11-02 08:47 pm (UTC)(link)Kaa
(Anonymous) 2012-12-30 04:16 am (UTC)(link)So all Disney really did was to change which good guy saved which other good guy from Kaa. In the book, being a human makes Mowgli immune to the hypnosis.
Re: Kaa
Re: Kaa
(Anonymous) - 2015-09-20 12:16 (UTC) - ExpandTarzan
In the Disney movie, he's a Gaston wannabe.
Re: Tarzan
Percy Jackson
Re: Percy Jackson
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As for Ursula, I remember her role in the original story of the Little Mermaid not being that deep. But since there was no real "bad guy" and the ending wasn't really all sunshine and rainbows, Disney had to come up with something to mold it into their normal castings.
Poor Hades, in the original myths, Hera was the actual "villain," but of course Disney couldn't use that! Then they'd have to explain why Hera wanted to kill her husband's kid and how he wasn't hers either. Definitely kid-unfriendly concepts. I supposed the use of Hades was because death isn't generally depicted in a positive light (unless it comes with eternal life or reincarnation, but even then, there are exigent conditions regarding those). That, and the fact that death is mysterious and a typically scary concept makes sense that Hades, Lord of the Dead, was type-cast as "evil"
For the rest, I'm not all that familiar with the original materials so this was interesting to find. I've read the Wonderland stories and cliff note The Hunchback of Notre Dame, but that was such a long time ago, I don't truly recall everything that happened.
I did read the comments aikaterini wrote about Hades and found it amusing that there was a slight, but common, misconception on the depiction of Hades as the Satan because he's the ruler of the Underworld. Most media industries suffer that same error of regarding Hell as a place where Satan rules, when in fact, it's actually a prison for him to be placed in when the events of Revelation passes, at least that's what Catholics, Protestants, (wait there are too many sects to list, let's just go with most or many sects) believe. So, I always find that sort of mistake (as well as the portrayal of a firey monster with horns as Satan) just weird.
Hades could have been #1
(Anonymous) 2015-07-22 04:56 am (UTC)(link)