Brown Blog Films

With all the interest in 2D animation lately I thought I’d watch some classic Disney. I have Sleeping Beauty on Blu-Ray so I threw that on. I haven’t seen this film in years and it’s only now that I realised how much I love Maleficent in it! We all love our heroes and well-doers but for me, you can’t have a good, classic Disney feature without some (to borrow a phrase from Jennifer Coolidge’s Amanda in Friends)  ‘positively ghastly’ villains!

The magnificent Maleficent

To me Maleficent is the most perfect villain Disney has ever created. Visually the second you see her silhouetted in green smoke you are in no doubt that this is pure evil incarnate (at a christening no less!). She oozes power, confidence and a nasty streak that you have to love in this world of fairies, songs and sickly sweet animals.

But in watching Maleficent send everyone off to sleep for 100 years I wondered about other villains. We’ve got the comedic bad-guys like Captain Hook, Hades, Jafar and Cruella de Vil but it’s the truly nasty ones that stay with you like Gaston, Lady Tremaine from Cinderella, Scar (he killed his brother and tried to off his nephew!), Frollo (have you listened to the lyrics of Hellfire lately?!) Sid from Toy Story, Stromboli from Pinocchio and of course the Evil Queen from Snow White (did she really need her heart in a box?!)

Stromboli

Frollo

Captain Hook

Sid

Scar

Snow White's Evil Queen

These are the stand-outs for me. They have very few redeeming traits, if any, but more importantly the writers knew they could go so far with such dark characters that we get memorable stories out of not only the villains but also, and more importantly, the heroes.

So we all have our favourite but if you were to come face to face with one of Disney’s back catalogue of villains, who would make you run the other way?!