At the beginning of March I made an assertion that Maleficent was one of the best Disney villains. I wanted to back up my statement.
I decided to make a top 5 Disney villain countdown and see how Maleficent ranks among them. At first I thought Maleficent would take the top spot.
But considering the list made me wonder just how evil Maleficent was compared to Disney’s other antagonists, and so I decided to make the list about the most evil Disney villains: not necessarily creepy, or memorable, or interesting, but whose actions were the most deplorable.
So here it is, the top 5 most evil characters to appear in a Disney animated movie.
5. Prince John (“Robin Hood”)/ Captain Hook (“Peter Pan”), tie: I know what you’re going to say: these guys are goofy and usually played for laughs, how can they be the most evil? But that’s the nature of this list: I’m judging actions alone. Ignoring comedic relief, what Prince John and Captain Hook did was awful: one of them locked a town’s worth of inhabitants in a dungeon, chaining starving children to walls. The other devoted his entire life to killing a 12-year old and his group of even younger friends. That’s cold, people.
4. Cruella de Ville (“101 Dalmatians”): She was ready to personally oversee the execution of a hundred and one puppies just for another fur coat. I’ll admit that I’m biased, being an animal lover. But we all know that the most evil villains in film and literature are the ones who kill baby fuzzy animals. Also, look at her name; it even means “cruel evil.”
3. Maleficent (“Sleeping Beauty”): This is where my list works against my favorite Disney villain: she might have the atmosphere, the attitude, and the fantastic outfit, but Maleficent’s actions aren’t the most evil of all. Even so, she earns the number 3 spot for the death curse she casts on a newborn condemning the baby’s life to end in 16 years.
2. Scar (“The Lion King”): One of (what I consider) Disney’s more boring villains get his dubious moment of honor on my list. Let’s look at the facts: Scar murders his own brother. That would be enough to earn him at least a bronze in Disney villainy, even without considering what he does next. But then Scar manipulates his nephew Simba, just a child at the time, into believing that Simba was responsible for his father’s death. It doesn’t get much more evil than that.
1. Shan-Yu (“Mulan”): What puts Shan-Yu at the top of this list is how unfeeling he is toward the deaths he orchestrates. In a chilling scene, he blithely orders the execution of a minor character, though the shot thankfully fades to black before anything is seen. Even more disturbing, Shan-Yu later wipes out an entire village. The village is symbolized by a little girl’s doll, which Shan-Yu employs to identify the village and Mulan later uses to memorialize it.
I can’t think of another time where so many deaths (even off-screen), especially those of children, are shown in a Disney movie. In my eyes, that makes Shan-Yu Disney’s most evil villain.
Do you have any additional thoughts about my list? Who do you think is the worst Disney villain?
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