Stop Giving Disney Villains Sympathetic Backstories (Seriously, Please Stop)

Disney Animation is responsible for some of the most delicious villains to ever grace the silver screen. Who doesn't adore the back-stabbing, fratricidal Scar from "The Lion King" or the cackling Queen from "Snow White"? Classic Disney baddies aren't just fun to hate — they're just fun. There's so much joy to be had, watching the regal Shere Khan suddenly go feral on Mowgli in "The Jungle Book" or Vincent Price's Professor Ratigan sing about his nefarious plans with unbridled glee in "The Great Mouse Detective" (arguably the film that was truly responsible for the Disney Renaissance).

By this point, you've undoubtedly gotten wind of us online grumps bemoaning the lack of dyed-in-the-wool, unsympathetic villains in Disney movies of late, be they animated features or live-action remakes. It's not automatically a defect, mind you. "Encanto," for example, doesn't need a Big Bad to explore themes about generational trauma or the ways that family members can inadvertently harm those they love by holding them to impossibly high standards. Then again, the faceless attackers from the film's prologue are clear-cut baddies, which may explain why "Encanto" works better than other recent Disney movies that've bent over backwards to avoid featuring full-blooded villains (see also: "Strange World," a fine film apart from that).

The House of Mouse's live-action remake of its animated 1989 Hans Christian Andersen adaptation, "The Little Mermaid," has the advantage of being equipped with one of the all-time greatest Disney evil-doers — Ursula. But while Melissa McCarthy is receiving top marks for her rendition of the fabulously diabolical sea witch from Disney's animated film (with /Film's Vanessa Armstrong praising McCarthy for depicting the character "with wicked glee" in her review), the remake also saddles Ursula with a sympathetic backstory. It's an element that could've — and probably should've — been jettisoned altogether.

Without divulging the specifics for those who've yet to see the film, it's fair to say the live-action "The Little Mermaid" doesn't go so far as to paint Ursula as a misunderstood antihero, much less suggest that she's actually justified in manipulating and using Ariel to serve her own ends. So why bother giving her a sympathetic backstory at all then? In the original animated movie, Ursula was banished and exiled from King Triton's palace for reasons that are never clarified. Of course, given her habit of tricking merpeople into deals that end with them becoming sea-polyps, Triton probably had just cause for doing that.

Therein lies one of the biggest issues with the sympathetic villain trend: sometimes people are cruel and selfish for the sake of it, especially when they've led a life of privilege or been raised with a strong sense of entitlement (two things that tend to go hand-in-hand). It's why Gaston in Disney's animated "Beauty and the Beast" never even questions that Belle might not want to marry him; his vanity and toxic sense of masculinity have long earned him the admiration of the people of his local village. When the live-action remake of the film toyed with the idea of him being a soldier with PTSD, it added little value and, at worst, felt insensitive (like it was indicating trauma is directly tied to being a chauvinistic ass).

Similar to Gaston, the animated version of Ursula is a wonderfully campy, chaos-loving, nasty piece of work who gets pissed off when things stop going her way and decides to make it everyone's problem. She can sing all she wants about human society's backwards approach to gender, but she doesn't actually care. All Ursula wants is a crown for herself (namely, Triton's).

You can see the logic behind this. Theoretically, a sympathetic villain is more interesting than one who's not and can muddy the water when it comes to narrative conflicts, even challenging your preconceived assumptions about right and wrong. That's precisely what "Maleficent" aims to do by taking the baddie in Disney's animated "Sleeping Beauty" (who's basically just a petty magical jerk) and re-imagining her as a survivor of assault. Similarly, "Peter Pan and Wendy" refashions Hook (a load of bluster and bluff in a pirate jacket) from Disney's animated "Peter Pan" into an embittered adult reeling from the traumas of their childhood.

The problem with "Peter Pan and Wendy," like many Disney live-action remakes, is that it otherwise sticks closely to the animated movie that inspired it. As such, trying to make Hook more sympathetic only serves to lower the film's stakes while at the same time robbing the pirate captain of his splendidly fiendish personality. "Maleficent," on the other hand, tries to replace the spiteful Maleficent we know and love with one who's misunderstood and hurt. And yet, it fails to adequately flesh out either her as a character (one defined by more than her tragic backstory) or the movie's fantasy setting, weakening a potentially powerful sexual assault allegory in the process.

What's doubly frustrating about all this is Disney has proven many times before that villains can be interesting and multi-faceted without also being sympathetic. Take Claude Frollo from the studio's animated "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," a genocidal zealot who's convinced of his own piousness and sings an admittedly badass song about how it's all that damn sexy Romani woman Esmeralda's fault that he's tempted to sin. You never remotely feel sorry for the guy, but you sure do find him compelling.

"The Hunchback of Notre Dame" might well be the boldest animated movie the House of Mouse has ever produced, tackling themes of intolerance and discrimination head-on. It also wasn't anywhere near as successful commercially as the previous Disney Renaissance films at the box office, and the idea of Disney tackling such dark, adult, and, most of all, controversial subject matter in today's world is kind of unfathomable.

Therein lies the real source of my beef with Disney's sympathetic villain trend — it's not about exploring moral ambiguities or nuanced storytelling, it's the ultimate form of fence-sitting. It's the same thing the Disney-owned Marvel Cinematic Universe has increasingly come under fire for. MCU antagonists are now notorious for raising valid critiques of society only to be saddled with stock villain traits, allowing the franchise's superheroes to fight to uphold the status quo rather than actively try to change things for the better. The results are often middle-of-the-road political commentary at its worst. 

Indeed, Disney's live-action "Aladdin" remake even borrows a page from the MCU's playbook when it comes to Jafar. Instead of the captivatingly devious power-hungry schemer from the studio's original animated feature, the remake's version of the character is a po-faced and, frankly, kind of boring villain with genuine grievances that he feels should be addressed. Alas, if only his favorite pastimes didn't also include murder and treason, y'know?

At the end of the day, these sympathetic villain backstories are part of Disney's both-sides-ing approach. It's all a means for them to avoid taking a firm stance on any particular social justice issue (via their art) and remain on friendly terms with people of all political persuasions, lest they risk damaging their bottom line. By the way, how's that going for you folks?

"The Little Mermaid" is now in theaters.