Poll of the Day > Rank these Disney villains.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Ursula
Scar
Oogie Boogie
Jafar
Hades
Monseigneur Claude Frollo
Gaston
Ratcliffe
Shan Yu

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9.) Shan Yu
Who is this guy again? Honestly, the real villain of Mulan seems to be ancient Chinese society that says a woman can't fight.

8.) Monseigneur Claude Frollo
Okay, he has literary clout, but other than showing clerical problems with sexuality.....he doesn't have nearly as much personality as the other villains. Meh.

7.) Govenor Ratcliffe
So Ratcliffe is a colonial entrepreneur who is meant to represent colonial greed, hypocrisy, and xenophobia. He is disgustingly snooty and vile (in a good way), but like Frollo, he is more generic than the other villains. Bonus points though for Percy the dog.

6.) Oogie Boogie
Yeah, this one hurt to put here. He is absolutely an awesome character with some of the most memorable character songs. Seeing Ken Page's live performance of the "Oogie Boogie Song" will give you chills. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2X-lWDPno-g). I guess where he lacks is that other than his musical numbers, he is kind of underdeveloped. Like in Mulan, The Nightmare Before Christmas's actual antagonist of the movie isn't a typical villain; the main antagonist is tragically Jack himself and his inability to feel content with the wonderful life he had in front of him.

5.) Jafar
From here on out, I feel like I am trying to rank my own favorite children. Jafar, unfortunately, had to be placed her despite Alladin being one of my all-time favorite animated films. Jafar is your generic twirly mustache villain who lurks in the shadows. Honestly, I think that without Gilbert Gotfried's Iago, he would have been slightly underwhelming. That said, he does turn into a freaking giant genie and enchant the sultan, which gives him points for raw power.

4.) Scar
This is another one that hurt to place so relatively low. Scar is the perfection of a very archetypical villain. He's jealous, plotting, arrogant, backstabbing, and opportunistic. He kills his own brother ffs. Scar's "Be Prepared" is a song of legend in musicality and animation. He doesn't do anything particularly new, but he does villainy really well. I mean...killing a kid's dad then raising that kid in a world of lies....that's messed up. That said, The Lion King isn't groundbreaking, borrowing heavily (at the least) from Japan's Kimba or Shakespear's Hamlet. Scar is a refined perfection of a timeless archetype.

3.) Hades
A prefaceI am probably biased because I am part Greek. That may influence my opinion that Hades is one of the most underrated villains in Disney history. He has the visual whimsicality of Alladin's genie, but with more nasty villainy which makes him quite fun. Also, his character seems more nuanced and "human" or "relatable" than anyone else in the entire movie. Hades is constantly ruminating, second-guessing himself, trying to get along with an Olympian family that he is alienated from. Hades could carry his own solo film. Where Hades lacks is a great setpiece, memorable song. Lastly, does anyone else agree that Dave Chapelle would be a great live-action Hades? Out of left field casting, I know.....but I think it could work.

2.) Ursula
Ursula was hard to place here, but I think she deserves it. Disney was a dumpster fire by the time The Little Mermaid came along and they hit it out of the park to preserve an eventual billion-dollar entity. Ursula was a queen beech in a deliciously self-indulgent way, with memorable songs. She had a lot of screen time other than just being a generic person on a thrown or in the shadows. This is a "gut" placement, but for some reason it feels right.

1.) Gaston
Gaston is the best. This dude is a d-bag. Everyone has met this guy or has been him/her themselves. Along with that, he has one of the greatest musical numbers in any medium which is entirely about himself. Thematically, he represents everything that the Beast and beauty is not. Also, he uses antlers in all of his decorating.




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maybe later, Im just too tired right now

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bad guy =/= villain. the villain in beauty and the beast would be the witch
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Krazy_Kirby posted...

bad guy =/= villain. the villain in beauty and the beast would be the witch

There's a witch?


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When I was a lad I ate four dozen eggs every morning to help me get large

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I might put Hades as the top. I just like him

BigOlePappy posted...

There's a witch?

The one who cursed Beast for not letting her stay the night
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LinkPizza posted...

I might put Hades as the top. I just like him

The one who cursed Beast for not letting her stay the night

Wasn't she actually a queen or princess?

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She was a "beautiful enchantress"

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BigOlePappy posted...

Along with that, he has one of the greatest musical numbers in any medium which is entirely about himself.

Haha, I'll give you this one but I'd say Jafar or Scar should take the top spot.

EDIT: No, it's Scar. Kills Mufasa and then convinces Simba he did it. That is some seriously fucked up shit for a kid's movie.

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Best Disney villain

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Black_Crusher posted...

Haha, I'll give you this one but I'd say Jafar or Scar should take the top spot.

EDIT: No, it's Scar. Kills Mufasa and then convinces Simba he did it. That is some seriously fucked up shit for a kid's movie.

I can see that. This is incredibly hard to rank.

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tbh, I see a Disney villain ranking topic from a name I don't recognize much and my first though is: "Gee, I wonder if Frollo is on that list..." and then "He is? I wonder who could be behind this account" >_>

Anyway, it's kinda hard to rank them because they're very different. I'll have to evaluate them in terms of relative evil, significance to the story, character design, etc.

9) Shan Yu is a legitimately evil guy, but he's very much a background character. And it's a testament to his irrelevance that he didn't appear in the live-action version. Disney felt comfortable just taking anybody to fill in that spot, even though Shan Yu is so generic that if they'd given the other general the same name I'm not sure many people would have complained about it not feeling like Shan Yu (although I imagine his counterpart got more lines and more character in the LA)

8) Ratcliffe is a generic bad guy. He's got a more distinct look than Shan Yu and a great villain song, but at the end of the day he's not really remembered because there's not much going on there (whereas other villains are so strong they made the film huge)

7) Frollo is where we get into the villains people might care about. He's evil, manipulative, and has TWO great villain songs (Part of "Out There" and "Hellfire"), although both are short. At the same time, the guy is barely a footnote. If he brought more presence to the role, Hunchback might have been a bigger film. However, there might have only been so much that could be done with him.

6) Oogie Boogie is one of my Disney favorite villains, but honestly he's literally in the background most of the time (first appearing as "the shadow on the moon at night" because he doesn't actually appear until much later). However, part of is just how he's built up, because the kids sing songs about him and he's seen in the shadows to make him look more intimidating. And, honestly, he's built up to scarier than he is because he's a more comical character

5) Gaston is a hard one to place. Maybe he belongs lower. However, he basically helped make Beauty and the Beast work. The guy carries his own weight, and he does a pretty good job of being disliked

4) Hades is where things start to get hard. He's where the villains really start to have screen presence and, in his case, he feels almost as big as Hercules himself. Maybe he should be ranked 3, maybe he's fine at 4. This one is a toss-up.

3) Jafar is one of the most iconic Disney villains. Even though Hades is big, he's not remembered in the same breath as Jafar. Even more so than Hades, Jafar drives the story of Aladdin from start to finish. He's the guy who puts Aladdin on his path. He gives us an epic final confrontation. (EDIT: And, unlike Hades, he kinda has a villain song -- I forgot about the "Prince Ali" remix.)

2) Scar is a great villain, and is a large part of why the Lion King was huge. Adjusting for inflation, the Lion King is Disney's *fifth* highest-grossing film and three of the titles above it are Marvel movies (the other is 101 Dalmations). When you hear "villain song," one of the first things that probably came to your mind was "Be Prepared."

https://thedisinsider.com/2021/01/01/disneys-all-time-highest-grossing-films/

1) I pity the poor unfortunate soul who wouldn't see these names and rank Ursula as #1. Ursula has pretty much everything you could ask for in a Disney villain. She has a great design, an iconic & catchy villain song, she drives the plot, and -- in the pantheon of Disney villains -- might only be seen as less iconic than Maleficent.

Krazy_Kirby posted...

bad guy =/= villain. the villain in beauty and the beast would be the witch

Gaston is really the villain, though. The Enchantress/Witch is more of a minor antagonist, even though her actions set up the story.

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captpackrat posted...

Best Disney villain

I was actually wondering why she wasnt on the list
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LinkPizza posted...

I was actually wondering why she wasnt on the list

Tried to stick to the decade of Resident Evil 2. (Except TLM)

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Ursula is the best its not even close. She was the real star of The Little Mermaid and stole Ariel's thunder not only her voice. Yzma from The Emperor's New Groove should be on here. Eartha Kitt gave a great performance.

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MeteoricBurst posted...

Yzma from The Emperor's New Groove should be on here.

I agree. She was great!
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1. Judge Claude Frollo
2. Maleficent
3. Jafar
4. Ursula
5. Gaston
6. Hades
7. Scar
8. Oogie Boogie
9. Ratcliffe
10. Shan Yu

Frollo is the only one that actually employs concepts like character depth and internal conflict, so he's at the top. It helps that he has the most screentime of any Disney villain, especially because he's already widely seen as the thing that carries the film. From there it's mostly just a matter of which flavor of one-note hammy villain you prefer.

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LinkPizza posted...

I was actually wondering why she wasnt on the list

To be fair, although she's the most iconic Disney villain (cartoon anyway), she'd still probably be a step under Ursula. Maleficent is great to the extent that a lot of people don't even remember the Princess or Princess's name from the original film yet Maleficent is a standout.

DistantMemory posted...

Frollo is the only one that actually employs concepts like character depth and internal conflict,

...roflmao. Novel Frollo has internal conflict, movie Frollo doesn't have much in the way of conflict or depth. If not for "Hellfire" lampshading some novel elements, you'd never know they existed. In fact, Disney went out of their way to change his character to remove the character depth from the novel, which is why now he's got some government role instead of playing a religious guy.

There's far less to the role than people think. Between that and his character design, he ranks among the more forgettable Disney villains except when somebody is trying to be edgy.

MeteoricBurst posted... Yzma from The Emperor's New Groove should be on here. Eartha Kitt gave a great performance.

I loved Eartha Kitt's Catwoman, but was kinda meh on Yzma. Everything about that movie didn't do it for me.

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9) Shan Yu

I like Mulan but Shan Yu is one of the most forgettable villains (though more memorable than most of them today).

8) Ratecliffe

Just a boring villain with a boring goal. Did the settlers really come here looking for gold?

7) Hades

Havent seen Hercules much to give a truly fair judgment but this guy seems cool enough.

6) Oogie Boogie

Only loses points for not being in the movie very long but he steals every scene hes in.

5) Jafar

I think a lot of Jafars charm also comes from Iago, easily one of the best lackies in all of Disney.

4) Ursula

Easily one of the most terrifying villains, especially at the end.

3) Scar

His posh voice and his beyond fucked up plan: kill his brother and convince his nephew that it was all his fault.

2) Frollo

Aside from his awesome voice, what makes Frollo one of the scarier Disney villains is he thinks hes doing the right thing, but in reality is doing something horrible to achieve his goals. These kinds of villains are usually scarier than the typical want to take over the world villains.

1) Gaston

This guy is all that is man. Hes so awesome, he has a song about it. So crazy and narcissistic about this one woman not wanting to worship the ground he walks on, hes willing to have her father imprisoned in a mental hospital or commit murder to have her. Gaston shows just how dangerous obsession can get. Another interesting thing about him is hes one of the few villains that doesnt look like a villain. His design is usually reserved for the hero (big, strong, handsome).

It is too bad most Disney movies now dont have such a great selection of villains like they used to. Im so sick of the whole surprise villain schtick theyve been stuck on for the past 12 years.

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Zeus posted...

...roflmao. Novel Frollo has internal conflict, movie Frollo doesn't have much in the way of conflict or depth. If not for "Hellfire" lampshading some novel elements, you'd never know they existed. In fact, Disney went out of their way to change his character to remove the character depth from the novel, which is why now he's got some government role instead of playing a religious guy.

The opening number establishes that he believes himself to be righteous despite his villainy and it has him scared shitless about what might happen to him in the afterlife after killing a woman and trying to drown her baby on the steps of Notre Dame. That's already making him a more compelling character than any other villain on this list, and it's the first five minutes of the film.

Also, yes, Hellfire gives him a heaping helping of internal conflict, as opposed to it being some villain song where he gleefully sings about his delightfully wicked scheme. That also gives him depth. It's weird that you dismiss it as "lampshading" as if that entire sequence isn't featuring the Disney version of Frollo, and doesn't directly lead into the plot turn the rest of the movie takes from that point forward.

Also, the reason he's made into a judge and not a priest is because they wanted to avoid any controversy that would arise from portraying a priest and/or the Catholic church in a negative light. It's weird that you connect two totally unrelated things there, as if being a judge would magically make him a flat character; it's not like he isn't still bible-thumping as hell, he just doesn't serve the church in an official capacity because Disney didn't want to piss off the church. He does have a lot of depth from the novel sucked out, but he still remains the deepest of these Disney villains. I suppose that's a testament to how good novel Frollo is as well as how simple other Disney villains are.

There's far less to the role than people think. Between that and his character design, he ranks among the more forgettable Disney villains except when somebody is trying to be edgy.

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/376/552/a05.png

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SeahorseCpt89 posted...

(though more memorable than most of them today).

...because most of the villains now are twist villains. It's hard to have an iconic villain if you don't know they're a villain until the final act.

Offhand, I think the last halfway decent villain we saw was Facilier, but he was basically a skinnier, male Ursula.

DistantMemory posted...

The opening number establishes that he believes himself to be righteous despite his villainy and it has him scared shitless about what might happen to him in the afterlife after killing a woman and trying to drown her baby on the steps of Notre Dame. That's already making him a more compelling character than any other villain on this list, and it's the first five minutes of the film.

It really doesn't. Disney's Frollo is fairly one-note as far as villains go, he's just a slightly different one-note.

DistantMemory posted...

Also, the reason he's made into a judge and not a priest is because they wanted to avoid any controversy that would arise from portraying a priest and/or the Catholic church in a negative light. It's weird that you connect two totally unrelated things there, as if being a judge would magically make him a flat character;

You take away the religion, he's a flat character. Judges can marry anybody they want. In the novel where he's actually a compelling character, he's torn between his religious vows and his lust. In the movie, he's just an incel. Unless you think the "supreme gentleman" Elliot Rodger was some deep, complicated individual and not justly a sexually-frustrated nutjob.


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if he wasn't religious he wouldn't think she was "turning him to sin"
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Clench281 posted...

When I was a lad I ate four dozen eggs every morning to help me get large

I want Ursula to lay four dozen eggs down my ass

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Krazy_Kirby posted...

if he wasn't religious he wouldn't think she was "turning him to sin"

But again, there's no reason he can't be with her in Disney's Hunchback. In the novel, he'd be breaking a vow of chastity. Judges don't have vows of chastity (and it's not like he's married). The line is a complete throwaway as a result, because it doesn't work.

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It's more about Esmerelda being a sinful person than about a vow of chastity.

The "Frollo as a judge" retcon predates Disney by quite a lot in my understanding, there have been a lot of adaptations of Hunchback that Disney borrowed from.

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Krazy_Kirby posted...

bad guy =/= villain. the villain in beauty and the beast would be the witch

The witch is pretty much the only reason the prince stops being such an asshole, and the entirety of Beauty and the Beast is about that redemption story. Had he not been cursed, he'd have spent his life surrounded by sycophants that tolerated him being a douche because of the status it brought them. He'd have married some princess or other, knocked her up a few times with kids he largely ignored except as needed to groom them into inheriting his legacy of dickdom, then eventually died having improved nothing about the world around him.

Because he was cursed, though, everyone he might ever have valued stopped caring about him completely. He lived a miserable existence and would have died sad and alone if not for the fact that he met somebody who saw some potential in him to be a half-decent person and managed to beat him into shape. He would never have given Belle a second glance if he weren't cursed (she was just some peasant girl, after all), but because he was, he had that opportunity to redeem himself, to the benefit of everyone.

Arguably, the Beast is the villain. The primary conflict that drives the story is everyone around him clashing with the less pleasant aspects of his personality, and ultimately triumphing. Gaston is a turbodink who stirs up trouble that exacerbates that conflict, but I would agree that he's not really the actual antagonist in the story, because he's not the one providing that central conflict (though he does act to represent what the Beast would be like if not for the curse, acting as a character foil). The witch definitely is not, though. She's the only reason the central conflict ever finds any sort of resolution.

Zeus posted...

But again, there's no reason he can't be with her in Disney's Hunchback. In the novel, he'd be breaking a vow of chastity. Judges don't have vows of chastity (and it's not like he's married). The line is a complete throwaway as a result, because it doesn't work.

Frollo sleeping with Esmeralda would be roughly akin to a Grand Dragon sleeping with a black woman. He's based so much of his fundamental identity and place in society on the premise that gypsies are subhuman, ungodly filth that his obsession with her is absolutely a violation of his fundamental beliefs, both in terms of what he's convinced himself about what God's will is and in terms of his public credibility. The problem is not that he's attracted to a woman, it's that he's attracted to a gypsy woman, especially one that has made a name for herself by being openly defiant of the order he's attempting to impose.

It's also worth noting that, while a judge may not actually be a member of the church and not have any vows of chastity or anything to worry about, the Catholic church was such a major part of the power structure in 15th century France that straying too far from what the church commanded would basically be social and career suicide for any judge. Vows or no vows, a "sinful" judge (by whatever metric was being used) would not be accepted by much of anyone. To that end, a judge worrying about being "sinful" is absolutely believable.

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Zeus posted...

You take away the religion, he's a flat character.

Frollo's extremely religious in the movie. It's starting to look like you haven't even seen the movie. And as that other guy said, there's reasons for him to be having a mental breakdown besides a vow of chastity. You keep hyperfixating on these bizarre negligible points. I think you should go back and (re?)watch the movie.

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