Dear Disney, We Hate Female Villians and Like It That Way!

A misunderstood stepmother doesn't have the same resonance or significance as an Evil Stepmother. This is the lesson Disney once had down pat. Lately, it seems, Evil Stepmother has been to counseling and discovered her inner child, but does she have to share it with us?

Complaints have been levied about Disney's formulaic and highly successful narrative of a beautiful, innocent princess abused by an evil stepmother. The accusation is unfair because of the hundreds of movies released by Disney since the 1940's very few are about a princess and an evil queen.  However, the handful or so that did follow this pattern featured an evil woman so beyond redemption that it scared the pants off us and made us hate her...and we loved it.

Take Maleficent. I haven't seen the Disney update, but any one who can transform themselves into a fire-breathing dragon probably isn't nice. And we like fire-breathing dragons Disney. Have you seen the fan response to Smaug?  From what I've heard about the "new" Maleficent, she was once a kind fairy...huh?

Then there was Frozen (see my review "Frozen: Gave Me Hypothermia"). The most interesting creature in the movie was the Abominable Snowman. For some reason, Disney chose to make the true queen a misunderstood princess who just wants to be herself. But if she could create an evil monster, doesn't it stand to reason that she herself is evil?

We loved Snow White and the Huntsman because it showed the truly depraved nature of the Evil Queen (Charlize Theron) and the authentic goodness of Snow White. If the antagonist is not truly evil, then what's the point of the protagonist trying to destroy them?

Even The Grimm Brothers movie (Matt Damon) got it right. The queen was beautiful, vain, and evil. Made sense that her just reward would be that she age, disintegrate, and shatter into a million pieces like her magic mirror.

This is not formulaic. It is good character arc. All of those "evil" women grew more and more jealous or evil over time (despite having chances to change). This is what makes us hate them all the more and then compare them to our least favorite relatives.

I've heard that the Broadway hit, "Wicked" is about the evil witch from Wizard of Oz, who actually isn't evil? Sorry I can't wrap my mind around that one after years of gleefully watching her melt into a pile of green slop in the original classic.

Ursula, in the Little Mermaid, was classic. Smooth, seductive, and evil. The perfect prototype for a villain. This is not anti-woman. It's common sense. If you must give us a multi-layered villain with a backstory and personality make it consistently and progressively wicked. (Was Ursula really once a good fish who got on the wrong side of King Trident, puh-lease!)

The Incredibles movie made a great villain out of Buddy, the annoying child, who eventually grew into a self-made super-villain, Syndrome. No one was sorry to see him get sucked into that turbine, lol!

I'm cherry-picking my personal favorites of course. But the point is that all movies need someone you love and someone you love to hate. We know the characters are not real (hopefully). But we need something real to experience. And if the plan is to dissect the personality of a villain to find some good in them, then there really is no villain. Snow White and the Queen are actually equals which isn't very interesting. There's just a Droopy-type fringe character, shuffling around the screen, crying out for help and attention instead of creating havoc and obstacles for the protagonist.

If you want to update a villain, follow the example of The Hobbit or How To Train Your Dragon or even Hercules (animated version). Make a villain so big, so bad, so larger than life that our eyes get big, our hands freeze just as we're about to take a bite of popcorn, and we go "Whoa!"

If you want someone different to happen at the end of your movies, let us walk away cheering for the good guy (or girl) and excitedly chattering about the demise of the bad guy (or girl), not trying to figure out what the difference is.