Cruella de Vil wanted Dalmatian puppies for fur coats, Captain Hook tried to blow up Peter Pan, and Maleficent cursed Aurora with an early death.
But what if these Disney villains were actually misunderstood? That’s the idea behind a new musical at Walt Disney World that’s making some people ask when Disney’s villains stopped being truly bad.
The live show, Disney Villains: Unfairly Ever After, opens May 27 at Disney’s Hollywood Studios in Orlando, Florida. In the show, three classic villains argue in front of an audience that they are the most misunderstood of them all.
“We wanted to tell a story that’s a little different than what’s been told before: which one of them has been treated the most unfairly ever after,” said Mark Renfrow, a creative director for the show, in a promotional video.
A fresh angle
This approach — telling a different side of the villains’ stories — isn’t sitting well with everyone.
“I think it’s wonderful when you still have stories where villains are purely villainous,” said Benjamin Murphy, a philosophy and religious studies professor at Florida State University’s Panama campus. “When you have villains reveling in their evil, it can be amusing and satisfying.”
Disney has explored softer portrayals of villains before. The 2021 movie Cruella, for example, gives a backstory to the dog-hating character played by Emma Stone. It explains her behavior by pointing to a difficult childhood and a distant mother.
Other parts of pop culture have done the same. Wicked — a book, stage musical, and film — retells the story of the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and shows her in a more human light.
Murphy said that Wicked‘s success helped start the trend of giving villains more depth and backstory. “With trends like that, the formula is repeated and repeated until it’s very predictable: take a villain and make them sympathetic,” he said.
A statue of Walt Disney and Mickey MouseA shift in values
Many old fairy tales that inspired Disney films were meant to teach lessons, like warning children to stay away from wolves or avoid strangers in the forest.
But those stories often made outsiders into villains — such as older women, people of color, or those who were poor — according to Rebecca Rowe, a professor of children’s literature at Texas A&M University-Commerce.
Rowe said the move to show villains in a more complex way started in the late 1980s and 1990s when children’s media began to change. At the time, there was a push to promote acceptance and show that people aren’t just good or bad.
“The problem is everyone has swung so hard into that message, that we have kind of lost the villainous villains,” Rowe said. “There is value in the villainous villains. There are people who just do evil things. Sometimes there is a reason for it, but sometimes not. Just because there is a reason doesn’t mean it negates the harm.”
Whether or not it’s good for children to relate to villains isn’t simple. Some worry kids might pick up bad traits. But others think it can help children connect with characters who come from groups that have been left out or looked down on, Rowe said.
Disney villains are often more popular with adults than kids, especially among members of the LGBTQ+ community who may have once felt excluded. Many have embraced the transformation from Disney princesses into “evil queens.”
Erik Paul, a Disney World annual pass holder who lives in Orlando, isn’t a big fan of villains, but understands why Disney would want to explore their stories in a different way.
“I know friends who go to Hollywood Studios mainly to see the villain-related activities,” Paul said. “Maybe that’s why people like the villains because they feel misunderstood as well, and they feel a kinship to the villains.”
