Ah, those classic animated villains. You love' em. You love to hate 'em. But do you understand them?
When it comes to animated movies, their villain's motivations don't often stray from one of two paths: greed/power-lust, or simple insanity. Look up your favorite animated movie. I guarantee you there's a 90% chance it follows one of these plots.
However, there are some outliers. There are some animated villains who were motivated by weird reasons, or whose plots were kind of strange. This list is going to document some of them. Enjoy.
Edgar from The Aristocats - Money (but not the way you think)
1970's The Aristocats stars Eva Gabor, dahling, and Phil Harris, who was in every Disney movie under the sun back then. In The Aristocats, the villain is Edgar, the butler to Madame Bonfamille, an elderly former thespian with tons of dough.
And also kind of a MILF. (Uhhhh...
am I allowed to say that?)
Edgar wants to murder the poor old lady's innocent cats. Why does he want to commit such an egregious deed, you ask? The answer is simple: despite decades of faithful service, Edgar has been omitted from his employer's last will. Madame plans to leave her millions to her cats once she dies, and Edgar isn't having that. Yes, that's right. Edgar is evil... because his employer wants to will her inheritance to her cats.
Honestly, this plot is outright insane. The cats can't spend money independently; they're gonna need Edgar to care for them and spend it on their behalf. So why does Madame not just give the money to Edgar and ask him to care for the cats?? What is the point of willing the millions directly to three felines?
And why does Edgar hear that the inheritance is going to the cats, and immediately think, "Well, I've got to kill them now"???? Does he not realize that the cats can't spend the money on their own??? The cats are not going to buy tiny Rolexes and gold-dusted catnip for themselves. Someone is going to have to administer the money for them. That someone is going to be you. You can spend most of the fortune as you damn well please. Edgar, you moron!
To add onto this, Edgar estimates that each cat will live about twelve years. Okay, reasonable, you'll get the money in twelve years, Edgar! But no. Then, the beleaguered butler is like, "But they each have nine lives! Twelve times nine... it's far longer than I'll ever live!" Oh, Edgar. You stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid twit. This whole movie happened because Edgar thought cats have nine lives. We need to improve education in France.
Amos Slade & his dogs in The Fox and the Hound - Intense hatred of foxes
Meet Amos Slade, the gun-totingest, most hillbilly-ish Disney villain in history. And get ready to learn the motivation behind his evil deeds. Are you ready to hear it? I don't think you are. This is the craziest villain motivation of all time. This is insanely complicated, and cannot be explained in less than 10 paragraphs. This has huge moral, ethical and philosophical implications. This is not easy to absorb. Are you sure you're ready for it? Are you sure? Okay, here we go...
He doesn't like foxes.
Yes, I know that in the latter half of the movie, Amos is hunting Tod the fox because he blames him for the accident that broke his dog's leg. But in the first half... that has not happened. Literally the only reason Amos and the dogs persecute Tod is because they can. They're not even gonna eat him or anything. They just don't like foxes.
I mean, maybe this makes more sense to experienced hunters, or something? I don't know. I just think this movie is kinda thin.
Bowler Hat Guy in Meet the Robinsons - Lost a baseball game one time
I always thought Meet the Robinsons was sweet and well-intentioned, but also kind of shitty. It came forth from the era where Disney was trying to transition into the 2000s after the successes of the Renaissance, but everything they released was very weird and mostly bad. Seriously, after Treasure Planet, absolutely everything was lackluster. Brother Bear, Home on the Range, Chicken Little, and Meet the Robinsons were all second-rate. Disney didn't give us another good movie until Bolt, and didn't put out a great movie until The Princess and the Frog.
Anyway, this movie has a complicated plot involving all sorts of time travel and shit. All you need to know is that the villain, Bowler Hat Guy, is evil because the genius main character kept him awake all night with his constant inventing, causing Bowler Hat Guy to be exhausted in the morning, causing him to lose a baseball game.
Yes. The villain in Meet the Robinsons is motivated by the bitter hatred of losing a Little League game one time. This was an odd little movie.
Yzma in The Emperor's New Groove - Got fired
The Emperor's New Groove is one of the funniest movies of all time, and its villain Yzma is one of the funniest bad guys they've cooked up at Disney, so of course she has a weird, less-than-standard motivation. Some villains are simply evil because they're evil, while others desire revenge for a wrongdoing - Yzma belongs in the latter category. She wants vengeance because... she got fired.
This is one of the most mundane villain raison d'etres that I have ever heard of. Yzma's inner fire and hatred stem from the fact that her boss handed her a pink slip after decades of loyal service. Which, I mean, is a great motivation... who wouldn't want revenge? But it's not exactly the most obvious Disney villain motivation that has ever existed. (Which definitely isn't a bad thing.)
Francis in The Boss Baby - Uh, not sure how to succinctly summarize this
Okay. If you haven't seen DreamWorks' Boss Baby, you need to know that this movie is genuinely insane. Bonkers. The whole thing is goddamn ludicrous. "I want you to suck it" is an actual line that the baby says. (The baby is a yuppie voiced by Alec Baldwin.)
Listen, um... I have no idea how to feel about this
movie, except that I love it unconditionally.
In The Boss Baby, the villain Francis's motivation is that... he used to be a permanent baby, because in this world babies can stay babies forever if they drink special formula, and babies have their own corporation, which is in a constant battle with puppies over whether babies or puppies will get more love, but the formula stopped working on Francis, so they fired him, and so he decided to join the puppies' side to get revenge on the babies.
Oh, and Francis's name used to be "Super Colossal Big Fat Boss Baby."
Yeah. I don't think I need to say anything more about that. Please watch this if you have the time.
Hal/Tighten from Megamind - Got friendzoned
This might just be one of my favorite villain motivations ever. Or least favorite, depending on how you look at it.
Hal is evil because he got friendzoned. Seriously, that's it. After he's blessed with superpowers, he initially has no problem with using his abilities for good... until Roxanne refuses to date him, at which point he goes to the dark side out of pure childishness.
I definitely feel like this movie is a cautionary parable about the dangers of Nice Guys™. There's a lot going on under the surface of Megamind, and I could probably talk about this for 50 more paragraphs. Time to move on.
The villains in Bee Movie - ??????
There is a lot to unpack here. (I could go on and on about Bee Movie. I'm gonna try to reel it in.)
There are multiple villains in Bee Movie. First of all, there is the boyfriend played by Patrick Warburton, who is motivated to kill Jerry Seinfeld's Barry B. Benson, a bee, because... the bee stole his girlfriend. (If you somehow haven't heard of Bee Movie, I bet that sentence blew your mind. Let me repeat it so it sinks in. THE BEE STEALS A MAN'S GIRLFRIEND.)
Second of all, there is the John Goodman lawyer, who is evil because... well. A) He's racist against bees, I guess? B) The bees are suing humanity for control of honey, and the lawyer has been hired to represent the big honey corporations of the world.
Bee Movie is a mishmash of barely-coherent weirdness. That's all there is to it.
Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty and/or Maleficent - Wasn't invited to birthday bash
This may well be the best-known example of a salty villain scheme. You probably already know. In this movie, the king and queen hold a celebration for the christening of their daughter, Princess Aurora. Mid-party, the witch Maleficent shows up and - in the most passive-aggressive manner possible - lets everyone know that she is NOT happy that she didn't get an invitation. And then she puts a curse on the baby.
So basically, this movie happens because Maleficent was pissed that no one invited her to the big royal party. But to be fair, I think there was a whole stipulation where literally everyone in the kingdom got an invitation except for her. Which means the king and queen are truly the saltiest ones in this situation.
I want to mention 2014's Maleficent, which retcons the witch's reason for cursing Aurora, from "How dare you not invite me to your party?" to "Actually, the king and I were lovers a long time ago, but then he drugged me and cut off my wings whilst I slept. And also, how dare you not invite me to your party?"
Angelina Jolie is DELICIOUSLY salty in this movie.
Marina Del Rey from The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning - Upward mobility
I haven't seen this movie, but I still want to include it. From what I can suss out from its Wikipedia page, Marina is the governess of Ariel and her sisters, but wants to steal Sebastian's job as Triton's attaché. To that effect, she rats Ariel and Sebastian out for performing music (which is illegal in this prequel because reasons), and Sebastian goes to.... fish jail.... whereupon Marina does indeed get his job.
To put things in simpler terms: the villain's evil plot is motivated by upward mobility. She's basically the anti-Yzma.
By the way, this villain is voiced by Oscar-winner Sally Field. How many other villains on this list can say that?
Balthazar Bratt from Despicable Me 3 - Puberty destroyed his career
There are about 1002 different reasons I hate Despicable Me. One is that it's kind of terrible. Two is that it's the reason no one remembers Megamind, one of the greatest masterpieces ever produced. And those other 1000 reasons? Those are all minions.
Anyway. In Despicable Me 3, the villain is a child star from the 80s. But after he went through puberty, Hollywood unceremoniously dumped him.
You can see why.
And that's why he's evil. Because Hollywood doesn't like casting child stars with acne and voice breakage. If Disney's Bolt had just taken place a few years later, it might have shared a very similar premise.
Assistant Mayor Bellwether from Zootopia - Racism
If you haven't seen or heard of Zootopia (some fucking how), this might come as a shock to you. But yes. This adorable cuddly sheep is a ginormous racist.
Here's the rundown: in this world populated by furries - er, I mean, talking animals - tension between predators and prey has never been higher. Bellwether, a sheep, hatches a plot to inject predators with a serum that makes them "go savage," with the ultimate goal being - and I'm quoting this directly from Wikipedia - "a prey-supremacist conspiracy." Basically, she wants to make all the stereotypes come true, so that predators will be demonized and the prey animals can take power.
I am not entirely sure if any other mainstream animated movie's plot has hinged around the villain being a racist. Except maybe The Hunchback of Notre Dame?
Syndrome from The Incredibles - Got kidzoned
I have now coined the word kidzoned to describe this situation. In The Incredibles, Buddy was a kid who had no superpowers (except perhaps, depending on whose opinion you seek out in the dark corners of the Internet, his superior intellect. There's actually a debate about this). As a huge fan of Mr. Incredible, Buddy tried to become his sidekick, to the hero's annoyance. Mr. Incredible was dismissive of him and sent him away in a cop car.
So, I guess you can narrow down Buddy's motivation to "Hates superheroes," or, alternatively, the new word "kidzoned" I have invented.
kid·zoned
verb
literary
- When a kid gets told "Fly home, Buddy, I work alone."
"And so, when Mr. Incredible kidzoned Buddy, he inadvertently set the events of The Incredibles in motion."
And finally...
Soto from Ice Age - Friends got murdered
Don't let the colorful and blase sequels fool you; the first Ice Age was pretty goddamn dark. Case in point: the villain, a saber-toothed tiger named Soto, wants revenge because a hunter killed half his pack. That's a pretty dark villain backstory already, and one that makes you question whether Soto is really a villain or not.
But this entry is more about his plot for revenge than about his motivation. Soto's plan... is to kidnap the hunter's baby and eat it alive.
Seriously. This is all but outright stated. Lest you forgot, and thought that this was just a cute movie from your childhood, let me be the harbinger of doom: Ice Age was all about saving a baby from getting eaten alive. Then again, it also had 50 comedic lines about poop, so perhaps that balances out all the gloom.
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