The Disney Villain Saves the Day Again

Villains are lipstick for bland heroes. With a few exceptions, I like villains more than heroes and root for them to win. They're more interesting. They represent our naughty natures that in the movies and in books we pay cash money to see tamed by well-intentioned but charismatically bankrupt do-gooders.

Without villains, in fact, terrible things happen. No Maleficent? Sleeping Beauty never dozes and Prince Charming never kisses her awake. She toils forever, marrying the Huntsman's slow cousin and raising seven children in a cottage down by the river. See what I mean?

I'm not alone, either. Michelle Rahn loves Disney villains so much that she developed a website exclusively for them called DisneyVillains (catchy, huh)? The site has profiles of the baddest of the bad, including the one villain even I wouldn't take with me on a bank job: Lotso the sociopathic stuffed bear.

Obscure villains get their fifteen spans of pixels, too. Remember the Bowler Hat Guy from Meet the Robinsons? Or how about Charles Muntz from Up? Michelle claims that Charles Muntz was named for Charles Mintz, the film producer who stole Oswald the Lucky Rabbit from Walt back in the old days. When I hear 'Muntz' I think of the serial killer 'Mad Man Muntz' played by John Goodman in the really strange movie, Barton Fink. Maybe the directors of that film, the Coen Brothers, had somehow run afoul of Charles Mintz themselves.

Michelle's site also compiles links to Disney villain merchandise for sale on eBay. It seems like a useful service, if you're in the market for that sort of stuff, and it's easily ignored if you're not.

You can learn much more about each Disney villain on Wikipedia, but it's nice to have many of them gathered together on one site with short profiles just long enough to expose their vileness - and, for the enlightened, their virtue.

Contact the Author: Bob McLain