I feel like the main reason why King Candy/Turbo works so well is due to the fact that the twist behind it isn't that the good guy was evil all along, but rather The identity of a villan is the main twist of the character and the fact that King Candy was a jerk from the very start and right at the very end, so he has more than enough time for being the villan
To be fair, King Candy did get progressively darker as the story progressed. He started off as a selfish but comical jerk and slowly transitioned into a psychopathic murderer until he was revealed to be Turbo. Alan Tudyk (King Candy/Turbo's voice actor) was actually surprised at how progressively dark the character became throughout the film's development. But yes, King Candy was pretty much bad from the get-go so he's not a twist villain in the traditional sense.
Reminds me of Judge Doom's reveal at the end of Roger Rabbit, in that we can tell both of them are evil or untrustworthy, but their true identities serve as the REAL twists at the end of their respective films. King Candy is actually Turbo, and Judge Doom is not only a Toon, but the Toon that murdered Eddie's brother.
What's genius about Rourke's character is that he isn't really a twist villain. When Milo meets with him and the crew, he has this puffed up vision of science, discovery, and fun adventure. He assumes the best in everyone and we warm up to the crew as Milo finally starts to befriend them. But even when they become friends, it doesn't change that Milo doesn't really know them. Rourke and the crew already have a previous history of camaraderie and stealing: They were ALWAYS going to try and steal the Heart of Atlantis. It's not that they are twist villains. They were ALWAYS villains, but Milo just never caught on.
The crew was also very open with Milo about their motivations. When he asked them why they were on the mission, all of them said "money". They were never hiding anything from him. Even Rourke treated the whole mission as a professional endeavour first and a thrilling adventure second. He never pretended that he had any motivation besides getting paid.
Saying they always had plans to steal the heart may be a little extreme because A) they had no real idea of what they were going to take only that it was “big shiny and gonna make them all rich”. And B) they didn’t expect anyone to still be alive down in Atlantis so would their act still have been considered a crime if their was no one to steal down their. To them this was all just a job for them with added complications of the living Atlantians.
@@lunerblade13 I guess they had an idea for the Diary that the ruins conserved a relic so valuable that make it worth several fortunes on it's own, as you said: no idea that was, no idea were living people
The weird thing is, Hans could've worked. He shows genuine care and concern for the townspeople of Arendelle. He's shown doing his part to keep the peace and calm down the turmoil while Anna is away. He sees firsthand several times just what Elsa is capable of. Have Hans fall for the same paranoia that the others do. That he legitimately grows to believe that Elsa is a threat to the people of her home, and that the only way to save Arendelle is to kill Elsa. Combined with the realization that Anna would never let them do that to her sister, he makes the wrong decision. Out of fear, he decides that to save Arendelle, he has to let Anna, who he truly does love, freeze and Elsa die so that he can protect the nation from its own princesses. He shows the full extent of what fearmongering and paranoia can do to people, and his compromised judgment leads him to abandon the girl he genuinely fell in love with to a terrible fate. It's a powerful lesson to Elsa that making drastic, rash decisions out of fear is dangerous and hurts others. It would play very well into the theme of Elsa being frightened of her own potential, and for an even more powerful moment when Anna sacrifices everything to save her sister from Hans. It validates the seemingly genuinely friendly and caring persona he carries throughout 3/4 of the movie, it validates his efforts to honor Anna's request to protect her home while she's gone, and it gives the movie a "villain" without making it some stupid twist of "awktually i was the evils the whole time huehue". He becomes the antagonist out of circumstance and fear, not because he showed up with evil intent from the start. All they had to do to make a "twist" villain work was just pay attention to the themes they were putting across in the writing and, you know, actually make use of them.
Heck you could also just make it clear that he only likes Anna because she is a princess, but otherwise he seems somewhat okay. So when he goes from 'im just trying to marry into royalty' to 'yeah im killing you fuckers and putting myself on the throne' it can still be dramatic and a bit of a twist.
Yeah. It’d make more sense to show that he does actually love Anna, but slowly has become so blinded and corrupted by the fear that surrounds him and his promise to protect Arendelle, that he begins to think that killing Elsa and Anna is the safest bet to end the Winter, even if he doesn’t have any confirmation that Elsa’s death would end Winter, than just “I’m EvIl NoW!!1!”
Silver works not only as a sympathetic/twist villain, but as a completely morally grey character - and I really can't think of any other Disney character as grey as Silver (let me know if you can think of one!). It goes without saying that Silver is an all-around lovable villain, but the film doesn't go all the way to claim that he has a heart of gold. It actually leaves Silver's morality cleverly ambiguous. Throughout the film, he doesn't do anything unforgivably evil - but only because the plot doesn't let him. As a result, there are several scenes where you don't know what Silver would have done. Would he actually have pulled the trigger on Amelia and Delbert, if Jim had refused him the map? (While he most certainly loves Jim, there's no indication that he cares about anyone else.) What would he have done if Flint's ship hadn't tipped over before he could reach Jim in the finale? He was approaching him pretty menacingly, and you don't know just how blinded he was by his greed in that moment (if the book is anything to go by, it would have been looking very grim for Jim). At the same time, you're free to assume that Silver's bark is worse than his bite, and he wouldn't have overstepped the line even if the plot had let him. In terms of morality, he's completely unfathomable. I honestly wish Disney would experiment with its villains more - there's a whole world between the irredeemable monster and the flimsy misunderstood bad boy with a heart of gold. Silver is the perfect example. Sympathetic villains don't have to be toothless and tame from the beginning in order to be available for a redemption arc (Silver revels in his villainy from start to finish, except when it comes to Jim), and nor does a sympathetic villain require a sob story to explain their character (for all you know, Silver is a pirate because he damn well loves it, and that's all you need). Your sympathetic villain doesn't have to be a tortured soul. He can just be an all-around nice person with a great sense of humour. Who just happens to be a swashbuckler.
By the end of the movie, you could say that Silver had a heart of silver. If I had to guess, I would say that Silver's youth was similar to Jim's and that is why Silver took to Jim. He saw himself in Jim.
@@charlessapp1835 Thank you for making the "heart of silver" pun, I was trying so hard to avoid it XD I think Silver's great strength, which he helps Jim to learn, is being true to himself. He pursues his goal regardless of whether the world approves or disapproves. Jim's initial complex is his urge to provoke by doing the opposite of whatever is considered good or respectable, even if it's to his own detriment - Silver, meanwhile, has no need to provoke, because what the world thinks is perfectly irrelevant to him. In the end, he just sets his priorities straight - just like Jim.
I think King Candy worked so well for several reasons 1. We always kinda knew he was up to something, unless he managed to fool you like he fooled Ralph for a short moment, but we didn't really get it confirmed he was evil until later on in the movie. 2. He has layers of twists. First he's racist against glitches, then he's actually just trying to protect her, but actually he lied and he's the whole reason Vanellope is a glitch, then he's Turbo, then we find out Vanellope was the original ruler so he took over the game from her. 3. His design doesn't fit in with the other racers when you actually look at them
If you listen to the announcer naming off the racers you'll notice that when he says King Candy's name it sounds a little more strained than the others, like Turbo is trying to mimic his voice.
It would be an interesting little piece if one of the human gamers had said “Oh, we don’t have him at my arcade” or “I’ve never seen him before” Just a nod to the random racer roster as well as a tiny note that this machine is unique
I think it adds that people kept talking about turbo, and it seems like it’s just a warning for rogue characters but then you find out that it’s king candy especially since he was a racer
I am a little embarrassed to admit that I did fall for King Candy's lie about Vanellopes potential fate. I think that a subtle, but a good hint of his nature was how he quickly changes the subject as Ralph mocks him for having a pink castle(with King Candy saying it's "salmon")as the pink and white design matches Vanellopes princess dress.
"Cool motive, Still Murder" i think is a great rule of thumb in this era lately of fandom completely pushing for irredeemable villains. Lately people forget you can totally make a villain's *situation* sympathetic (even in a selfish way you'd never admit to in public) while still making the *execution* of whatever choices they made to fix those things completely distasteful and needing to be stopped.
People tend to forget that you can definitely empathize with a villain, but will never sympathize with them. We can get why they are doing what they are doing, but that never excuses their actions.
Mr. Freeze being an example of it whenever he isn't being too flanderized. He's been a member of multiple supervillain groups, killed countless people, and even worked with Black Mask but we still know WHY he does it being extremely depressing with Nora. It doesn't help that every time Nora was cured or saved she turned out to be genuinely evil or much worse than him
Does Thanos count here? He wanted to solve universal overpopulation because he saw what it did to his planet, but obviously his method of doing so is horrific.
@@real_abender His motive is only that benevolent in the MCU for the most part, he genuinely wants to cause as much death as possible because he got one-upped both by doctor doom and deadpool in his girlfriend Death's eyes
King Candy/Turbo's reveal was so good because up till his reveal, even when you THINK you already know he's the villain, his *reasoning* for doing the 'villainous' actions he does (forbid Vanollepe from racing, etc) actually MAKES SENSE when he explains it to Ralph; If she races, the game glitches on the player and the game gets unplugged, killing the game and herself. And yet even when he shows his true colors of how evil he is, he gives another whiplash by revealing he was Turbo the whole time that used coding to hide himself in plain sight. ON TOP OF THAT, once you think he'd dead eaten by the cybug, he comes back in a 'final boss level' face off in his own virus form, which was animated so creepily and flawless, toying with Ralph and Vanollepe's lives that just showed off just how merciless and evil he really is.
Something I find interesting about Turbo's fake-out death scene at the hands of the Cybug is that the rest of the arcade didn't know if Turbo was still alive untill he was revealed in the race against Penelope, if I remember right he was assumed to have died in one of the two unplugged games. Him "dying" again at the hands of the Cybug is fitting as the Cybugs mirror turbo a bit. Like Turbo, the first Cybug seemingly died at the start of the movie after Ralph crash lands in Sugar Rush, and like Turbo the Cybugs end up resurfacing later significantly less dead than initially thought. They're both invasive elements that care little about where they end up and how their actions affect others, both complete their objectives without everyone else being the wiser, Turbo altering the game's code and the Cybugs growing their numbers underground. The fact that he later calls himself "the most powerful virus in the arcade" makes me think that he's realized how similarly destructive he and the Cybugs are.
Personally, Belleweather could've worked, simply by showing small acts of silent defiance; glaring hatred at the Mayor, before returning to her 'sunny personality' to the main characters, who hired her simply for a vote, and still treats her like dirt and leaves all the work to her! Small things that tell the audience there's SOMETHING wrong with her, but they never did! Even evidence of sheep hoofprints would've worked. Not made sense at first, but it would've worked! ^^
These are in the movie. They don't have hoofprints. They go further; a sticky note with her name and cellphone on it. She does explain her resentment to the mayor. Her entire hatred of "predator" animals is because the mayor just can't get her name right. And that sticky note isn't the only smoking gun. You have to rewatch the entire movie to notice she's been pulling the strings the entire time. Zootopia isn't even part of my top Disney movies, hardly so, but I caught all these on the first watch through. That's why the Nighthowler associates are rams. They're animals Bellweather "trusts". I pine for the days when Disney knew how to write scripts but I hate to tell you this... THIS SHIT AIN'T IT.
They needed her to crack before the reveal. Even if it isn’t “glaring hatred” it needs to be some kind of visible stress or tiredness. Like her terrible office with her mug that says #1 Dad crossed out to say “Assistant Mayor” she needed to take a breath for composure or something there. Like she’s actively fighting to keep her sunny disposition up, rather than that being her personality by default.
@@finalfroggitapproaches6418 Agreed, I'd probably had her mask slip slightly and have a moment where she gets genuinely angry in private with Judy (although nothing outright anti-predator just "I have a terrible boss" anger) before calming down or Judy comforting her. Basically a moment which the audience can interpret as an abused employee justifiably venting for a second.
I just want to point out, it wasn't Disney who came up with the twist for Long John Silver, it was RL Stevenson - that's exactly how he's written in the original Treasure Island, he's an ambiguous villain who you can never decide is completely good or completely bad.
@@LloydTheZephyrianI mean, in the movie Silver is more likable just in general. In the books, silver is a much more complex and complicated character that you actually feel pretty conflicted about until about the very end. In the end you like him just as much, it’s just a roller coaster of a journey instead of being such an easy change. For reference, Silver is my favorite villain I’ve ever seen or read and has such an enjoyable character arc.
Every time twist villains get brought up I think of a thousand different ways Hans could have been done better. Like for example, what if he kisses Anna but that doesn’t break the curse, they realize that they can’t be in love because they’ve known each other for two days, but he still really cares about her so decides to try and save her by killing Elsa, and THAT’S how he goes villain without fundamentally changing into a completely different character. Maybe he reluctantly teams up with the Duke to try and save the girl, y’know. Idk, all this goes to show once again how amazing Treasure Planet and Atlantis are. Silver is still my all time favorite Disney villain.
I actually like the idea of him being a villian, because his backstory (that isn't even in the movie...) shows us he has a lot of brothers and the attention was never given to him, so he wasn't *ever* intended to gain power. I can see why someone line him would want to make a name for himself, specially when his own family bullied him and he hadn't ever experienced love, here's the thing though: they didn't do it right. I think that he could have worked right as a morally grey character, like this: he _does_ care about Anna, he wanted to convince himself it was for power, but that wasn't completely right, so now he was confused and had to make a choice: gain the power for himself by betraying her?, or listening to his heart and not betraying the only person that showed him care? Idk, i just like his backstory and i think he could've been a complex character.
@@kittypeanut4102 I agree completely! The version of Hans you described is so juicy, I wish I had seen that in the movie instead! Like I said, there are SO MANY WAYS they could have done him right, and full villain is another great example. It’s like Disney tried to have their cake and eat it too.
I had always thought of two better ways they could have taken Hans: 1. Hans is not a twist villain and actually wanted to save Anna, but the realization is that their love is actually only at a very superficial level (which was already hinted at pretty well in their duet song together) and so a kiss failed, and they would need to find something else to cure her. It would also fit better with that part of the movie's messaging/theme of "you can't marry someone you only just met" and eventually Anna could've found out she has better chemistry with Kristoff anyway. 2. Hans is a twist villain and only joined the mission to bring back Elsa so that he could deliberately sabotage it. Attempt to have Elsa killed in her ice palace and either have it framed as an "accident" or convince the rest of the kingdom that she had truly become a monster and couldn't be stopped, and Anna would be crowned as queen instead. By this point the audience at least knows that Hans is the villain(whether or not it takes time for the rest of the characters to catch on) and had enough time to do villainish things, and it still fits in with Hans' motive of having his own kingdom regardless of any means possible. Though of course his plans inevitably fail, Elsa survives somehow and Hans is caught and dealt with. Though seriously, Disney could have pretty much done anything with just some effort and it probably would've been better.
I would have preferred hans just focused on saving ana and by extension his opportunity to be king, the fact executing elsa meets both criteria is just bonus points.
"Attempt to have Elsa killed in her ice palace and either have it framed as an accident" is literally what he did :-) Like, he looked towards the to the ceiling as he ran towards the one shooting at Elsa and then aimed the crossbow towards the chandelier hanging above, which then fell down on top of Elsa. Unfortunately Disney was so focused on surprising the audience, that you literally have to go frame-by-frame to see it :-)
I don't think Silver was a villain per se. Like Severus Snape, he's too complex to categorize. We know he's not a hero, because he's a criminal who robs and plunders but he's not a villain either, because he's kind and merciful. However, it's suggested that Silver was never a true pirate, but simply obsessed with treasure to the point where he operates outside the law. And his bloodthirst is only a facade to keep the pirates from killing him. His redemption stems primarily from seeing himself in Jim, a delinquent who needs guidance. Bonding with him made him see where his obsession has led him and he can't bear seeing Jim making the same mistake. Which sets up his epiphany where he sees that there are some things worth more than an entire planet of gold and jewels.
I'm frankly amazed how they were able to craft such a complex character with such a simple villain motivation and with absolutely no "tragic backstory". I would say Silver _is_ a "true" pirate, simply because he's driven by greed and adventure and doesn't mind deceiving and endangering honest people in the process. However, he's not sadistic like Scroop - he doesn't enjoy killing or hurting people for the sake of it, he just doesn't mind doing so if it clears his path to the treasure (in all fairness, you don't really know how Silver feels about killing or hurting people other than Jim). I absolutely agree about him realising his obsession for what it is - and it's so ironic considering his advice to Jim. Silver learns NOT to stick to it, no matter the squalls - he changes course with the wind.
@@vetarlittorf1807 Completely forgot about Morph! Yes, he's definitely shown to have a strong nurturing side. He just picks the people he cares about. That also agrees pretty well with the book, where Morph is a parrot and Silver also has a wife he goes back to in the end.
Characters like that are why we have "anti-hero" and "anti-villain." Those terms describe characters who lean one way or the other, but aren't within the area enough to be hero or villain.
I feel like we need to clarify the difference between a villain who _is a twist_ and a villain who _contains_ a twist. The difference between "Woah, Hans is the bad guy??" And "Woah, King Candy is the bad guy but that was kind of obvious but WOAH HE'S ALSO TURBO???"
I see Atlantis and Treasure Planet in the thumbnail I click. In all seriousness though I think the decline of twist villains is just a symptom of Disney losing faith in their villains in general, like it was the next step in their plan to get rid of villains altogether. First they did twist villain pretty well, then they did these villains badly then they made the villain be generational trauma. I'm not saying that classic Disney villains are the way to go for every story out there, different stories require different villains, some stories can only be told with generational trauma and some only with a complete monster for a villain, but Disney seems really resistant to create classic villains even if it's detrimental to the story. I know it's been talked about to death (heh) but Puss in Boots The Last Wish managed to juggle three different types of villain in the story perfectly, so Disney really has no excuse.
You know what I don't like? They took Cruella.. and made her some kinda anti-hero, which just means the modern Cruella can not connect to the crazed dog murderer of the past.. they legit took a classic villain and de-villain-ified her
Look I’m all for the villain being sympathetic or evil or even psychological like generational trauma as long as its written well. Problem is that it isn’t. Disney has gotten lazy, they know their animated films will make millions even if the writing is lackluster. Just pour the budget into the visuals and animation and call it a day. But releasing mediocre film after mediocre film slowly deteriorates their brand. Now their animation is taking a hit, just look at Elemental and Wish, they’re not even released yet and they look dated compared to the last wish, arcane, and into the spiderverse.
There seems to be three qualities that every decent twist villain seems to possess at least one of: 1) A thematically fulfilling emotional arc from spending so much time with the protagonists. (Ex: Treasure Planet) 2) The satisfying recontextualization of a piece of info that also explains the villain's motivation. (Ex: Wreck-It Ralph) 3) An effective critique of the real-world inspiration behind the story's genre conventions. Peeling back the romanticization to show an unpleasant reality (Ex: Atlantis)
8:20 Yeah! The Duke of Weaselton from Frozen was a suspect being the villain of Frozen because he wanted to kill Elsa because of her dangerous ice powers. But in the end, he really didn't do anything wrong
The Duke was also upset when Hans lied about Anna being killed by Elsa's powers. His immediate response was "her own sister!" which was consistent with his belief that Elsa was a danger to anybody around her. The Duke was a bumbling idiot but he wasn't evil.
That's just it though, the twist villains who are bad and forced in movies actually exist in real life. In my opinion, Disney is showing us that there are all different kinds of villains in real life. There's the obvious villains, the villains who give subtle hints that they're villains, and then there's the villains who genuinely care about the people they're with only to reveal their true nature completely out of nowhere.
@@nerinablais6623 pulling shit out of thin air isn't the same as tricking or manipulating the audience. It's just lazy writing. If you followed those "subtle" bad people around, you'd see cracks in their facade sooner or later. If the villain has enough screentime for their twist to even matter in the first place, their transformation shouldn't come without foreshadowing.
i actually attended a lecture a few years ago by Randy Haycock, the lead animator for Clayton in Tarzan. He was joking because it was a great white hunter stereotype with a pencil mustache and the loudest gun in the story; does that really count as a twist villain? To that end, he decided to just have fun with animating him. If you're wondering why he looks plain NUTS half of his frames, that's why.
I’m a bit surprised you didn’t include nor mentioned Bowler Hat Guy (Michael "Goob" Yagoobian) from Meet The Robinsons in the video. I’d say his backstory and him being a future version of Goob who didn’t let go of the past after loosing the Winning catch, was a well done twist and I say he’s one of Disney’s best Twist Villains alongside King Candy. I also forgot to mention about DOR-15 (Doris) the Robot Bowler Hat, cause when you first saw "her" we thought she was the smart intelligent robot Sidekick to Bowler Hat Guy, until in the final act, DOR-15 was the true evil mastermind.
"Sometimes you give up a few things... Chasing a dream" This quote from Silver in "Treasure Planet" always sticks with me. When he says it, he is directly referencing his cyborg implants. There's a kind of ambiguity about it as well- did he get those parts because of catastrophic injury or because he felt willingly that he needed to sacrifice his own body? As the story progresses you realize the quote refers to more than his implants. He's talking about surrendering any noble part of him that he used to be for the sake of his raw ambition. This informs the internal battle he has over how to treat Jim, at first keeping him at arms length and being cold, but succumbing to the fact that Jim represents the person he used to be, and he doesn't want to be responsible for making Jim into the kind of man he became. Eventually he gives up everything he had sacrificed for because he saw a chance to set things right with Jim.
Disney: Villains needs to be reliable nowadays. Dreamworks: So anyway, in this movie, Death is a cheating bastard who wants to kill the hero out of spite, also the other main villain just want absolute power because he was slightly wronged as a child and decided to become the fattest bastard the world as ever known. And he fucking enjoys it.
and goldilocks just wants a real family, at the expense of the one she already has. You could almost phrase the last wish as an insult to Disney's villain writing style.
Years ago when I first watched Atlantis, Rourke's evil twist legitimately shocked me. Most villains at that time were fairly obvious from the get go, but Rourke? The man was a kind caring leader who respected and valued his team, and out of nowhere becomes a cold monster because of how little he thinks of the Atlanteans and Milo's attachment to them. He also accurately sums up how this is just archaeology, at the end of the day. "Return every artifact, and you're left with an empty building." And his demise was even more shocking. I was not prepared for the horrific way he died by the Crystal's power.
In a way he is one of the most shocking and eerie due to him seeming a decent person yet not caring for the "commodities" like so many people in real life
I think it was so shocking because it was disney. You don't expect a betrayal like that in disney. If it was a live action film it would have been obvious to everyone, but in atlantis, the intended audiance is kids, who are like Milo, and only the parents would suspect Rourke from the get go due to their life experience. Maybe not even them
I am a simple girl. I see Silver- I click. But yeah Silver is a twist bc during their growth and character development you start to forget/hope that he’s not the villain. The same way Jim does. And so when he does ACTUALLY betray Jim and (unknowingly) in front of him, we feel the same hurt as Jim.
I think the reason why Rourke works so well as a twist villain is the fact that initially, you don't think there is going to be a villain at all. The first half of the movie is entirely obstacle based with major threats in the sub, fireflies, and everything else. There were other avenues available that could have led to a huge climax without the reveal that he was evil. As for Silver, I think the big fact that makes that twist work is the fact that he is heavily hinted at being the villain as soon as you meet him. You know the bad guy is a cyborg, and there were no other cyborgs around. The twist isn't really that he is the villain, it's that you don't want anything bad to happen to the villain after you meet him.
King Candy was already the main antagonist for Vanellope’s narrative, but then the twist was that he was actually Turbo, Ralph’s narrative foil (another video game character who was discontent with his home game and jumped games for selfish reasons). But whereas Turbo was the hero in his game but then became the villain, Ralph was the bad guy who learned he can be heroic in his own way.
What I like about Silver is that they didn't try to hide the twist. We knew from the start that he was a traitor, but the interesting part was Jim finding out about it and confronting him.
Waternoose is made better by the fact that he's *only* do it to save the company - not because he has a personal vendetta against anyone. You can see that in the scene where he talks to Randall and says "Because of you, I had to banish my top scarer!" in an annoyed tone. Sully was literally the cash cow of the company. He knows that and is just damn near praying Randall's invention works. But when you compare that to Callahan from Big Hero 6, he lets Tadashi die by destroying the building for no reason, doesn't give a shit about it (even though he was the prize student), and makes some dumbass convoluted plan to use the microbots to get back at the big company guy for an accident said company guy felt empathetic for - he didn't want to strand or kill the daughter, but it just happened by accident partially due to him rushing the safety check. i haven't seen either film in years so i'm sure i'm missing some points, but it's a good contrast between the old and new types of disney villains.
As a Treasure Planet fan i was overjoyed for you to talk about silver, but yeah the twist is he starting to care for jim, you get the vibe of a boy who never had a dad, and a man who started to love someone other than him, and you see how hard it is for both of them when the twist happens
The Hans twist wasn’t seen from a mile away by me… but, rather, by my mom. She spent her youth reading all the cheesy dollar store romance novels my aunt bought, and she said that his whole premise was a very common villain setup in those kinds of stories.
While I do agree with you by and large, I think Zootopia actually nailed its villainous reveal. The movie wasn’t an action flick, but a detective one. While we only get the twist at the end for mayor Bellwether, her motivations are slowly unveiled alongside clues and the general themes of the story. Her motivations are very closely tied to her actions/crimes, and we see our pair of detectives slowly uncover all the rot and biases within their beloved city. We see how both the prejudice against predators and the fear of herbivores effect various people in differing ways. And all of these clues and themes come together to point at the person with motive, ability and opportunity to pull off such a big scheme: the mayor’s aide, recently promoted to mayor. Heck, Judy being supported by Bellwether fits right in with all of her motivations, she just didn’t understand that Judy wanted to live with the predators (instead of merely dealing with the system where they are in charge like Bellwether). Bellwether actually wanted Judy as an ally and confidant, hence why her going overly menacing at the reveal hit harder. But you are right, if Zootopia weren’t a detective movie, the last minute reveal of the villain would have been a terrible twist. Thankfully it was a proper detective movie where the clues properly foreshadowed what he villain
I can agree with you to an extent. Since it's a detective story, it works. I just think there should've been more and better hints to her villainy before the reveal. Other than that, I agree
I am going to say that Gaston is another twist villain, especially if you skip the introduction of the movie. We see that he is high-handed and arrogant, but we really do not see his true villainy until later. In fact we are introduced to him with people everywhere singing his praise and women swooning over him. No one is surprised at his eventual villainy, but he is in a certain light a sympathetic character until he decides to lock away Maurice.
Gaston is honestly the hero from the village perspective, he hardly counts as a twist villain, the fact we know the beast isn't evil is the only reason he comes off as villainous at all.
@@andrewgreeb916 Technically the Beast is the villain for nearly half the movie. We are given his motivations in the opening, which is why I excluded that portion. And I agree that we eventually see Gaston and the Beast switch ends roughly at the midpoint. And we never actually see the townspeople repent of their assault upon the castle and its inhabitants.
I honestly don't know if I'd even call King Candy a twist villain, because unlike most of the others, the fact that he's the villain is not the twist in itself. We already know from his very first scene that he's an arrogant, attention hungry prick who'll do underhanded and unethical things to stop Ralph and Vanellope from taking away his power, so even when he doesn't seem like an outright villain, he's very clearly the antagonist from the start. The _actual_ twist - that he's really Turbo - doesn't change this fact, but it adds a ton and depth and context to the character and his actions, while also making him a much more direct parallel to Ralph. It's the same with the Wolf in _Puss In Boots: The Last Wish_ . We know from his very first scene that he's a ruthless hunter who wants Puss dead, and Puss is already desperately trying to get away from him. The character's goal and personality remains exactly the same after we learn that he's actually Death, we just have the explanation for _why_ he's doing it while also cementing the film's message about life and mortality. These twists don't abruptly change the characters or their roles in the story, but they add tons of layers and deeper meanings to the point where if you watch the films again, you'll see them and these villains in a completely different light than you did the first time.
Remember what Zangief says to ralph: "You are bad guy, but this does not mean you're a bad guy". Remembering that quote just made me realise that yeah, these are video game characters, and they are villains for a video game, but that doesn't mean they are evil outside of the video game as well. They could be the most vile villain ever in a video game only to be the most caring outside of it or just a pretty chill dude. Everyone is just following a script of bad guy vs good guy, and what makes turbo a true villain that was a hero or main character in his own video game and disguised as a king who doesn't care too much in another. That's really the twist here for him
@@bugsquashinghero891 Ya know, the more I think about it, the more it does make sense. His whole motive is to get revenge for his daughter's death. He waited until one of his students created some technology that he can use to get his revenge. It was probably years of seething and scheming before that night. Thus, when he saw the tech, his implemented his plan to fake his death. Considering how his fake death plan was detailed enough that no one was supposed to die, having one of his greatest students actually die would have haunted him. However, in his mind, while struggling with grief and revenge, he would make himself believe that he was not at fault for his death in order to ease his twisted mind of the guilt and to focus completely on his revenge plot. Could they have conveyed that better, of course. However, his outburst of anger when he said that is making me think that he is just believing that lie so he doesn't have to feel guilty of killing one of his favorite students. And yes, I instinctually left the names out as I would butcher them and spell check wouldn't help me :)
I find what I've seen in good twist villans are that they dont actually begin as an antagonist towards the cast but are genuinely welcoming but its when the object of their desire is threatened they would do anything to keep it even turn against the protagonist. So in a sense it was a genuine ally turned bad rather than someone just pretending to be good.
You made so many good points in this. I do agree about Clayton except instead of CHANGING him, the jungle just EXPOSED who he always was. This idea that polite and refined society often leads and enables the most horrendous of us to hide their natures. Out in the wild, there is nothing for you to hide behind, you end up having to be brutally honest. Rourke is amazing because ya, we could always tell something was off about him and Helga. It was the turn of the others that got me so hard the first time. Ya you understood they were in for money but none of them came across as willing to hurt people to do so. So, seeing them initially willing to not just hurt but cause a full genocide hits you really hard. Silver is perfect but I'd phrase him more as a kind of twist hero? Like if you know the book or just pay attention you can tell he's one of the bad guys from the jump. The twist in my eyes is when he starts bonding with Jim and seeing that slowly change him, with the big 'twist moment' to me being him getting upset over the sabotage during the black hole. Even the others call him out on it and you see it in his face that he's kind of shocked himself too. I liked seeing him constantly questioning his actions after that point, building up to the final culmination of letting the treasure go for Jim. Sad thing is, a lot of these modern twist villains could work SO much better with some relatively minor changes to the narrative that don't involve rewriting the entire thing. I get frustrated cuz I can see the moments where they could build the twist up better and I just end up wondering why they seem to just ignore all the clear signs that it isn't gonna work the way they want without these changes.
I actually liked bellwether, but the hints with her was THAT she was being helpful, and the fact that Lionheart was trying to keep the predators from hurting anyone was standing in her way of making them look like a threat.
Granted it was a rather harsh switch in focus, but then I think the beauty of zootopia was the idea that things weren’t solved by switching the blame on people.
My take on how these twist villains were able to work is that their villainy didn't feel like an on/off switch, but more like a tool that they might use depending on the situation. Your money-making scheme is getting waylaid by someone getting the hots for a native? Ditch the dead weight and bring out the weapons, we've got looting to do. Some nosy outsider is disrupting your plans to take control? Get on their good side to make it easier to remove them when they're a threat, or even get them to help you instead.
I think bellwether would have been a pretty good twist villan if she was written and hinted at better. I think a politician villan that seems like they're helping when really thier on the other side for their own benefit is a really great concept fitting really well with Zootopia. I already like Zootopia but if bellwether was a better villan id like it a lot more.
Yeah, I personally liked that movie because it had good protagonists and a fun setting, but the villain was easily the weakest part. I spent some time awhile back writing fanfics, and I personally think I ended up creating way better villains
Because it doesn't feel like a sequel to cars at all yeah it's cool seeing cars as spies but half of it doesn't make sense and the story is bland and not very exciting
Ok. Bellwether makes perfect sense. Did you somehow miss that she was shit on by the mayor from her first appearance, emotionally and mentally abused? And she helped the main characters only when it helped expose the mayor's attempt to disappear the victims. Had Judy not figured out the night howlers later Bellwether would have gotten away with it. She is more insidious because she only helped them because, well because Judy was a prey animal, but because her investigation helped her pin it on the Mayor. It's genius. And I felt it was a good twist.
The problem I feel with Bellwether is that she has barely any presence. Yes, her motivations are there, even a later twist hinted at by the assassins being rams... but I feel like she should have been more visibly involved in the plot, even if that would have been difficult with all the traveling Judy and Nick had to do to solve the case. Maybe even having her escape instead of the whole police department showing up to arrest her would have been an option that improves the plot if follow ups were in consideration, because now there's a villain that grows as a threat just like the heroes grow as a counter. As it stands, Bellwether has too weak a presence to be a major villain, though definitely well shown reasons for why she does what she does.
The issue is that Bellweather has around 2 minutes of villain screentime to actually be a villain. Yes it's a good twist, no one saw it coming but that doesn't equal a good villain. Basically no presence and pretty boring to be honest. Again if they revealed her 2/3 of the way through instead of in the last 5 minutes it could have worked way better
I think Silver works because they show why his Bond with Jim is so important to both and it’s like an emotional gut punch to show someone so important to Jim, the Main Character, would do something as such.
Well Disney can make great villains again in series. Belos is the best villain since Frollo and they can make them relateable like in Amphibia and these also had twist but they have a twist surrounding the villain and not that it is a twist that they are the villain. Sorry for my bad english i am German
I'm sorry but Bellweather from Zootopia was done really well however the biggest problem with her is that *they were too subtle about her connections and hints.* In some scenes when Bellweather is working on her computer to help Judy, you can see some sticky notes with hints of her connection to Doug (related to the big bad thing happening in the film) it's just very, very subtle with the way they show her having these clues in open sight but don't bring attention to it.
No offense but you shouldn't have to have a spyglass in hand to see the clues that she's a twist villain. Plus she ruins the overall message of the film by effectively saying that the "animal racism" is entirely her doing and that it's all fixed when she's stopped.
She needed WAY more screentime for any of that to matter tbh. The way it was executed was basically like "do you remember this side character??? Well now she's actually EVIL"
@@error-try-again-later The zootopia that hit the screens was actually the second telling of the story, the first draft was very interesting which had judy as more of a villain than the protagonist, its really interesting how they first envisioned it. Still I have to agree with the OP I thought Bellweather fit the narrative well. every interaction she has throughout the story explains her motives and goals, she uses prejudice as a weapon and exploits it to make changes in society that she feels is right at the expense of those she views as abusers/oppressors. The same prejudice that damages judy's relationship with nick so deeply, one she has held since childhood and makes her reconsider why she even joined the ZPD in the first place. I thought it was better than how you described it, more like "you remember that little sheep character that the Mayor abused at every opportunity? who hated the status quo of society? Yeah turns out, despite her cheery personality, she actually snapped"
@@pierrebegley2746 that's the thing though, at no point did she single handedly cause the racism against predators, she just twisted it into something that helped her to get into power, over someone who's outwardly robust and commanding like Lionheart. The point is Racism can only be countered by people working together to go against it, so that people like Bellwether can't use it to gain power. As someone from a country where this happens pretty regularly, this hit very close.
I actually LIKED Hans as a twist villian. He is every bit as sheltered and frustrated by the strictures of royal life as Anna, and when the 2 of them fall in love at first sight like 2 virgins on X- tacy and when they decide they want to get married, I truly believe he is every bit as invested as Anna. At this point in the story, the most villianous thought in Hans mind is how advantageous marrying Queen Elsa's little sister would be, and the worst that would have happened is he'd have turned into an entitled douchebag once the honeymoon was over. Then Elsa says no to the wedding and almost immediately afterward is revealed as a terrifyingly powerful ice witch who freezes Arandel and flees off into the night. Anna then does a dumb thing: She leaves Hans in charge of running Arendel while she goes in search of Elsa, leaving Hans the de facto King of Arandel. Im sure he just couldn't WAIT to give that up, especially when Anna returns with a blonde Magic Mike XXX himbo in tow ....Forget "twist villiany", what else was he going to do?
He unnecessarily dragged things on. He went out of his way to continue the charade even when he didn't need to do so. How would he even know Anna would die?
Dude, waiting for the main characters to realize who the villain is can be so engaging. Season 1 of the show Invincible had me on the edge of my seat for this!
Really great video! I definitely agree with all the older twist villains working so well. I think part of the reason that modern Disney twist villains are very poorly written is because of how big Disney as a company has gotten, they own so many franchises, and have split up all their best writers among to many different projects, causing the writing of everything as a whole fall from every franchise they own.
No offence but I don't think John Silver was that much of a surprise as a twist villain if you notice him in the beginning through the window when the house went on fire. You could clearly see his eye and shadow of a mechanical arm. However I'm not saying that he's a bad character, I love his development and the movie 🤩
I think the failure of Incredibles 2 is that the main character, Mrs. Incredible, didn't have an arc. Mr. Incredible had clear growth in the first film and went from bottom to overinflated ego to failure to growth as a character. In the second movie Mrs. Incredible was just awesome the whole time and was never shown to learn anything or grow from her experience and become a better wife or mother or hero. Rae and other heroines have had this same treatment in modern Disney and the results speak for themselves.
Part of the reason she doesn’t have a development arc is because everything falls into place perfectly, due to all the results being manufactured behind the scenes by the villain. So on a meta level it makes sense, but I agree that for an audience it’s very disappointing and does not work.
Treasure island was my favorite childhood movie I watched it almost once a week as a child and still have the movie to this day so to see it come up was something really happy for me, because he is the villain but at the same time grew to be a father as well and it is undeniably one the best portrayals of how just because someone is cruel in some ways doesn't mean it extends to all parts of who they are.
Funny enough, I didn’t totally understand why people disliked modern villains. I agreed they weren’t as strong as they count be but I still didn’t totally disagree to the twist side….. until now, you’ve reminded me three of my favorite Disney villains… No modern Disney villain has given me chills like King Candy did when he first: revealed himself as turbo, and two: had a “boss level”. Seeing the Cybug transformation gave me goosebumps. No other villain had done that until we got De la Cruz.. Now, I entirely understand where Disney is failing as their villians
I'm going to go against the grain and say I liked Hans as a twist villain. If you listen to his conversations with Anna, the clues are there. He mentions he has several older brothers who disrespected him growing up. He wants power and respect. Being the youngest of so many brothers would mean that he wouldn't inherit the throne or a large allowance. Further, pay attention to his face during "Love is an Open Door", when he and Anna are sliding down the hall in their socks and duck behind a door to avoid being seen. Hans initially looks at Anna with a disgusted expression until she looks at him, then he neutralizes his face. By assuming a leadership role while Anna and Elsa were away, he established trust among the peasants and politicians, so when he lied about Anna's death, he would go unquestioned.
Hans could honestly have worked if they stuck to what he was doing, which was trying to protect ana to protect his line to the throne, and the fact killing Elsa would save ana makes the situation all the more convenient. Cause Hans doesn't have any claim on the Arendelle throne so he needs ana to survive, so he would definitely try the kiss, and upon it failing he would jump to the conclusion that Elsa needs to die to save ana and his opportunity to rule, so he'd order the execution for ana and Arendelle's sake. This would also motivate Hans to try to kill Elsa in the snowstorm.
Theres a scene where Hans is all alone and he looks wistfully after Anya with no dark intent in his eyes. This is a huge contradiction to the scene you described and clearly done so the audience wouldnt suspect Hans is evil. The movie took so much time trying to fool us into thinking Hans is a good guy all for a big stupid twist that it never bothered to establish his evil nature. It could have shown some of his backstory and some of his ego and pride, especially when leading elsa’s people aganist her. instead we got a charming prince acting as the hero for the majority of the movie only for him to flip full psycho and leave anya to freeze to death and attempt to chop off elsa’s head. Its a weird 360.
From a meta perspective I think it's really cool that hans is basically a mirror to whatever character he's with. He acts to meet their expectations to manipulate them and that's a cool detail that calls back to the original story. But I really wish there was more done in the narrative that explicitly showed his manipulations and greed for power and was more overt to the audience with the Kill Elsa In The Ice Castle plan
10:15 Thanks for showing, “Atlantis: The Lost Empire”, a lotta love; it definitely deserves it & it’s one of the few classic Disney movies where a live action remake would make sense.
One thing I never understood about Hans is… why tf would you leave Anna to die? She’s like you’re guaranteed entry to the throne, marry her and you’re golden. I think that scene would have been more impactful if he did try to kiss Anna to save her so he could marry her and take the throne, but it didn’t work. Then as Anna realises he never actually loved her he starts his monologue, having now resolved to plan B; leave the kingdom leaderless and then establish himself there through aid and garnering the public’s support. And of course, he will have no issue revealing all this in a lengthy monologue as he’s convinced Anna will die.
Bellweather as a twist villain did *NOT* come out of nowhere, they just built the mystery *properly* and didn't hit us over the head with hints like a hammer. I caught these hints on my first watch through, the major ones for me being 1) the "Doug" bad guy had his name and phone number on Bellweather's desk on a sticky note, 2) The henchmen were all rams or "sheep" like Bellweather, 3) She's being sh*t on by her boss, the lion, and MOST IMPORTANTLY 4) When there was that pushback against predators and our cinnamon roll Clawhouser gets taken off the front desk *they made a point* to have Clawhouser say his new office was "in the basement, next to the boiler room" AKA Bellweather's old office where she was stuffed out of sight when the previous predator mayor was in power. To me, as an audience member, that last one confirmed my suspicions because *they were deliberately giving us information linking Clawhouser's move to Bellweather.* (Also, while Bellweather is the antagonist in that she's manipulating things from the background, I'd say the greater "villain" of Zootopia is really societal issues/bigotry/etc. rather than a specific person, so having Bellweather be "defeated" so quickly doesn't take anything away for me. Cuz she wasn't the *true* villain of the story)
Top 3 reasons why they worked and what every twist villain needs to not be crap imo 1: Their motivation is understandable and doesn't come out of nowhere 2: They are given enough time that we can get to know them as characters 3: They don't become a completely different character after the reveal 3 being the most important Silver worked because even after the mutiny it's clear everything we saw of him up until then was still there, he maintained the same personality and clearly still cared for Jim Hans failed because we only saw him being the almost too good to be true prince with little to no indication as to his intentions and his character did a complete 180 at the end
Honestly, as a Treasure Island fan, I already knew where it was going with Long John Silver's character, but still, Jim's belief that he felt betrayed made my heart break when watching Silver lie to the pirates about going soft.
Well sowed values and motives are the necessity of a good twist villain. The clues are necessary to build towards how dark these characters really are, while also keeping in continuity and believability of a character turning
For twist villians to work well, it doesn't matter if the audience can mostly figure out what's going before the reveal, all that matters is the gut punch within the narrative, both from the twist itself, and all the little moments before hand where you can see the villian laying foundations, getting ideas, adapting to manipulate others, foreshadowing through a bit of seemly insignificant banter. Some of my favourite twist villians of all time in fiction are from Babylon 5. That show is a gold mine of well written twist villians if I ever did see one.
Honestly, one of the best twist villains of DreamWorks was Johaan, from the RTTE HTTYD show. We knew that character since the first show, he was always that fun, comic relief idiot, but when he was revealed to be a villain it was a shock. Not even the audience could've predicted that. He and Krogan working for Drago and manipulating both Viggo and Hiccup was done so GOOd. Viggo's redemption and character development might have been rushed, but it was pretty good, sad that they decided to kill him off.
I actually give a pass to bellwether because there aren’t hints from her directly but sometimes the things around her are hints. Like she has, I think it’s Doug’s number on a sticky note on her desk when they’re reviewing footage of traffic cams with her and little stuff like that. So while she herself isn’t directly giving us hints other stuff is idk, that’s just my opinion. I know she didn’t get a lot of screen time as a villain but tbh I think that’s another reason why I give her a pass because the most dangerous enemies we have are the ones we don’t always see, the ones who work behind the scenes. Idk I kinda like that idea, it shows a human aspect and that is that humans are creatures that can act kind while they do harm to others, which is something I don’t see a lot of movies or shows do. Idk that’s just me, to each their own
Rourke and John silver are actually two of my favorite villains in Disney history probably because Disney Atlantis and Treasure planet are some of the best Disney movies
I love Silver to pieces, but everything you said about Silver being a twist villain and why it was so shocking is wrong if you're going from an audience perspective. The movie tells us early on that Silver is the villain. We're warned of a cyborg, we're introduced to one cyborg, in his debut appearance after Jim leaves, we see his charming persona is a front, and shortly after, we hear him losing his temper at his crew and confirming that he is indeed the cyborg pirate Bones warned Jim about. This is all within the first 30ish minutes of the movie. The shocking twist for the audience isn't that Silver is the villain, the twist is that he both grew to care about Jim in spite of that and STILL goes through with his mutiny and pursuing his goal of obtaining the treasure from Treasure Planet.
the thing that annoys me about hans, is that he honeslty could have filled the villain role just fine without betraying ana, he could try the kiss, have it fail and then go ahead with the execution with the intent to save ana, and then try to kill elsa anyways, hans gets to come off as a misguided good guy instead of a terrible twist villain
It's the planting of small things early that makes a twist villain work (that and personality staying relatively the same). John Silver was one of my favourite characters because of how nuanced he was as a person. In a world of black and white people in children's movies, at the age of 7 I found him a breath of fresh air
In my opinion, Bellwether wasn't a good twist villain, but she was a solid villain. Like, her actions made sense. Her plan was fear. Dart predators and make them go savage. The issue was that they kept going missing. So she used a eager, gullible, rookie cop to do her dirty work for her. After all, if they remain missing, her plan won't work. And it would be far too suspicious if she found them (Or maybe she didn't know where they were, which would give another reason why she helped.) So, while her being a twist villain failed, her plan was solid and it actually worked. At least until the cop figured out what was happening and then things fell apart.
Adding to this, I have a feeling she didn't frame the mayor. Again, her plan was to dart predators as a fear tactics. It doesn't make sense for Bellwether and the mayor to be in cahoots. Odds are, they had no idea what the other was doing. I think Lionheart actually was doing his best to understand what was happening and fix it. Which made him look bad when the animals were found.
Regarding Frozen, alot of the issues with the story of that movie is due to the major story rewrite that happened because Elsa was originally the villain. It possible that Hans 'Odd' behaviour was due to them just chancing his ending rather then chancing his entire story.
In Disney films prior to 2001, twist villains are extremely rare, but I can think of a few "semi-villains" and "temporary villains." Almost everyone in DUMBO, for example, is effectively a villain for bullying the title character: the other elephants, the clowns, Max the ringmaster, and arguably even the crows at first. To that list you could add Tinker Bell in PETER PAN, Aunt Sarah in LADY AND THE TRAMP, Sir Ector and Sir Kay in THE SWORD IN THE STONE, George Banks in MARY POPPINS, King Louie in THE JUNGLE BOOK, and pretty much all of Halloweentown in THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS. Of course, all of these characters either don't realize they're doing anything wrong, experience heel-face turns, or were never anything more than a nuisance.
I'd classify them more as antagonists then straight up villains, sure they were not very nice to the main character but they weren't straight up malicious like trying to kill them or anything. Antagonists are just there to terrorize or put down the main characters (think of a high school bully) so the audience sympathizes with said character, those types of characters don't go over the top and have some sentiment of morals. Villains on the other hand are the complete opposite, will be willing to go over the top in order to get what they want, they are those with more malicious and wicked intentions who are treated as obstacles that the main character must overcome (think of more among the lines of an evil dictator controlling the people in their city)
Rourke (Atlantis) also works as the twist villains for adults taking their kids to see the movie at the time. The voice actor always played the kind, reliable friend/love interest in his films. He's the senior version of Ryan Gosling from The Notebook
You know it's so funny because those infamous 3 could have been fixed with a few extra shots where we should be able to see their face. Like let's just imagine a scene where Hans before proposing shows his back to Anna, but is facing us the viewers. Make him have a suspicious facial expression before he turns and returns to his acting towards Anna, he proposes and voila. You now know he is up to something. Anna is not aware so to her he is a twist villain, but viewers are on edge and waiting for when he strikes (anticipatory suspense) Or not even that, when he was dunked with the boat, make him have an annoyed expression rather than a love-struck. You could argue that everyone would be annoyed by a dunking, but later on when he approaches Anna it can be up in the air 50/50 if he is genuine or playing a part.
The worst part about Bellwether is that she's a villain. The movie was meant to be an allegory about racism, and there isn't just one person behind racism
I get the rushed romance between Hans and Anna was put in there to make Hans seem kinda sus, but the scene where he smiled at her from under that boat gave me every indication that they switched him over to villain at the last minute without a very good set up.
When I was in film school, the screenwriting professor drilled into our heads that films were stories about growth. It didn't matter how short the script, the main character needed to undergo some sort of change. I think the good twist villains _don't_ do this. I think Rourke is the best example of this. He and Milo are both treasure hunters, but while Milo's motivation changes from wanting to realize his grandfather's dream to wanting to save Atlantis, Rourke is stagnant. He wants a paycheck from the museum, and he doesn't care if a civilization is destroyed in the process.
If you really think about it, twist villains like Hans or Assistant Mayor Bellwether actually exist in real life. There are people like Hans who look like they genuinely care for the person they're with, and even the person with them believes that their romantic interest genuinely cares about them, but then suddenly their true colors are revealed. My aunt's ex-husband genuinely cared about her, but out of nowhere, he started physically, emotionally, and sexually abusing her after they got married. Twist villains in real life aren't always going to have subtle signs that they're actually villains and many could be just like Assistant Mayor Bellwether. Twist villains in real life hide their true intentions from everyone who only sees their generosity and only reveal themselves to be villains when they have everyone completely fooled. When I fist saw Frozen during opening weekend back in 2013, I had a gut feeling that Hans was secretly a villain even though I knew nothing about the movie at the time other than commercials for it. Still, when Hans revealed himself as a villain, I was the only one in the theater who wasn't at all surprised. When everyone else gasped, I thought, "I knew it!" The same thing happened to me when I first saw Zootopia. While I didn't see that movie in theaters, the first time I saw the movie, I somehow knew that the main sheep was the villain. If twist villains in real life like Hans and Assistant Mayor Bellwether are acceptable in real life, then why are twist villains like them a problem in works of fiction?
Think they were reminded of Frollo and tried to give Hans and Bellwether the same creepy aura of people like them existing in the real life and fail at doing so since their not so great twists distracted the audiences from that (some people here like them tho and idk why).
@@1992disney as I pointed out with my reaction towards Hans being a villain, some people just have a gut instinct about these things. Sometimes people just have a feeling that a fictional character is a villain even if there aren't any obvious or subtle signs of that being the case. It may not excuse bad writing, but it does teach the audience that not everyone is who they seem to be. It shows the audience fictional examples of how people appear to be in real life. I'm not excusing bad writing, just giving my opinion on why Disney may have gone in the direction they did with some of their twist villains.
Because fiction, when you present it to the reader, has to be at least somewhat believable and have the story beats be connected. "Muh real life" doesn't work when you want the reader to get invested in these _specific_ character's lives. They'll inevitably want to know the what's and why's, and "just because" isn't a compelling answer to those questions (unless you've specifically written them to be chaotic or something.) Even in real life, if you followed those deceptive people around like an invisible camera, you'd be able to see SOME clues about their true nature whenever they were comfortable enough. Pulling it out of thin air isn't brilliant, it's just lazy.
The thing about Atlantis's twist villain its a reference to Kurt Russell's O'Neal from Stargate. Unlike O'Neal, Rourke is blinded by greed as opposed to grief. In O'Neal's twist he wanted to destroy the gate so earth couldn't be invaded by the Go'uld( using the SG1 name) but after The big bad finds the bomb O'Neal takes charge and with his team and the natives take on the Go'uld and overthrow him. There is a point why Milo Thatch looks like Daniel Jackson from Stargate and why they picked Tommy Lee Jones to be Rourke.
Disagree on Bellwhether a bit. Her reveal was lackluster, but they did lead up to it in a very subtle way. She WANTED Judy to find the Mayor’s facilities so he would take the fall. She helped the main characters because it got the major out of the picture and put her in charge instead, and put Judy - a prey animal - at the forefront of law enforcement. Prey animals then had political and police controlled. That was her plan
Fun fact: One of my former co-workers was watching Frozen with her nephew (7 years old). He said after “Love Is An Open Door” that Hans was the villain because “He wasn’t going to say sandwiches”. What was supposed to be a one-off joke line was enough for a child to determine that he was lying and would be the villain. I definitely didn’t pick up on this. Just shows how amazing the mind of a child can be. But while I’m talking about Hans, I give him a little bit of slack because there seems to be evidence of Elsa being the originally planned villain (and that it was changed to keep her image clean). Doesn’t excuse how lackluster he was. But I’m not as harsh on him as other twist villains.
Yeah, There does exist earlier concept art even during the earlier stages of adapting the Snow Queen to screen that dates back to the 1940's that they were going to have it follow the Hans Christian Andersen's story before later into the height of the Disney Renaissance and then the early 2000's were when other attempts failed. Even from what snippets were when Frozen was being developed Elsa was the villain and Hans was good but when "Let It Go" was made it was shifted that Elsa ended up sympathetic and Hans then the bad guy.
I feel like the main reason why King Candy/Turbo works so well is due to the fact that the twist behind it isn't that the good guy was evil all along, but rather The identity of a villan is the main twist of the character and the fact that King Candy was a jerk from the very start and right at the very end, so he has more than enough time for being the villan
To be fair, King Candy did get progressively darker as the story progressed. He started off as a selfish but comical jerk and slowly transitioned into a psychopathic murderer until he was revealed to be Turbo. Alan Tudyk (King Candy/Turbo's voice actor) was actually surprised at how progressively dark the character became throughout the film's development.
But yes, King Candy was pretty much bad from the get-go so he's not a twist villain in the traditional sense.
@@CriticalMaster95 that's what makes him unique compare to other 2010s Disney villans
@@CriticalMaster95he's a twist villain in that he's even more evil than we initially thought
@@CriticalMaster95 Fun Fact: King Candy's voice is based on the Mad Hatter from Alice and Wonder Land.
Reminds me of Judge Doom's reveal at the end of Roger Rabbit, in that we can tell both of them are evil or untrustworthy, but their true identities serve as the REAL twists at the end of their respective films. King Candy is actually Turbo, and Judge Doom is not only a Toon, but the Toon that murdered Eddie's brother.
What's genius about Rourke's character is that he isn't really a twist villain. When Milo meets with him and the crew, he has this puffed up vision of science, discovery, and fun adventure. He assumes the best in everyone and we warm up to the crew as Milo finally starts to befriend them. But even when they become friends, it doesn't change that Milo doesn't really know them. Rourke and the crew already have a previous history of camaraderie and stealing: They were ALWAYS going to try and steal the Heart of Atlantis. It's not that they are twist villains. They were ALWAYS villains, but Milo just never caught on.
The crew was also very open with Milo about their motivations. When he asked them why they were on the mission, all of them said "money". They were never hiding anything from him. Even Rourke treated the whole mission as a professional endeavour first and a thrilling adventure second. He never pretended that he had any motivation besides getting paid.
Saying they always had plans to steal the heart may be a little extreme because A) they had no real idea of what they were going to take only that it was “big shiny and gonna make them all rich”. And B) they didn’t expect anyone to still be alive down in Atlantis so would their act still have been considered a crime if their was no one to steal down their.
To them this was all just a job for them with added complications of the living Atlantians.
@@lunerblade13 I guess they had an idea for the Diary that the ruins conserved a relic so valuable that make it worth several fortunes on it's own, as you said: no idea that was, no idea were living people
Well said 👏
o.o
The weird thing is, Hans could've worked.
He shows genuine care and concern for the townspeople of Arendelle. He's shown doing his part to keep the peace and calm down the turmoil while Anna is away. He sees firsthand several times just what Elsa is capable of.
Have Hans fall for the same paranoia that the others do. That he legitimately grows to believe that Elsa is a threat to the people of her home, and that the only way to save Arendelle is to kill Elsa. Combined with the realization that Anna would never let them do that to her sister, he makes the wrong decision. Out of fear, he decides that to save Arendelle, he has to let Anna, who he truly does love, freeze and Elsa die so that he can protect the nation from its own princesses. He shows the full extent of what fearmongering and paranoia can do to people, and his compromised judgment leads him to abandon the girl he genuinely fell in love with to a terrible fate. It's a powerful lesson to Elsa that making drastic, rash decisions out of fear is dangerous and hurts others.
It would play very well into the theme of Elsa being frightened of her own potential, and for an even more powerful moment when Anna sacrifices everything to save her sister from Hans. It validates the seemingly genuinely friendly and caring persona he carries throughout 3/4 of the movie, it validates his efforts to honor Anna's request to protect her home while she's gone, and it gives the movie a "villain" without making it some stupid twist of "awktually i was the evils the whole time huehue". He becomes the antagonist out of circumstance and fear, not because he showed up with evil intent from the start.
All they had to do to make a "twist" villain work was just pay attention to the themes they were putting across in the writing and, you know, actually make use of them.
Heck you could also just make it clear that he only likes Anna because she is a princess, but otherwise he seems somewhat okay. So when he goes from 'im just trying to marry into royalty' to 'yeah im killing you fuckers and putting myself on the throne' it can still be dramatic and a bit of a twist.
Ooh, this is good!
I love this twist. And hey, Nimona kinda got that with its message and the villain even though she was revealed midpoint in the movie.
That would have been so much better!
You better be listening, Disney! And if you are, I actually hope you're feeling ashamed of yourself!
Yeah.
It’d make more sense to show that he does actually love Anna, but slowly has become so blinded and corrupted by the fear that surrounds him and his promise to protect Arendelle, that he begins to think that killing Elsa and Anna is the safest bet to end the Winter, even if he doesn’t have any confirmation that Elsa’s death would end Winter, than just “I’m EvIl NoW!!1!”
Silver works not only as a sympathetic/twist villain, but as a completely morally grey character - and I really can't think of any other Disney character as grey as Silver (let me know if you can think of one!).
It goes without saying that Silver is an all-around lovable villain, but the film doesn't go all the way to claim that he has a heart of gold. It actually leaves Silver's morality cleverly ambiguous. Throughout the film, he doesn't do anything unforgivably evil - but only because the plot doesn't let him. As a result, there are several scenes where you don't know what Silver would have done. Would he actually have pulled the trigger on Amelia and Delbert, if Jim had refused him the map? (While he most certainly loves Jim, there's no indication that he cares about anyone else.) What would he have done if Flint's ship hadn't tipped over before he could reach Jim in the finale? He was approaching him pretty menacingly, and you don't know just how blinded he was by his greed in that moment (if the book is anything to go by, it would have been looking very grim for Jim). At the same time, you're free to assume that Silver's bark is worse than his bite, and he wouldn't have overstepped the line even if the plot had let him. In terms of morality, he's completely unfathomable.
I honestly wish Disney would experiment with its villains more - there's a whole world between the irredeemable monster and the flimsy misunderstood bad boy with a heart of gold. Silver is the perfect example. Sympathetic villains don't have to be toothless and tame from the beginning in order to be available for a redemption arc (Silver revels in his villainy from start to finish, except when it comes to Jim), and nor does a sympathetic villain require a sob story to explain their character (for all you know, Silver is a pirate because he damn well loves it, and that's all you need). Your sympathetic villain doesn't have to be a tortured soul. He can just be an all-around nice person with a great sense of humour. Who just happens to be a swashbuckler.
By the end of the movie, you could say that Silver had a heart of silver.
If I had to guess, I would say that Silver's youth was similar to Jim's and that is why Silver took to Jim. He saw himself in Jim.
Ironic that silver is a grey color
o.o
This analysis of Silver is top tier, he's one of my favourite villains of all time!
@@charlessapp1835 Thank you for making the "heart of silver" pun, I was trying so hard to avoid it XD I think Silver's great strength, which he helps Jim to learn, is being true to himself. He pursues his goal regardless of whether the world approves or disapproves. Jim's initial complex is his urge to provoke by doing the opposite of whatever is considered good or respectable, even if it's to his own detriment - Silver, meanwhile, has no need to provoke, because what the world thinks is perfectly irrelevant to him. In the end, he just sets his priorities straight - just like Jim.
I think King Candy worked so well for several reasons
1. We always kinda knew he was up to something, unless he managed to fool you like he fooled Ralph for a short moment, but we didn't really get it confirmed he was evil until later on in the movie.
2. He has layers of twists. First he's racist against glitches, then he's actually just trying to protect her, but actually he lied and he's the whole reason Vanellope is a glitch, then he's Turbo, then we find out Vanellope was the original ruler so he took over the game from her.
3. His design doesn't fit in with the other racers when you actually look at them
If you listen to the announcer naming off the racers you'll notice that when he says King Candy's name it sounds a little more strained than the others, like Turbo is trying to mimic his voice.
It would be an interesting little piece if one of the human gamers had said “Oh, we don’t have him at my arcade” or “I’ve never seen him before”
Just a nod to the random racer roster as well as a tiny note that this machine is unique
I think it adds that people kept talking about turbo, and it seems like it’s just a warning for rogue characters but then you find out that it’s king candy especially since he was a racer
@@Aardydarling Chekhov’s Gun
I am a little embarrassed to admit that I did fall for King Candy's lie about Vanellopes potential fate.
I think that a subtle, but a good hint of his nature was how he quickly changes the subject as Ralph mocks him for having a pink castle(with King Candy saying it's "salmon")as the pink and white design matches Vanellopes princess dress.
"Cool motive, Still Murder" i think is a great rule of thumb in this era lately of fandom completely pushing for irredeemable villains. Lately people forget you can totally make a villain's *situation* sympathetic (even in a selfish way you'd never admit to in public) while still making the *execution* of whatever choices they made to fix those things completely distasteful and needing to be stopped.
People tend to forget that you can definitely empathize with a villain, but will never sympathize with them.
We can get why they are doing what they are doing, but that never excuses their actions.
Mr. Freeze being an example of it whenever he isn't being too flanderized. He's been a member of multiple supervillain groups, killed countless people, and even worked with Black Mask but we still know WHY he does it being extremely depressing with Nora. It doesn't help that every time Nora was cured or saved she turned out to be genuinely evil or much worse than him
Lmao that B99 quote
Does Thanos count here? He wanted to solve universal overpopulation because he saw what it did to his planet, but obviously his method of doing so is horrific.
@@real_abender His motive is only that benevolent in the MCU for the most part, he genuinely wants to cause as much death as possible because he got one-upped both by doctor doom and deadpool in his girlfriend Death's eyes
King Candy/Turbo's reveal was so good because up till his reveal, even when you THINK you already know he's the villain, his *reasoning* for doing the 'villainous' actions he does (forbid Vanollepe from racing, etc) actually MAKES SENSE when he explains it to Ralph; If she races, the game glitches on the player and the game gets unplugged, killing the game and herself. And yet even when he shows his true colors of how evil he is, he gives another whiplash by revealing he was Turbo the whole time that used coding to hide himself in plain sight.
ON TOP OF THAT, once you think he'd dead eaten by the cybug, he comes back in a 'final boss level' face off in his own virus form, which was animated so creepily and flawless, toying with Ralph and Vanollepe's lives that just showed off just how merciless and evil he really is.
Something I find interesting about Turbo's fake-out death scene at the hands of the Cybug is that the rest of the arcade didn't know if Turbo was still alive untill he was revealed in the race against Penelope, if I remember right he was assumed to have died in one of the two unplugged games. Him "dying" again at the hands of the Cybug is fitting as the Cybugs mirror turbo a bit.
Like Turbo, the first Cybug seemingly died at the start of the movie after Ralph crash lands in Sugar Rush, and like Turbo the Cybugs end up resurfacing later significantly less dead than initially thought. They're both invasive elements that care little about where they end up and how their actions affect others, both complete their objectives without everyone else being the wiser, Turbo altering the game's code and the Cybugs growing their numbers underground. The fact that he later calls himself "the most powerful virus in the arcade" makes me think that he's realized how similarly destructive he and the Cybugs are.
It's so refreshing seeing someone acknowledging that twist villains aren't inherently bad, and can be done in interesting ways.
Personally, Belleweather could've worked, simply by showing small acts of silent defiance; glaring hatred at the Mayor, before returning to her 'sunny personality' to the main characters, who hired her simply for a vote, and still treats her like dirt and leaves all the work to her! Small things that tell the audience there's SOMETHING wrong with her, but they never did! Even evidence of sheep hoofprints would've worked. Not made sense at first, but it would've worked! ^^
These are in the movie. They don't have hoofprints. They go further; a sticky note with her name and cellphone on it. She does explain her resentment to the mayor. Her entire hatred of "predator" animals is because the mayor just can't get her name right. And that sticky note isn't the only smoking gun. You have to rewatch the entire movie to notice she's been pulling the strings the entire time.
Zootopia isn't even part of my top Disney movies, hardly so, but I caught all these on the first watch through. That's why the Nighthowler associates are rams. They're animals Bellweather "trusts".
I pine for the days when Disney knew how to write scripts but I hate to tell you this... THIS SHIT AIN'T IT.
They needed her to crack before the reveal. Even if it isn’t “glaring hatred” it needs to be some kind of visible stress or tiredness. Like her terrible office with her mug that says #1 Dad crossed out to say “Assistant Mayor” she needed to take a breath for composure or something there. Like she’s actively fighting to keep her sunny disposition up, rather than that being her personality by default.
Or just a hint that she knows what's going on in the city beyond some side character-tier exposition.
@@finalfroggitapproaches6418 Agreed, I'd probably had her mask slip slightly and have a moment where she gets genuinely angry in private with Judy (although nothing outright anti-predator just "I have a terrible boss" anger) before calming down or Judy comforting her. Basically a moment which the audience can interpret as an abused employee justifiably venting for a second.
You literally see the phone number for the other sheep villain on her desk.
I just want to point out, it wasn't Disney who came up with the twist for Long John Silver, it was RL Stevenson - that's exactly how he's written in the original Treasure Island, he's an ambiguous villain who you can never decide is completely good or completely bad.
The book, and character within, are not identical.
I haven't gotten the chance to read Treasure Island, but I heard that there are some big differences that go beyond "but in space".
@@LloydTheZephyrianI mean, in the movie Silver is more likable just in general. In the books, silver is a much more complex and complicated character that you actually feel pretty conflicted about until about the very end. In the end you like him just as much, it’s just a roller coaster of a journey instead of being such an easy change.
For reference, Silver is my favorite villain I’ve ever seen or read and has such an enjoyable character arc.
Every time twist villains get brought up I think of a thousand different ways Hans could have been done better. Like for example, what if he kisses Anna but that doesn’t break the curse, they realize that they can’t be in love because they’ve known each other for two days, but he still really cares about her so decides to try and save her by killing Elsa, and THAT’S how he goes villain without fundamentally changing into a completely different character. Maybe he reluctantly teams up with the Duke to try and save the girl, y’know. Idk, all this goes to show once again how amazing Treasure Planet and Atlantis are. Silver is still my all time favorite Disney villain.
Hans is still a good guy, just misguided, that's a great way to run a villain.
That's how it should've been.
I actually like the idea of him being a villian, because his backstory (that isn't even in the movie...) shows us he has a lot of brothers and the attention was never given to him, so he wasn't *ever* intended to gain power. I can see why someone line him would want to make a name for himself, specially when his own family bullied him and he hadn't ever experienced love, here's the thing though: they didn't do it right. I think that he could have worked right as a morally grey character, like this: he _does_ care about Anna, he wanted to convince himself it was for power, but that wasn't completely right, so now he was confused and had to make a choice: gain the power for himself by betraying her?, or listening to his heart and not betraying the only person that showed him care?
Idk, i just like his backstory and i think he could've been a complex character.
@@kittypeanut4102 I agree completely! The version of Hans you described is so juicy, I wish I had seen that in the movie instead! Like I said, there are SO MANY WAYS they could have done him right, and full villain is another great example. It’s like Disney tried to have their cake and eat it too.
@@QilleWolf yeah, what they did to him wasn't it, they just wanted the shock factor and that left us with a character with wasted potential
I had always thought of two better ways they could have taken Hans:
1. Hans is not a twist villain and actually wanted to save Anna, but the realization is that their love is actually only at a very superficial level (which was already hinted at pretty well in their duet song together) and so a kiss failed, and they would need to find something else to cure her. It would also fit better with that part of the movie's messaging/theme of "you can't marry someone you only just met" and eventually Anna could've found out she has better chemistry with Kristoff anyway.
2. Hans is a twist villain and only joined the mission to bring back Elsa so that he could deliberately sabotage it. Attempt to have Elsa killed in her ice palace and either have it framed as an "accident" or convince the rest of the kingdom that she had truly become a monster and couldn't be stopped, and Anna would be crowned as queen instead. By this point the audience at least knows that Hans is the villain(whether or not it takes time for the rest of the characters to catch on) and had enough time to do villainish things, and it still fits in with Hans' motive of having his own kingdom regardless of any means possible. Though of course his plans inevitably fail, Elsa survives somehow and Hans is caught and dealt with.
Though seriously, Disney could have pretty much done anything with just some effort and it probably would've been better.
3. Hans only became villainous at the exact moment the magical trolls sang "Get the fiancé out of the way and the whole thing will be fixed!"
@@lotsofspots so the trolls did it, knew we couldn't trust them.
I would have preferred hans just focused on saving ana and by extension his opportunity to be king, the fact executing elsa meets both criteria is just bonus points.
Woah buddy thats a lot of comment
"Attempt to have Elsa killed in her ice palace and either have it framed as an accident" is literally what he did :-) Like, he looked towards the to the ceiling as he ran towards the one shooting at Elsa and then aimed the crossbow towards the chandelier hanging above, which then fell down on top of Elsa. Unfortunately Disney was so focused on surprising the audience, that you literally have to go frame-by-frame to see it :-)
I don't think Silver was a villain per se. Like Severus Snape, he's too complex to categorize. We know he's not a hero, because he's a criminal who robs and plunders but he's not a villain either, because he's kind and merciful.
However, it's suggested that Silver was never a true pirate, but simply obsessed with treasure to the point where he operates outside the law. And his bloodthirst is only a facade to keep the pirates from killing him.
His redemption stems primarily from seeing himself in Jim, a delinquent who needs guidance. Bonding with him made him see where his obsession has led him and he can't bear seeing Jim making the same mistake. Which sets up his epiphany where he sees that there are some things worth more than an entire planet of gold and jewels.
I'm frankly amazed how they were able to craft such a complex character with such a simple villain motivation and with absolutely no "tragic backstory". I would say Silver _is_ a "true" pirate, simply because he's driven by greed and adventure and doesn't mind deceiving and endangering honest people in the process. However, he's not sadistic like Scroop - he doesn't enjoy killing or hurting people for the sake of it, he just doesn't mind doing so if it clears his path to the treasure (in all fairness, you don't really know how Silver feels about killing or hurting people other than Jim).
I absolutely agree about him realising his obsession for what it is - and it's so ironic considering his advice to Jim. Silver learns NOT to stick to it, no matter the squalls - he changes course with the wind.
@@thesardonicpig3835 I mean, he saved Morph's life, which implies that he is merciful.
@@vetarlittorf1807 Completely forgot about Morph! Yes, he's definitely shown to have a strong nurturing side. He just picks the people he cares about. That also agrees pretty well with the book, where Morph is a parrot and Silver also has a wife he goes back to in the end.
Have you ever heard of Stevenson's Treasure Island?
Characters like that are why we have "anti-hero" and "anti-villain."
Those terms describe characters who lean one way or the other, but aren't within the area enough to be hero or villain.
I feel like we need to clarify the difference between a villain who _is a twist_ and a villain who _contains_ a twist.
The difference between "Woah, Hans is the bad guy??" And "Woah, King Candy is the bad guy but that was kind of obvious but WOAH HE'S ALSO TURBO???"
I see Atlantis and Treasure Planet in the thumbnail I click. In all seriousness though I think the decline of twist villains is just a symptom of Disney losing faith in their villains in general, like it was the next step in their plan to get rid of villains altogether. First they did twist villain pretty well, then they did these villains badly then they made the villain be generational trauma. I'm not saying that classic Disney villains are the way to go for every story out there, different stories require different villains, some stories can only be told with generational trauma and some only with a complete monster for a villain, but Disney seems really resistant to create classic villains even if it's detrimental to the story. I know it's been talked about to death (heh) but Puss in Boots The Last Wish managed to juggle three different types of villain in the story perfectly, so Disney really has no excuse.
You know what I don't like? They took Cruella.. and made her some kinda anti-hero, which just means the modern Cruella can not connect to the crazed dog murderer of the past.. they legit took a classic villain and de-villain-ified her
Look I’m all for the villain being sympathetic or evil or even psychological like generational trauma as long as its written well. Problem is that it isn’t. Disney has gotten lazy, they know their animated films will make millions even if the writing is lackluster. Just pour the budget into the visuals and animation and call it a day. But releasing mediocre film after mediocre film slowly deteriorates their brand. Now their animation is taking a hit, just look at Elemental and Wish, they’re not even released yet and they look dated compared to the last wish, arcane, and into the spiderverse.
I just think writers and directors just got dumb😢😅
Treasure Planet is so goddamn underrated and it had an enormous effect on me and my taste in fiction. It's always good to see people talk about it.
I'm glad that it flies under the radar. Imagine how awful treasure planet would be now.
There seems to be three qualities that every decent twist villain seems to possess at least one of:
1) A thematically fulfilling emotional arc from spending so much time with the protagonists. (Ex: Treasure Planet)
2) The satisfying recontextualization of a piece of info that also explains the villain's motivation. (Ex: Wreck-It Ralph)
3) An effective critique of the real-world inspiration behind the story's genre conventions. Peeling back the romanticization to show an unpleasant reality (Ex: Atlantis)
8:20 Yeah! The Duke of Weaselton from Frozen was a suspect being the villain of Frozen because he wanted to kill Elsa because of her dangerous ice powers. But in the end, he really didn't do anything wrong
The Duke was also upset when Hans lied about Anna being killed by Elsa's powers. His immediate response was "her own sister!" which was consistent with his belief that Elsa was a danger to anybody around her. The Duke was a bumbling idiot but he wasn't evil.
True. I do like the twist villains that work. The bad and forced twist villains make movies worse.
That's just it though, the twist villains who are bad and forced in movies actually exist in real life. In my opinion, Disney is showing us that there are all different kinds of villains in real life. There's the obvious villains, the villains who give subtle hints that they're villains, and then there's the villains who genuinely care about the people they're with only to reveal their true nature completely out of nowhere.
@@nerinablais6623 pulling shit out of thin air isn't the same as tricking or manipulating the audience. It's just lazy writing. If you followed those "subtle" bad people around, you'd see cracks in their facade sooner or later.
If the villain has enough screentime for their twist to even matter in the first place, their transformation shouldn't come without foreshadowing.
i actually attended a lecture a few years ago by Randy Haycock, the lead animator for Clayton in Tarzan. He was joking because it was a great white hunter stereotype with a pencil mustache and the loudest gun in the story; does that really count as a twist villain? To that end, he decided to just have fun with animating him. If you're wondering why he looks plain NUTS half of his frames, that's why.
I’m a bit surprised you didn’t include nor mentioned Bowler Hat Guy (Michael "Goob" Yagoobian) from Meet The Robinsons in the video.
I’d say his backstory and him being a future version of Goob who didn’t let go of the past after loosing the Winning catch, was a well done twist and I say he’s one of Disney’s best Twist Villains alongside King Candy.
I also forgot to mention about DOR-15 (Doris) the Robot Bowler Hat, cause when you first saw "her" we thought she was the smart intelligent robot Sidekick to Bowler Hat Guy, until in the final act, DOR-15 was the true evil mastermind.
We stan Bowler Hat Goob in this house
I love Goob, gotta be the best character in the movie
"Sometimes you give up a few things... Chasing a dream"
This quote from Silver in "Treasure Planet" always sticks with me. When he says it, he is directly referencing his cyborg implants. There's a kind of ambiguity about it as well- did he get those parts because of catastrophic injury or because he felt willingly that he needed to sacrifice his own body? As the story progresses you realize the quote refers to more than his implants. He's talking about surrendering any noble part of him that he used to be for the sake of his raw ambition. This informs the internal battle he has over how to treat Jim, at first keeping him at arms length and being cold, but succumbing to the fact that Jim represents the person he used to be, and he doesn't want to be responsible for making Jim into the kind of man he became. Eventually he gives up everything he had sacrificed for because he saw a chance to set things right with Jim.
Disney: Villains needs to be reliable nowadays.
Dreamworks: So anyway, in this movie, Death is a cheating bastard who wants to kill the hero out of spite, also the other main villain just want absolute power because he was slightly wronged as a child and decided to become the fattest bastard the world as ever known. And he fucking enjoys it.
and goldilocks just wants a real family, at the expense of the one she already has.
You could almost phrase the last wish as an insult to Disney's villain writing style.
Goldilocks is the sympathetic antagonist done well.
@@andrewgreeb916 A move 2000's Dreamworks would be all over.
Years ago when I first watched Atlantis, Rourke's evil twist legitimately shocked me. Most villains at that time were fairly obvious from the get go, but Rourke? The man was a kind caring leader who respected and valued his team, and out of nowhere becomes a cold monster because of how little he thinks of the Atlanteans and Milo's attachment to them. He also accurately sums up how this is just archaeology, at the end of the day. "Return every artifact, and you're left with an empty building." And his demise was even more shocking. I was not prepared for the horrific way he died by the Crystal's power.
In a way he is one of the most shocking and eerie due to him seeming a decent person yet not caring for the "commodities" like so many people in real life
I think it was so shocking because it was disney. You don't expect a betrayal like that in disney. If it was a live action film it would have been obvious to everyone, but in atlantis, the intended audiance is kids, who are like Milo, and only the parents would suspect Rourke from the get go due to their life experience. Maybe not even them
I am a simple girl. I see Silver- I click.
But yeah Silver is a twist bc during their growth and character development you start to forget/hope that he’s not the villain. The same way Jim does. And so when he does ACTUALLY betray Jim and (unknowingly) in front of him, we feel the same hurt as Jim.
I think the reason why Rourke works so well as a twist villain is the fact that initially, you don't think there is going to be a villain at all. The first half of the movie is entirely obstacle based with major threats in the sub, fireflies, and everything else. There were other avenues available that could have led to a huge climax without the reveal that he was evil. As for Silver, I think the big fact that makes that twist work is the fact that he is heavily hinted at being the villain as soon as you meet him. You know the bad guy is a cyborg, and there were no other cyborgs around. The twist isn't really that he is the villain, it's that you don't want anything bad to happen to the villain after you meet him.
King Candy was already the main antagonist for Vanellope’s narrative, but then the twist was that he was actually Turbo, Ralph’s narrative foil (another video game character who was discontent with his home game and jumped games for selfish reasons). But whereas Turbo was the hero in his game but then became the villain, Ralph was the bad guy who learned he can be heroic in his own way.
What I like about Silver is that they didn't try to hide the twist. We knew from the start that he was a traitor, but the interesting part was Jim finding out about it and confronting him.
Waternoose is made better by the fact that he's *only* do it to save the company - not because he has a personal vendetta against anyone. You can see that in the scene where he talks to Randall and says "Because of you, I had to banish my top scarer!" in an annoyed tone. Sully was literally the cash cow of the company. He knows that and is just damn near praying Randall's invention works.
But when you compare that to Callahan from Big Hero 6, he lets Tadashi die by destroying the building for no reason, doesn't give a shit about it (even though he was the prize student), and makes some dumbass convoluted plan to use the microbots to get back at the big company guy for an accident said company guy felt empathetic for - he didn't want to strand or kill the daughter, but it just happened by accident partially due to him rushing the safety check.
i haven't seen either film in years so i'm sure i'm missing some points, but it's a good contrast between the old and new types of disney villains.
As a Treasure Planet fan i was overjoyed for you to talk about silver, but yeah the twist is he starting to care for jim, you get the vibe of a boy who never had a dad, and a man who started to love someone other than him, and you see how hard it is for both of them when the twist happens
The Hans twist wasn’t seen from a mile away by me… but, rather, by my mom. She spent her youth reading all the cheesy dollar store romance novels my aunt bought, and she said that his whole premise was a very common villain setup in those kinds of stories.
The reason simplified: They were built up.
While I do agree with you by and large, I think Zootopia actually nailed its villainous reveal. The movie wasn’t an action flick, but a detective one. While we only get the twist at the end for mayor Bellwether, her motivations are slowly unveiled alongside clues and the general themes of the story. Her motivations are very closely tied to her actions/crimes, and we see our pair of detectives slowly uncover all the rot and biases within their beloved city. We see how both the prejudice against predators and the fear of herbivores effect various people in differing ways. And all of these clues and themes come together to point at the person with motive, ability and opportunity to pull off such a big scheme: the mayor’s aide, recently promoted to mayor. Heck, Judy being supported by Bellwether fits right in with all of her motivations, she just didn’t understand that Judy wanted to live with the predators (instead of merely dealing with the system where they are in charge like Bellwether). Bellwether actually wanted Judy as an ally and confidant, hence why her going overly menacing at the reveal hit harder. But you are right, if Zootopia weren’t a detective movie, the last minute reveal of the villain would have been a terrible twist. Thankfully it was a proper detective movie where the clues properly foreshadowed what he villain
Yes! As a detective story, I agree it works.
@@hellogoodbyeandallinbetween Rather well, I might add!
I can agree with you to an extent. Since it's a detective story, it works. I just think there should've been more and better hints to her villainy before the reveal. Other than that, I agree
I am going to say that Gaston is another twist villain, especially if you skip the introduction of the movie. We see that he is high-handed and arrogant, but we really do not see his true villainy until later. In fact we are introduced to him with people everywhere singing his praise and women swooning over him. No one is surprised at his eventual villainy, but he is in a certain light a sympathetic character until he decides to lock away Maurice.
Gaston is honestly the hero from the village perspective, he hardly counts as a twist villain, the fact we know the beast isn't evil is the only reason he comes off as villainous at all.
@@andrewgreeb916
Technically the Beast is the villain for nearly half the movie. We are given his motivations in the opening, which is why I excluded that portion. And I agree that we eventually see Gaston and the Beast switch ends roughly at the midpoint. And we never actually see the townspeople repent of their assault upon the castle and its inhabitants.
@@jayt9608 it was definitely by far the most interesting twist between the villain and the hero.
@@andrewgreeb916 Yeah but he does lock up the professor and stuff and got pretty brutal
I honestly don't know if I'd even call King Candy a twist villain, because unlike most of the others, the fact that he's the villain is not the twist in itself.
We already know from his very first scene that he's an arrogant, attention hungry prick who'll do underhanded and unethical things to stop Ralph and Vanellope from taking away his power, so even when he doesn't seem like an outright villain, he's very clearly the antagonist from the start. The _actual_ twist - that he's really Turbo - doesn't change this fact, but it adds a ton and depth and context to the character and his actions, while also making him a much more direct parallel to Ralph.
It's the same with the Wolf in _Puss In Boots: The Last Wish_ . We know from his very first scene that he's a ruthless hunter who wants Puss dead, and Puss is already desperately trying to get away from him. The character's goal and personality remains exactly the same after we learn that he's actually Death, we just have the explanation for _why_ he's doing it while also cementing the film's message about life and mortality.
These twists don't abruptly change the characters or their roles in the story, but they add tons of layers and deeper meanings to the point where if you watch the films again, you'll see them and these villains in a completely different light than you did the first time.
Remember what Zangief says to ralph: "You are bad guy, but this does not mean you're a bad guy". Remembering that quote just made me realise that yeah, these are video game characters, and they are villains for a video game, but that doesn't mean they are evil outside of the video game as well. They could be the most vile villain ever in a video game only to be the most caring outside of it or just a pretty chill dude. Everyone is just following a script of bad guy vs good guy, and what makes turbo a true villain that was a hero or main character in his own video game and disguised as a king who doesn't care too much in another. That's really the twist here for him
"That was his mistake!" Best villain quote in Disney history🤣 It definitely deserved an academy award over The Lego Movie.🤣
And it's also one of the dumbest things ever said in a Disney movie
@@bugsquashinghero891 Ya know, the more I think about it, the more it does make sense. His whole motive is to get revenge for his daughter's death. He waited until one of his students created some technology that he can use to get his revenge. It was probably years of seething and scheming before that night. Thus, when he saw the tech, his implemented his plan to fake his death. Considering how his fake death plan was detailed enough that no one was supposed to die, having one of his greatest students actually die would have haunted him. However, in his mind, while struggling with grief and revenge, he would make himself believe that he was not at fault for his death in order to ease his twisted mind of the guilt and to focus completely on his revenge plot.
Could they have conveyed that better, of course. However, his outburst of anger when he said that is making me think that he is just believing that lie so he doesn't have to feel guilty of killing one of his favorite students.
And yes, I instinctually left the names out as I would butcher them and spell check wouldn't help me :)
A twist villain works best when they are a twist to the other characters instead of trying to be a twist to the audience.
I find what I've seen in good twist villans are that they dont actually begin as an antagonist towards the cast but are genuinely welcoming but its when the object of their desire is threatened they would do anything to keep it even turn against the protagonist. So in a sense it was a genuine ally turned bad rather than someone just pretending to be good.
It's also obvious that John Silver was the bad guy because Treasure Planet is just Treasure Island in space. It's not even apologetic about it.
It's always nice to see Turbo getting some recognition, thanks, great analysis, straight to the point and well explained.
yesss
cant see him the same 😅
@@ARCHIVED9610 why you say so?
tumblr sexypedia popped up when i searched him 😔
@@ARCHIVED9610 ahahahahaha, "do not cite the tumblr drawings to me, I was there when they were drawn"
@@OhHeckNono memories i hoped were long forgotten came backkkk
You made so many good points in this.
I do agree about Clayton except instead of CHANGING him, the jungle just EXPOSED who he always was. This idea that polite and refined society often leads and enables the most horrendous of us to hide their natures. Out in the wild, there is nothing for you to hide behind, you end up having to be brutally honest.
Rourke is amazing because ya, we could always tell something was off about him and Helga. It was the turn of the others that got me so hard the first time. Ya you understood they were in for money but none of them came across as willing to hurt people to do so. So, seeing them initially willing to not just hurt but cause a full genocide hits you really hard.
Silver is perfect but I'd phrase him more as a kind of twist hero? Like if you know the book or just pay attention you can tell he's one of the bad guys from the jump. The twist in my eyes is when he starts bonding with Jim and seeing that slowly change him, with the big 'twist moment' to me being him getting upset over the sabotage during the black hole. Even the others call him out on it and you see it in his face that he's kind of shocked himself too. I liked seeing him constantly questioning his actions after that point, building up to the final culmination of letting the treasure go for Jim.
Sad thing is, a lot of these modern twist villains could work SO much better with some relatively minor changes to the narrative that don't involve rewriting the entire thing. I get frustrated cuz I can see the moments where they could build the twist up better and I just end up wondering why they seem to just ignore all the clear signs that it isn't gonna work the way they want without these changes.
I actually liked bellwether, but the hints with her was THAT she was being helpful, and the fact that Lionheart was trying to keep the predators from hurting anyone was standing in her way of making them look like a threat.
Granted it was a rather harsh switch in focus, but then I think the beauty of zootopia was the idea that things weren’t solved by switching the blame on people.
Turbo one probably my fav, they used him as historical context only for him to become the main baddie in the final act
Silver being a villain WRECKED me as a kid, I was shocked to my core. Treasure Planet stays at my top 5 favourite movies
My take on how these twist villains were able to work is that their villainy didn't feel like an on/off switch, but more like a tool that they might use depending on the situation. Your money-making scheme is getting waylaid by someone getting the hots for a native? Ditch the dead weight and bring out the weapons, we've got looting to do. Some nosy outsider is disrupting your plans to take control? Get on their good side to make it easier to remove them when they're a threat, or even get them to help you instead.
I think bellwether would have been a pretty good twist villan if she was written and hinted at better. I think a politician villan that seems like they're helping when really thier on the other side for their own benefit is a really great concept fitting really well with Zootopia. I already like Zootopia but if bellwether was a better villan id like it a lot more.
Yeah, I personally liked that movie because it had good protagonists and a fun setting, but the villain was easily the weakest part. I spent some time awhile back writing fanfics, and I personally think I ended up creating way better villains
4:00 WHY DOES EVERYONE HATE THIS MOVIE?!
Because it doesn't feel like a sequel to cars at all yeah it's cool seeing cars as spies but half of it doesn't make sense and the story is bland and not very exciting
Ok. Bellwether makes perfect sense. Did you somehow miss that she was shit on by the mayor from her first appearance, emotionally and mentally abused? And she helped the main characters only when it helped expose the mayor's attempt to disappear the victims. Had Judy not figured out the night howlers later Bellwether would have gotten away with it. She is more insidious because she only helped them because, well because Judy was a prey animal, but because her investigation helped her pin it on the Mayor. It's genius. And I felt it was a good twist.
The problem I feel with Bellwether is that she has barely any presence.
Yes, her motivations are there, even a later twist hinted at by the assassins being rams... but I feel like she should have been more visibly involved in the plot, even if that would have been difficult with all the traveling Judy and Nick had to do to solve the case.
Maybe even having her escape instead of the whole police department showing up to arrest her would have been an option that improves the plot if follow ups were in consideration, because now there's a villain that grows as a threat just like the heroes grow as a counter.
As it stands, Bellwether has too weak a presence to be a major villain, though definitely well shown reasons for why she does what she does.
The issue is that Bellweather has around 2 minutes of villain screentime to actually be a villain. Yes it's a good twist, no one saw it coming but that doesn't equal a good villain. Basically no presence and pretty boring to be honest. Again if they revealed her 2/3 of the way through instead of in the last 5 minutes it could have worked way better
@@arnoldgreen4278 according to disney, a twist is only good if you didn’t see it coming.
If you sneezed you'd miss all of her set up.
I think Silver works because they show why his Bond with Jim is so important to both and it’s like an emotional gut punch to show someone so important to Jim, the Main Character, would do something as such.
King Candy being Turbo was considered the last "twist" villain to be good. The rest you can see from space.
Well Disney can make great villains again in series. Belos is the best villain since Frollo and they can make them relateable like in Amphibia and these also had twist but they have a twist surrounding the villain and not that it is a twist that they are the villain.
Sorry for my bad english i am German
I'm sorry but Bellweather from Zootopia was done really well however the biggest problem with her is that *they were too subtle about her connections and hints.* In some scenes when Bellweather is working on her computer to help Judy, you can see some sticky notes with hints of her connection to Doug (related to the big bad thing happening in the film) it's just very, very subtle with the way they show her having these clues in open sight but don't bring attention to it.
No offense but you shouldn't have to have a spyglass in hand to see the clues that she's a twist villain.
Plus she ruins the overall message of the film by effectively saying that the "animal racism" is entirely her doing and that it's all fixed when she's stopped.
She needed WAY more screentime for any of that to matter tbh. The way it was executed was basically like "do you remember this side character??? Well now she's actually EVIL"
@@error-try-again-later The zootopia that hit the screens was actually the second telling of the story, the first draft was very interesting which had judy as more of a villain than the protagonist, its really interesting how they first envisioned it. Still I have to agree with the OP I thought Bellweather fit the narrative well. every interaction she has throughout the story explains her motives and goals, she uses prejudice as a weapon and exploits it to make changes in society that she feels is right at the expense of those she views as abusers/oppressors. The same prejudice that damages judy's relationship with nick so deeply, one she has held since childhood and makes her reconsider why she even joined the ZPD in the first place. I thought it was better than how you described it, more like "you remember that little sheep character that the Mayor abused at every opportunity? who hated the status quo of society? Yeah turns out, despite her cheery personality, she actually snapped"
@@pierrebegley2746 that's the thing though, at no point did she single handedly cause the racism against predators, she just twisted it into something that helped her to get into power, over someone who's outwardly robust and commanding like Lionheart.
The point is Racism can only be countered by people working together to go against it, so that people like Bellwether can't use it to gain power. As someone from a country where this happens pretty regularly, this hit very close.
I actually LIKED Hans as a twist villian. He is every bit as sheltered and frustrated by the strictures of royal life as Anna, and when the 2 of them fall in love at first sight like 2 virgins on X- tacy and when they decide they want to get married, I truly believe he is every bit as invested as Anna. At this point in the story, the most villianous thought in Hans mind is how advantageous marrying Queen Elsa's little sister would be, and the worst that would have happened is he'd have turned into an entitled douchebag once the honeymoon was over.
Then Elsa says no to the wedding and almost immediately afterward is revealed as a terrifyingly powerful ice witch who freezes Arandel and flees off into the night. Anna then does a dumb thing: She leaves Hans in charge of running Arendel while she goes in search of Elsa, leaving Hans the de facto King of Arandel. Im sure he just couldn't WAIT to give that up, especially when Anna returns with a blonde Magic Mike XXX himbo in tow ....Forget "twist villiany", what else was he going to do?
He unnecessarily dragged things on. He went out of his way to continue the charade even when he didn't need to do so.
How would he even know Anna would die?
Dude, waiting for the main characters to realize who the villain is can be so engaging. Season 1 of the show Invincible had me on the edge of my seat for this!
Really great video! I definitely agree with all the older twist villains working so well.
I think part of the reason that modern Disney twist villains are very poorly written is because of how big Disney as a company has gotten, they own so many franchises, and have split up all their best writers among to many different projects, causing the writing of everything as a whole fall from every franchise they own.
No offence but I don't think John Silver was that much of a surprise as a twist villain if you notice him in the beginning through the window when the house went on fire. You could clearly see his eye and shadow of a mechanical arm. However I'm not saying that he's a bad character, I love his development and the movie 🤩
The twist isn't that he's the villain, but moreso about his personality and motives.
I think the failure of Incredibles 2 is that the main character, Mrs. Incredible, didn't have an arc. Mr. Incredible had clear growth in the first film and went from bottom to overinflated ego to failure to growth as a character. In the second movie Mrs. Incredible was just awesome the whole time and was never shown to learn anything or grow from her experience and become a better wife or mother or hero. Rae and other heroines have had this same treatment in modern Disney and the results speak for themselves.
Part of the reason she doesn’t have a development arc is because everything falls into place perfectly, due to all the results being manufactured behind the scenes by the villain. So on a meta level it makes sense, but I agree that for an audience it’s very disappointing and does not work.
Silver is the goat, fav Disney character
He's my favorite Disney villain of all time.
Rourkes biggest crime was what he did to mommy helga
Treasure island was my favorite childhood movie I watched it almost once a week as a child and still have the movie to this day so to see it come up was something really happy for me, because he is the villain but at the same time grew to be a father as well and it is undeniably one the best portrayals of how just because someone is cruel in some ways doesn't mean it extends to all parts of who they are.
Funny enough, I didn’t totally understand why people disliked modern villains. I agreed they weren’t as strong as they count be but I still didn’t totally disagree to the twist side….. until now, you’ve reminded me three of my favorite Disney villains… No modern Disney villain has given me chills like King Candy did when he first: revealed himself as turbo, and two: had a “boss level”. Seeing the Cybug transformation gave me goosebumps. No other villain had done that until we got De la Cruz.. Now, I entirely understand where Disney is failing as their villians
No matter how 'silly' you think King Candy was, you can't deny him in his cybug form is fucking terrifying (in a good way).
I'm going to go against the grain and say I liked Hans as a twist villain. If you listen to his conversations with Anna, the clues are there. He mentions he has several older brothers who disrespected him growing up. He wants power and respect. Being the youngest of so many brothers would mean that he wouldn't inherit the throne or a large allowance. Further, pay attention to his face during "Love is an Open Door", when he and Anna are sliding down the hall in their socks and duck behind a door to avoid being seen. Hans initially looks at Anna with a disgusted expression until she looks at him, then he neutralizes his face. By assuming a leadership role while Anna and Elsa were away, he established trust among the peasants and politicians, so when he lied about Anna's death, he would go unquestioned.
Hans could honestly have worked if they stuck to what he was doing, which was trying to protect ana to protect his line to the throne, and the fact killing Elsa would save ana makes the situation all the more convenient.
Cause Hans doesn't have any claim on the Arendelle throne so he needs ana to survive, so he would definitely try the kiss, and upon it failing he would jump to the conclusion that Elsa needs to die to save ana and his opportunity to rule, so he'd order the execution for ana and Arendelle's sake.
This would also motivate Hans to try to kill Elsa in the snowstorm.
Theres a scene where Hans is all alone and he looks wistfully after Anya with no dark intent in his eyes. This is a huge contradiction to the scene you described and clearly done so the audience wouldnt suspect Hans is evil. The movie took so much time trying to fool us into thinking Hans is a good guy all for a big stupid twist that it never bothered to establish his evil nature. It could have shown some of his backstory and some of his ego and pride, especially when leading elsa’s people aganist her. instead we got a charming prince acting as the hero for the majority of the movie only for him to flip full psycho and leave anya to freeze to death and attempt to chop off elsa’s head. Its a weird 360.
From a meta perspective I think it's really cool that hans is basically a mirror to whatever character he's with. He acts to meet their expectations to manipulate them and that's a cool detail that calls back to the original story.
But I really wish there was more done in the narrative that explicitly showed his manipulations and greed for power and was more overt to the audience with the Kill Elsa In The Ice Castle plan
@@Nopeasaurus Weird? Stupid is more like it!
John Silver starts out as a villain and ends up a twist anti-hero.
10:15 Thanks for showing, “Atlantis: The Lost Empire”, a lotta love; it definitely deserves it & it’s one of the few classic Disney movies where a live action remake would make sense.
One thing I never understood about Hans is… why tf would you leave Anna to die? She’s like you’re guaranteed entry to the throne, marry her and you’re golden. I think that scene would have been more impactful if he did try to kiss Anna to save her so he could marry her and take the throne, but it didn’t work. Then as Anna realises he never actually loved her he starts his monologue, having now resolved to plan B; leave the kingdom leaderless and then establish himself there through aid and garnering the public’s support. And of course, he will have no issue revealing all this in a lengthy monologue as he’s convinced Anna will die.
Treasure Planet is such a underrated masterpiece of a Movie….
Bellweather as a twist villain did *NOT* come out of nowhere, they just built the mystery *properly* and didn't hit us over the head with hints like a hammer. I caught these hints on my first watch through, the major ones for me being 1) the "Doug" bad guy had his name and phone number on Bellweather's desk on a sticky note, 2) The henchmen were all rams or "sheep" like Bellweather, 3) She's being sh*t on by her boss, the lion, and MOST IMPORTANTLY 4) When there was that pushback against predators and our cinnamon roll Clawhouser gets taken off the front desk *they made a point* to have Clawhouser say his new office was "in the basement, next to the boiler room" AKA Bellweather's old office where she was stuffed out of sight when the previous predator mayor was in power. To me, as an audience member, that last one confirmed my suspicions because *they were deliberately giving us information linking Clawhouser's move to Bellweather.*
(Also, while Bellweather is the antagonist in that she's manipulating things from the background, I'd say the greater "villain" of Zootopia is really societal issues/bigotry/etc. rather than a specific person, so having Bellweather be "defeated" so quickly doesn't take anything away for me. Cuz she wasn't the *true* villain of the story)
I love Silver so much, hes one of my favourite villains of all time.
Top 3 reasons why they worked and what every twist villain needs to not be crap imo
1: Their motivation is understandable and doesn't come out of nowhere
2: They are given enough time that we can get to know them as characters
3: They don't become a completely different character after the reveal
3 being the most important Silver worked because even after the mutiny it's clear everything we saw of him up until then was still there, he maintained the same personality and clearly still cared for Jim
Hans failed because we only saw him being the almost too good to be true prince with little to no indication as to his intentions and his character did a complete 180 at the end
"Let's watch her DIE together shall we"
The parents in the theatres: 👁👄👁
Honestly, as a Treasure Island fan, I already knew where it was going with Long John Silver's character, but still, Jim's belief that he felt betrayed made my heart break when watching Silver lie to the pirates about going soft.
Well sowed values and motives are the necessity of a good twist villain. The clues are necessary to build towards how dark these characters really are, while also keeping in continuity and believability of a character turning
For twist villians to work well, it doesn't matter if the audience can mostly figure out what's going before the reveal, all that matters is the gut punch within the narrative, both from the twist itself, and all the little moments before hand where you can see the villian laying foundations, getting ideas, adapting to manipulate others, foreshadowing through a bit of seemly insignificant banter.
Some of my favourite twist villians of all time in fiction are from Babylon 5. That show is a gold mine of well written twist villians if I ever did see one.
There’s also Scar, he’s Simba’s uncle and it’s obvious to us that he’s a villain but not to his family
Treasure planet was a underrated gold movie
Honestly, one of the best twist villains of DreamWorks was Johaan, from the RTTE HTTYD show.
We knew that character since the first show, he was always that fun, comic relief idiot, but when he was revealed to be a villain it was a shock. Not even the audience could've predicted that.
He and Krogan working for Drago and manipulating both Viggo and Hiccup was done so GOOd. Viggo's redemption and character development might have been rushed, but it was pretty good, sad that they decided to kill him off.
I actually give a pass to bellwether because there aren’t hints from her directly but sometimes the things around her are hints. Like she has, I think it’s Doug’s number on a sticky note on her desk when they’re reviewing footage of traffic cams with her and little stuff like that. So while she herself isn’t directly giving us hints other stuff is idk, that’s just my opinion. I know she didn’t get a lot of screen time as a villain but tbh I think that’s another reason why I give her a pass because the most dangerous enemies we have are the ones we don’t always see, the ones who work behind the scenes. Idk I kinda like that idea, it shows a human aspect and that is that humans are creatures that can act kind while they do harm to others, which is something I don’t see a lot of movies or shows do. Idk that’s just me, to each their own
This video got me thinking…has there ever been a twist hero done by disney, the only one I can think of are the crew from Atlantis
The fox from Zootopia i think
Anastasia from Cinderella 2 & 3 x
The lava diety in Moana and the huntsman in Snow White, maybe?
Stinky Pete being called Skinny Pete is the best thing ever😂
Rourke and John silver are actually two of my favorite villains in Disney history probably because Disney Atlantis and Treasure planet are some of the best Disney movies
I love Silver to pieces, but everything you said about Silver being a twist villain and why it was so shocking is wrong if you're going from an audience perspective. The movie tells us early on that Silver is the villain. We're warned of a cyborg, we're introduced to one cyborg, in his debut appearance after Jim leaves, we see his charming persona is a front, and shortly after, we hear him losing his temper at his crew and confirming that he is indeed the cyborg pirate Bones warned Jim about. This is all within the first 30ish minutes of the movie. The shocking twist for the audience isn't that Silver is the villain, the twist is that he both grew to care about Jim in spite of that and STILL goes through with his mutiny and pursuing his goal of obtaining the treasure from Treasure Planet.
Plus there is also the lore around the book it's loosely based off of.
the thing that annoys me about hans, is that he honeslty could have filled the villain role just fine without betraying ana, he could try the kiss, have it fail and then go ahead with the execution with the intent to save ana, and then try to kill elsa anyways, hans gets to come off as a misguided good guy instead of a terrible twist villain
It's the planting of small things early that makes a twist villain work (that and personality staying relatively the same). John Silver was one of my favourite characters because of how nuanced he was as a person. In a world of black and white people in children's movies, at the age of 7 I found him a breath of fresh air
In my opinion, Bellwether wasn't a good twist villain, but she was a solid villain. Like, her actions made sense. Her plan was fear. Dart predators and make them go savage. The issue was that they kept going missing. So she used a eager, gullible, rookie cop to do her dirty work for her. After all, if they remain missing, her plan won't work. And it would be far too suspicious if she found them (Or maybe she didn't know where they were, which would give another reason why she helped.)
So, while her being a twist villain failed, her plan was solid and it actually worked. At least until the cop figured out what was happening and then things fell apart.
Adding to this, I have a feeling she didn't frame the mayor. Again, her plan was to dart predators as a fear tactics. It doesn't make sense for Bellwether and the mayor to be in cahoots. Odds are, they had no idea what the other was doing. I think Lionheart actually was doing his best to understand what was happening and fix it. Which made him look bad when the animals were found.
Regarding Frozen, alot of the issues with the story of that movie is due to the major story rewrite that happened because Elsa was originally the villain.
It possible that Hans 'Odd' behaviour was due to them just chancing his ending rather then chancing his entire story.
Atlantis: TLE would make a great live action film, I think, if they get the right people to do it.
Calling John Silver a twist villain is like calling Doppler a bodybuilder.
They worked because they didn't have their personality doing a 180 after they were reveal as villains.
In Disney films prior to 2001, twist villains are extremely rare, but I can think of a few "semi-villains" and "temporary villains." Almost everyone in DUMBO, for example, is effectively a villain for bullying the title character: the other elephants, the clowns, Max the ringmaster, and arguably even the crows at first. To that list you could add Tinker Bell in PETER PAN, Aunt Sarah in LADY AND THE TRAMP, Sir Ector and Sir Kay in THE SWORD IN THE STONE, George Banks in MARY POPPINS, King Louie in THE JUNGLE BOOK, and pretty much all of Halloweentown in THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS. Of course, all of these characters either don't realize they're doing anything wrong, experience heel-face turns, or were never anything more than a nuisance.
I'd classify them more as antagonists then straight up villains, sure they were not very nice to the main character but they weren't straight up malicious like trying to kill them or anything.
Antagonists are just there to terrorize or put down the main characters (think of a high school bully) so the audience sympathizes with said character, those types of characters don't go over the top and have some sentiment of morals.
Villains on the other hand are the complete opposite, will be willing to go over the top in order to get what they want, they are those with more malicious and wicked intentions who are treated as obstacles that the main character must overcome (think of more among the lines of an evil dictator controlling the people in their city)
Rourke (Atlantis) also works as the twist villains for adults taking their kids to see the movie at the time. The voice actor always played the kind, reliable friend/love interest in his films. He's the senior version of Ryan Gosling from The Notebook
You know it's so funny because those infamous 3 could have been fixed with a few extra shots where we should be able to see their face. Like let's just imagine a scene where Hans before proposing shows his back to Anna, but is facing us the viewers. Make him have a suspicious facial expression before he turns and returns to his acting towards Anna, he proposes and voila. You now know he is up to something. Anna is not aware so to her he is a twist villain, but viewers are on edge and waiting for when he strikes (anticipatory suspense)
Or not even that, when he was dunked with the boat, make him have an annoyed expression rather than a love-struck. You could argue that everyone would be annoyed by a dunking, but later on when he approaches Anna it can be up in the air 50/50 if he is genuine or playing a part.
The worst part about Bellwether is that she's a villain. The movie was meant to be an allegory about racism, and there isn't just one person behind racism
I get the rushed romance between Hans and Anna was put in there to make Hans seem kinda sus, but the scene where he smiled at her from under that boat gave me every indication that they switched him over to villain at the last minute without a very good set up.
When I was in film school, the screenwriting professor drilled into our heads that films were stories about growth. It didn't matter how short the script, the main character needed to undergo some sort of change. I think the good twist villains _don't_ do this. I think Rourke is the best example of this. He and Milo are both treasure hunters, but while Milo's motivation changes from wanting to realize his grandfather's dream to wanting to save Atlantis, Rourke is stagnant. He wants a paycheck from the museum, and he doesn't care if a civilization is destroyed in the process.
If you really think about it, twist villains like Hans or Assistant Mayor Bellwether actually exist in real life. There are people like Hans who look like they genuinely care for the person they're with, and even the person with them believes that their romantic interest genuinely cares about them, but then suddenly their true colors are revealed. My aunt's ex-husband genuinely cared about her, but out of nowhere, he started physically, emotionally, and sexually abusing her after they got married. Twist villains in real life aren't always going to have subtle signs that they're actually villains and many could be just like Assistant Mayor Bellwether. Twist villains in real life hide their true intentions from everyone who only sees their generosity and only reveal themselves to be villains when they have everyone completely fooled. When I fist saw Frozen during opening weekend back in 2013, I had a gut feeling that Hans was secretly a villain even though I knew nothing about the movie at the time other than commercials for it. Still, when Hans revealed himself as a villain, I was the only one in the theater who wasn't at all surprised. When everyone else gasped, I thought, "I knew it!" The same thing happened to me when I first saw Zootopia. While I didn't see that movie in theaters, the first time I saw the movie, I somehow knew that the main sheep was the villain. If twist villains in real life like Hans and Assistant Mayor Bellwether are acceptable in real life, then why are twist villains like them a problem in works of fiction?
Because that's no way to excuse bad writing. How exactly was the audience supposed to know that they're not really who they seem to be?
Think they were reminded of Frollo and tried to give Hans and Bellwether the same creepy aura of people like them existing in the real life and fail at doing so since their not so great twists distracted the audiences from that (some people here like them tho and idk why).
@@1992disney as I pointed out with my reaction towards Hans being a villain, some people just have a gut instinct about these things. Sometimes people just have a feeling that a fictional character is a villain even if there aren't any obvious or subtle signs of that being the case. It may not excuse bad writing, but it does teach the audience that not everyone is who they seem to be. It shows the audience fictional examples of how people appear to be in real life. I'm not excusing bad writing, just giving my opinion on why Disney may have gone in the direction they did with some of their twist villains.
@@nerinablais6623 I think there are better ways to teach the audience that not everyone is as they seem to be.
Because fiction, when you present it to the reader, has to be at least somewhat believable and have the story beats be connected.
"Muh real life" doesn't work when you want the reader to get invested in these _specific_ character's lives. They'll inevitably want to know the what's and why's, and "just because" isn't a compelling answer to those questions (unless you've specifically written them to be chaotic or something.)
Even in real life, if you followed those deceptive people around like an invisible camera, you'd be able to see SOME clues about their true nature whenever they were comfortable enough. Pulling it out of thin air isn't brilliant, it's just lazy.
The thing about Atlantis's twist villain its a reference to Kurt Russell's O'Neal from Stargate. Unlike O'Neal, Rourke is blinded by greed as opposed to grief. In O'Neal's twist he wanted to destroy the gate so earth couldn't be invaded by the Go'uld( using the SG1 name) but after The big bad finds the bomb O'Neal takes charge and with his team and the natives take on the Go'uld and overthrow him. There is a point why Milo Thatch looks like Daniel Jackson from Stargate and why they picked Tommy Lee Jones to be Rourke.
Disagree on Bellwhether a bit. Her reveal was lackluster, but they did lead up to it in a very subtle way. She WANTED Judy to find the Mayor’s facilities so he would take the fall. She helped the main characters because it got the major out of the picture and put her in charge instead, and put Judy - a prey animal - at the forefront of law enforcement. Prey animals then had political and police controlled. That was her plan
Fun fact: One of my former co-workers was watching Frozen with her nephew (7 years old). He said after “Love Is An Open Door” that Hans was the villain because “He wasn’t going to say sandwiches”. What was supposed to be a one-off joke line was enough for a child to determine that he was lying and would be the villain.
I definitely didn’t pick up on this. Just shows how amazing the mind of a child can be.
But while I’m talking about Hans, I give him a little bit of slack because there seems to be evidence of Elsa being the originally planned villain (and that it was changed to keep her image clean). Doesn’t excuse how lackluster he was. But I’m not as harsh on him as other twist villains.
Yeah, There does exist earlier concept art even during the earlier stages of adapting the Snow Queen to screen that dates back to the 1940's that they were going to have it follow the Hans Christian Andersen's story before later into the height of the Disney Renaissance and then the early 2000's were when other attempts failed. Even from what snippets were when Frozen was being developed Elsa was the villain and Hans was good but when "Let It Go" was made it was shifted that Elsa ended up sympathetic and Hans then the bad guy.
Waternoose works because when he reveals his villainous nature the motivations are clear right after banishing Sulley and Mike then kidnapping Boo
I mean, for John Siver they had the advantage of already having a well written villian in the story they were adapting.