I know with all the coverage of the Tokyo Disney Resort it must seem like the site could now be known as "Blue Sky Tokyo Disney", so I thought we'd take a look at animation...
From Blue Sky's perspective, of course.
A villain is a villain, right? We all know that a Disney Villain is a special thing, but have you ever thought about how different the nemesis in a Pixar film is? See, they're really, really quite the opposite. At least looking at them from the core of what makes them up...
When it comes to Disney Villains, like the classic Maleficent or Chernabog, they are absolutes. They are evil. Living, breathing examples of it. There are no faults, no frailties, no hidden meanings, no shades of gray... they exist for the purpose of symbolizing evil in its most pure form.
Now a Pixar Villain, or Bad Guy as I refer to them is... misunderstood. He or she has many complexities in terms of what motivates them. They are not evil. Their actions may result in bad things, but it's not the villain's goal, it is the results that determine that.
Al from "Toy Story 2" isn't evil, he's greedy. Even Zurg is simply a distraught father acting out his aggression. The characters that make up the foil of each picture the Lamp comes out with didn't start off on the wrong side of the tracks, but Disney Villains are born to be what they are.
Another comparison could be in relation to Marvel Comics versus DC Comics. While DC's rouges gallery is made up of heroes of absolutes like Superman and Batman, the literal light and dark of comics... Marvel's characters are infused with human foibles that we see in everyone of us. Traits that make us look at them from a closer perspective. That's the contrast between the Mouse and the Lamp's animated antagonists. Just as we would have trouble relating to a god that flies around in blue tights wanting to be human, so to would we have trouble relating to the ruler of the Underworld. Such is the a Disney Villain. Now, who hasn't seen a kid like Sid Phillips? One that's a bully, perhaps the product of a broken childhood? Someone that you're sure didn't start off to be what he's become. Pixar tends to look at the human condition for what it can cause and what it is capable of... while Disney tends to start out with the ideal and work its way back...
Look at the villain of "Monster's Inc.", Mr. Waternoose. He's a guy trying to save his company and in so doing he does horrible things that make him the obsticle in the film. A very, very bad obsticle. Now compare him to Jafar from "Aladdin", a creature of absolute, dark persona in quest of total power. This isn't to say you can't find bad guys in Disney films or villains in Pixar films... but the primary focus is what I'm refering to. One example of the way Pixar takes care of this is the Zurg character in the second Toy Story film. See how he's portrayed in the video game? The unreal world of that film is where Zurg is a pure villain, but when seen in the real environment that "Toy Story 2" takes place in, he's a more human, more flawed creation. One that we identify with more. Could you ever see Cruella De Vil holding a puppy lovingly as a child? Or Madame Mim every in her entire hag life doing anything altruistic? Professor Ratigan? The Queen of Hearts? Shere Khan?
This isn't to say that one is better than the other, only that they approach that which is evil or bad from opposite ends of the spectrum. Any story has to have conflict to be interesting. A film without conflict or something for the hero/heroine to fight against is a boring film. Without struggle there life like film looses it's meaning by it's very definition. One hopes that Lasseter hasn't blurred the lines in the new films he's greenlit(from what I've heard about "Princess" and "Rapunzel" he seems to be on the right track). Disney Villains are what they are... Pixar Bad Guys are who they are...
And that's not so bad, is it?
