#@frozen

I'm trying to get back into the swing of things, so in doing so I'm going to talk about a phenomenon I've noticed crop up quite a bit in plots - animated films in particular. I pointed this out in my Frozen review (on the off chance that anyone remembers about that...) and said I would talk about it then, so I guess you could say I'm past due for this particular musing.

Something that I've realized recently is how animated movies (well, the category I was thinking of in particular was Disney, but it's worth expanding, I think) aren't particularly big on sympathetic antagonists - that is, villains or opposing characters who are more relateable, pitiable, worthy or sympathy, or heroic (to simplify it somewhat). Perhaps to keep a more rigid hero vs antagonist contrast, while villains are often in some way understandable in demeanor or ambitions, they are not generally thematically or narratively portrayed in a way that causes us to feel for them or root for them in some way - at least not intentionally. Though there are certain genres that always give sympathetic antagonists (heroes forced to clear their names, for instance), most are more straight up evil or rigidly villainous in contrast

But that's a given. What interests me here is the situation where the villains or antagonists (or in certain cases, the more ambiguous protagonists) are more sympathetic. To make it short, I've noticed a trend in these things: in situations where an antagonist is apparently considered not evil enough, to heroic or simply too relatable to fill the "villain" role, you'll often find another villain inserted into the plot who is more vile (or, in particularly poorly written cases, more two dimensionally evil) and seems to more or less be there to pick up the slack. I've noticed it more than a few times - for now, I'm calling this character the "backup villain," mostly because the only other name I could think for it was "obligatory villain," and that seemed a bit mean.

Note that I'm not talking about villains that don't appear a lot, even in situations where heroes' are more ambiguous. Turbo/King Candy, for instance, is not one of these despite the movie really being about Ralph's problems (and his not really showing up in person for much of the movie) - mostly because the contrast between him and Ralph and the effect he has on Vanellope's life are very prominent in the movie, even if the heroes don't become aware of how prominent he is until the very end. The mystery surrounding him and Vanellope constantly weaves in and out of the main plot constantly, and his rule effects everyone. Thus even though the story is all about Ralph's issues, Turbo as a character is a lot more important a villain than the others I'm about to note. The main difference here is prominence: these villains aren't there, necessarily, to be the big villains, but seem more to be there to balance out less evil characters. A lot of these characters seem to only exist in order to allow a big hero-villain battle to take place (another staple we never seem to be without in animated films), whereas such a thing wouldn't be possible with the main antagonist, and many seem to be there simply so that the audience has someone to latch their hate onto, with little to them besides that.

Anyway, onto the actual thoughts: the first time I ever noticed it was years ago, in watching Disney's underrated-but-still-not-terrific forgotten gem, Treasure Planet. As you can probably tell from the name Treasure Planet is a loose adaptation of Stevenson's classic Treasure Island, reimagined in the future with spaceships that operate like galleons, supernovae that act like hurricanes, and menacing looking aliens as it's motley crew of menacing looking pirates. What was particularly interesting was it's portrayal of Long John Silver: Silver has a long history of being portrayed as a greedy man with a deeply hidden and long tarnished heart, and it's especially noticeable here. Jim Hawkins here has a missing father, and Silver takes up the role. They bond, they come to deeply care about one another, and we even see a lot of Silver's pain in having to do what he has to do in order to chase his dream of boundless treasure. When he gives Jim an offer to join him both before and after he officially changes sides, you can tell he absolutely means it, and he is by far the least villainous Big Bad Disney has ever done - at least in the Animated Canon (I'm not counting the shows or not-strictly-DAC movies, like Pixar's fare. Pixar, by the way, is very good at making sympathatic villains and not feeling the need to supplant their presence by throwing in more obviously evil ones). So, if Jim and Silver are so close and their relationship is such a strong theme in the movie, who is going to fill the role of "big evil pirate" that Jim can have a valiant confrontation with? Who's going to make sure we know Silver's gang really is evil, even if Silver himself is more on the fence? Enter Mr. Scroop: a big, ugly spider-psycho who's aggressive, vindictive, and outright sadistic. Scroop has little to him besides being the most evil guy in a band of already not-very-nice characters, so he contrasts Silver and serves as a good physical challenge to Jim: who has to fight him in the a dark hallway of a malfunctioning spaceship. He's big, he's mean, he's scary and... that's about it. He's a good first example, because he exemplifies a lot of what I see when I notice films doing this: he's only really there to have someone evil, and is specifically not there to be a major player in the themes and arc of the plot. He does kill someone who is important, but the conflict there almost immediately gets laid upon Jim and Silver - he himself goes along his merry away until he falls up into space.

That may have been the first time I saw it, but it wasn't the most painful version of it to watch. Scroop is, at least, very detached from things and entertaining when he does show up. No, the worst is, by far, the extra villain in the recent animated adaptation of The Lorax. The film features an extensive backstory for the main antagonist Once-ler, that paints him as an initially well meaning fool that gets caught up in and ultimately corrupted by his own success until finally forced to face the enormous consequences of his actions. I actually like this portrayal of the Onceler, and think it's as worthwhile as the more outright symbol for the ruthlessness of big business that the character originally and usually - as flame baity as that opinion most certainly is - but the movie is still terrible. And a big reason for this is it's "villain," O'Hare. In a movie that already dedicates a huge chunk of it's plot to the descent and actions of another regretful corrupt robber baron, there in some small place apparently was the need for another, even more corrupt businessman to balance him out (as Onceler is a lot less outright destructive and more sympathetic than usual, at least initially). How much more corrupt could you get from wiping out an entire ecosystem? Well, not have him be so over the top that he's literally charging people for air and enacting a campaign to smear nature itself. He's about as ludicrously two-dimensional as he sounds, and what's more he's incredibly needless - though I kind of get what the intention might have been for him (that he represents the end of what Once-ler started) - but the Onceler plot accomplishes the "business vs nature" theme more than adequately, and what's more O'Hare has absolutely no real input in the plot beyond showing off how over-the-top money grubbing he is. Especially in contrast to the Once-ler himself, who is always a good symbol of our potential for ignorance and destruction, O'Hare is just a bad satire and, what's worse, a superfluous character who only really seems to be there so the hero can have someone to defeat and kick out of town in the end - which, of course, kind of clashes with the theme: by throwing a big target in front of the characters to pin the blame on, it takes the changes we need to make in ourselves out of the characters themselves and into this straw boogieman. And speaking of boogiemen...

Time to stop ranting as much. Despite what I've said, this practice isn't always a bad thing (I've found that most tropes/conventions/elements aren't inherently bad, but some can easily be made so through writing), though in my opinion it's always conspicuous. If done particularly blatantly, it can result in villains that don't seem to connect to the main plot that much but are there nonetheless - which is kind of the case with the aforementioned O'Hare, in addition to all the other poorly conceived aspects of his character. That said, just because the villain isn't quite as important to the main plot it doesn't necessarily mean they're a drain on the movie itself. Consider, for instance, The Nightmare Before Christmas. One of the things that makes this movie so interesting is that our well meaning but foolish and ignorant protagonist is his worst enemy, and thus he is the main source of conflict and difficulty to his plans. Jack Skellington's mid-life crisis turns into a journey of personal growth that nearly kill himself and ruins the livelihood of others, despite the best of his intentions, and everything most important to the development of the plot happens in relation to his actions, his choices and his outlook on life. Where, then, fits the "villain" of this story: Oogie Boogie - the Boogie Man. Oogie Boogie is a great foil for Jack: he shares Jack's love of the scary and macabre, but is legitimately cruel and vindictive in contrast to Jack's obliviously destructive kindness and curiosity. He is a great foil to the people of Halloweentown as a whole, who have fun scaring people as their jobs but don't mean any malice behind it - Oogie being a sadist who clearly enjoys torturing and frightening others. This makes him the perfect warden for Santa, who is innocent in all of this and has no idea what's going on: from bad to worse personified. Oogie Boogie is extremely entertaining, with one of the best songs in the movie. Oogie Boogie is not, however, that important to the main plot - his plotline is more of a subplot than anything. His main role is to steal away Santa Claus after Jack has already kidnapped him, a fact that Jack doesn't even become aware of until after he's already had the revelation at the end of his big plotline: Oogie becomes a roadblock in the path of setting things right, but his input has little effect on Jack's character arc. It does, however, give us an excuse to have a stellar hero-villain confrontation. Despite this, Oogie still manages to feel like an organic part of the movie, probably because of how well his villainy fits into the world itself. As I said, he's a very good foil to various characters and the subplot, though arguably minor, is well set up even with snippets of attention. As a result, Oogie feels a lot less superfluous than Scroop and doesn't break the experience in the same way O'Hare does, and instead his confrontation feels kind of like a narrative cushion to support the falling action of the last few scenes of Nightmare. 

Similarly, but not quite the same, we have Frozen: I pointed out in my Frozen that Hans - slimy and deceitful as he is - is not the main antagonist of the movie. That role goes to Elsa, whose in her issues and detachment unintentionally causes problems for the rest of the cast and maintains and role of opposition - pitiable, tragic opposition, but opposition nonetheless - throughout the film (Elsa having apparently gone through several more direct villain roles in production). But Elsa, while an antagonist, isn't much of a villain, so someone had to step in and take that role. Hans' role is similar, but only similar, to Oogie's. The main plot is in the hands of others just like Oogie, and Elsa is arguably even more antagonistic the conflict she causes for herself and others Jack was to himself, but Hans is, of course, more involved than Oogie was. He's more or less a catalyst: his actions kickstart the plot in the beginning, and then again kickstart the climax towards the end - I may have noted this in the Frozen review, but he's more of a dedicated plot device than the average villain. In any case, this ranks him as more important to his plot than a lot of the other villains I've mentioned, but even he runs into these problems. For one, his plot does take away a bit from the sisters' plot, but I noted that this was intentional (for better or for worse) in my review so I won't get into that. Another point against him, however, is what he does to the themes of the movie: like O'Hare, the idea that he's someone whose heart is irredeemably cold (and what's worse, who isn't even referred to in relation to this point) in a movie about softening hearts in general feels dissonant, and I'll say again that I'd prefer it if we either got a few notes or something about how even he could someday find the heart to care about others or got some kind of line about how he feels he's beyond such things (he does get some backstory, but we have no idea how much of it was lies and in any case it's not referenced after he's revealed to be a villain). As such, he's sometimes comes off as being there to ensure some measure of villainy keeps the ball rolling (the Duke of Weselton is the same way), but that doesn't necessarily mean he's a bad villain, just that he's not a major one. As much as I dislike how prominent the romantic subplot was in Frozen, Hans did get the ball rolling well - and the dramatic irony in his scenes in the climax is more than insidious enough to keep him interesting. But he gets a lot of attention as a major villain that just isn't reflected in his character - he's a villain, but he's not the villain.

That's it for examples - I hope you guys got the gist of what I was trying to point out and didn't think I was just ranting about characters and such. If so, alas - I have failed in my attempt to be upbeat about these thigns. I don't really think this is necessarily a bad thing - it can result in some really interesting characters, and sometimes you really do just want a straight-up villain involved in some way - but it is really noticeable, is all I'm saying. These kinds of characters always stand out to me, because of how removed they tend to be from the plot as a whole, so I wanted to share it here. Gotta justify having an animation blog in some way, right?