February 13, 2017
EP. 165 — Jafar Is Disney Moses: Secretly Heroic Villains
Did you ever notice how every movie villain is just really ugly beyond belief?
Emperor Palpatine? WRINKLED UP UGGO.
Jafar? POINTY FACE.
Scar? LITERALLY NAMED AFTER HIS FACIAL DEFORMITY.
It’s fucking dark when you think about how many movies this applies to; how the villain is usually someone trying to live a normal or equal life, but their ugliness just gets in the way. ‘The Incredibles’ is a perfect example. The villain is an ugly-little redhead kid who just wants for everybody to be a superhero, but the Incredibles are like NNNNNNOPE and throw him into a jet engine because only they should get to be superheroes.
Yeah, of course Syndrome kills like 30 other superheroes and sets a giant death robot loose on a major metropolis, but just go with us for this thought experiment. His heart was in the right place. On this week’s podcast Jack O’Brien welcomes Cracked’s own Katie Goldin and Michael Swaim to unpack this trope and how you can see ugly bad guys ostensibly trying to do the right thing in franchises from Disney to The Lord of the Rings.
Footnotes:
Video: Cracked: 4 Disney Movie Villains Who Were Right All Along: https://goo.gl/ddcdE7
Article: Cracked: 9 Famous Movie Villains Who Were Right All Along: https://goo.gl/YHj25
Article: Cracked: 5 Movie Villains Who Were Right The Whole Time: https://goo.gl/2P99EY
Article: Cracked: 6 Reasons The Jedi Would Be The Villain In Any Sane Movie: https://goo.gl/rPHaAO
Article: Cracked: You Really Have No Idea Who The Villain Of Frozen Is: https://goo.gl/SsbdFm
Book: Chuck Klosterman: I Wear the Black Hat: https://goo.gl/oxij5c
Video: Kanye West: All Day (Live at the 2015 BRIT Awards): https://goo.gl/xeDgWu
This episode is brought to you by ZipRecruiter (www.ziprecruiter.com/cracked) and Harry’s (www.harrys.com/cracked).
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