Animated Disney Villains Ranked
6. Gaston – Beauty and the Beast (1991)
A vainglorious hunter relentlessly pursuing Belle’s hand in marriage and the Beast’s head in order to maintain his reputation in the local small-minded community.
There had been a lot of Disney villains bearing outdated and stereotypical hallmarks of evil – scars or physical difference, accents, aberrant behaviour – but Gaston, refreshingly, looks like a classic fairy tale hero. His actions, though selfish, cruel and borderline deranged, prove a good message to have in a Disney movie: to never judge a book by its cover.
“Gaston” is appropriately enough all about the blunt himbo and essentially acts as his amping-up walk-on music.
Demise by: Falling from a tower at the Beast’s castle.
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5. Captain Hook – Peter Pan (1953)
The arrogant and paranoid gentleman pirate who wants nothing more than to kill his rival in Neverland, Peter Pan.
The great pantomime baddie beloved for over a century of children’s stage productions transitions to big screen child-hating villainy in a colourful, energetic adaptation of J.M. Barrie.
Not enough Disney baddies are funny as well as scary, but Hook certainly fits that bill with his put-on airs and graces, code of honour, and slapstick antics against his other mortal enemy, the ticking crocodile who ate his hand.
Demise by: Last seen desperately swimming with hungry croc in hot pursuit.
4. Scar – The Lion King (1994)
The plotting younger brother of King Mufasa who engineers an accident to kill him and banish his son Simba.
Given the “Hamlet” inspiration behind The Lion King, Scar is essentially Claudius, the resentful second-born to a royal family who sees his chances of ascending the throne slip through his fingers on the birth of a prince. Scar realises he will never beat King Mufasa in a straight fight so tricks Simba into wandering into the path of a stampede herded by his hyena lackeys, getting his chance to push Mufasa after the king has rescued his son. Blaming Simba for causing his father’s death, he tells him to “run away and never return”, before sending hyenas on his tail and taking over the Pride Lands.
Scar is a bitter and unloved second son and gets his way through cunning, guile and deception, still trying to talk his way out of being killed by his mistreated hyena allies after Simba returns to claim the throne, beats him in combat, and spares his life.
Jeremy Irons makes for one of the great over the top British baddies, and his iconic, camp earworm song “Be Prepared” (“I’ll be king undisputed, respected saluted, and seen for the wonder I am”) is rightly held up as one of the best and most lyrically satisfying in Disney.
Demise by: Thrown to the hyenas by Simba, who proceed to rip Scar apart for trying to blame his plans for regicide on them.
Madame Medusa peeling her eyelashes off haunted me as a child!!