From a very young age, we are brought up to understand that there are good people and bad people. When listening to bedtime stories such as Sleeping Beauty, or Little Red Riding Hood, we are taught to stay far away from the big scary wolf or the evil witch. What these stories fail to convey, however, is that the evil witch is a person too, with their own life and struggles. While we may judge Snow White or Red Riding Hood for being too trusting or naive, we ultimately sympathize with them because the story always paints them as the hero, or at the very least, the victim of their situation. But what about the ugly sorceress? Does she not have her own story, too?

Then, in 2014, Maleficent was released. Although several other films also depict villains as nuanced characters with detailed personal lives, the film Maleficent was a pioneer in providing dimension to cardboard-cutout characters we had come to know as the ‘villains.’ The movie depicted Maleficent in a more human manner, embracing her flaws and portraying her as the victim. Her villainous tendencies are attributed to the volatile environment she grew up in, and the betrayal she suffered, rather than her soul being purely evil. Notably, this film was produced by Disney, a studio that doesn’t often attempt to humanize its villains. While they deserve credit for the morals their classic films instill in younger audiences, they could also benefit from presenting the idea that there is more than just pure good or evil.

Following Maleficent, Cruella came out in 2021, continuing the trend of humanizing well-known antagonists. Other classic villains such as the Joker from the DC universe, and Loki from Marvel have also experienced a change in their narrative. Recently, in Percy Jackson, Medusa is simultaneously presented as both a villain and an unfortunate individual who received unfair treatment throughout her life. The movie version of Wicked, a play that shows the backstory of the Wicked Witch of the West, was released on November 22nd, 2024. 

Why does this matter? Even if a villain has a sad past, it does not change the fact that they do terrible things in the future. After all, Cruella’s miserable childhood doesn’t excuse her desire to kill 101 Dalmatians to make a fur coat. 

However, the humanization of villains makes it harder to think in an ‘us versus them’ mindset. It eliminates the barrier between ourselves and the people we have come to hate. 

Some part of us also wants to relate to the villain. It is much easier to relate to jealousy and hatred depicted by villains than overwhelming love and empathy for all. Sophie Yang ’27 said, “I don’t really understand most of the main characters in movies and T.V. shows.” In fact, it raises the question: does the existence of ‘heroes’ set unrealistic standards that are impossible to meet? This is not to say that nobody has positive qualities or personality traits. However, if we as a society relate more to the villains than the heroes that we see on screen, then maybe our portrayal of what we think of as heroes and villains isn’t very accurate. 

This brings us back to the current trend of reclaiming classic villains and humanizing them in pop culture. In a way, it’s almost as if we’re projecting ourselves onto these figures that we see on our television screens. By creating flawed yet inexplicably human characters, we create more relatable personas.

Humanizing villains also answers the “why” behind their actions. Often, when a villain is purely evil or malicious, they seem to lack a motive for their actions. For example, the original story of Maleficent states that she was angry because she had not received an invitation to Princess Aurora’s birthday party. Yet, cursing a child to sleep for a hundred years seems like a rather drastic action to take in response to a missing invite. It makes the story seem rather impersonal and unrealistic, even if it does teach good life lessons.

However, the 2014 film Maleficent supplies a much more realistic motive that makes the viewer feel sympathy for Maleficent. The king had been her former lover, but he was manipulative and cut off her wings to advance his place in the world. While it does not justify Maleficent cursing an innocent baby, it explains her motives and makes her a more interesting character overall.

In addition, the humanization of villains challenges the way we view the people around us. After all, real life is not a cartoon or children’s movie where the hero defeats the bad guy, and everything turns out alright in the end. In real life, there isn’t always a clear hero or a bad guy. Yang said, “I think that we can also use it to humanize people we don’t like in life.” If we judge people simply by how they act in any given moment without looking at their whole identity or their past, it becomes extremely easy to make wrong assumptions.

Still, a person’s past traumas does not excuse all wrongdoings. Nevertheless, while one should not simply forgive someone who has wronged them because of their past, one can attempt to understand it. If we can empathize with how other people’s past caused their mistakes of today, then we learn to avoid those same missteps ourselves. By humanizing the ‘villains’ around us, we can also learn to prevent ourselves and the people we care about from becoming villains as well.

However, many people have argued that the quality of movies seems to go down whenever they try to ‘humanize’ their villains. There are several reasons that this could be the case. For one, people are attracted to mystery. We love to watch true crime, horror films, and thrillers, and villains are often the most mysterious characters in the movie. By understanding all of their personal goals and motivations, they lose a bit of their mystical presence.

Another reason humanizing the villain appears to affect movie quality is that we love to hate one another. When people can’t express such strong feelings in their own lives, it can be refreshing to have a character to viciously criticize without any fear of being judged by the people around you. As you might have guessed, it’s a lot easier to hate somebody without a tragic backstory.

And let’s face it, we all love to hate the villain sometimes. It can be nice to curl up under a blanket and shout insults at the screen when a character does something we despise. It’s often simpler and more enjoyable to hate a villain with no depth or personal struggles. It becomes harder when the villain appears more human, and we end up being torn between feeling empathy and hatred for the same person. The problem is that it’s just not realistic and representative of real life and the struggles that people go through, and people have a tendency to over-connect media with reality.

It’s perfectly acceptable to want to hate a movie character. Just remember that they are in fact, a movie character, and not a real, live, human being. Everybody has their own problems and obstacles they have to overcome, and as much as you may detest that origin movie to your favorite cruel, petty, and manipulative villain, that movie is the closest they will ever come to reality.

The humanization of villains makes it harder to think in an ‘us versus them’ mindset. It eliminates the barrier between ourselves and the people we have come to hate.