Disney/Pixar In General

Would not surprise me if this is about prioritizing tropey teencoms over everything else.

Doubtful. Remember that this finale was hyped up by the network and planned well in advance from a season of that hype. They wasted a week or more's worth of advertising spending (and reserved airtime for that advertising) to do this.

Whatever this was, it was a last minute choice... for some reason... but it's far too abrupt to be a "this show isn't what we want, let's replace it with something else" executive decision.

Edited by KnownUnknown on May 3rd 2021 at 9:47:47 AM

Who else agrees that Flynn - I mean Eugene has a funny scream? XD

> Whatever this was, it was a last minute choice... for some reason... but it's far too abrupt to be a "this show isn't what we want, let's replace it with something else" executive decision.

I'm leaning on someone watching the cartoon before it aired and going "Holy shit,you've gone too far,you can't just [spoiler] in a Disney cartoon,ABORT ABORT ABORT"

-hits large red cancel button,warning sounds-

From the perspective of someone who watched the episode, I can't imagine they didn't watch it ahead of time, and I can't imagine the part you're referring to being something they needed to rewatch to notice.

Yeah, if they were going to pull it for content - whatever that content is (haven't seen it yet) - it wouldn't have happened the day before. The network censors would have gotten to it ages ago.

Who among the Disney villain roster was the most effective manipulator?

• Scar
• Ursula
• Faciler
• Cruella
• Jafar
• Gaston
• Maleficent
• Evil Queen
• Yzma
• Hades
• Oogie Boogie
• Mother Gothel

My vote would have to be Ursula. Rewatching "Poor Unfortunate Souls" she had the entire deck stacked in her favor whether Ariel succeeded or failed. Her only screw-up was not planning for the Power of Love between Ariel and Eric, and making herself immune to electricity.

Edited by FOFD on May 4th 2021 at 8:01:56 AM

Either Ursula or Facilier since both of them very prominently make deals.

Ursula. She manipulates ariel, triton and Eric at various points.

Well... to be fair Ariel's kind of an idiot, Triton didn't know about it until it was too late to do anything, and she had to mind control Eric.

I think I'd say Jafar, just because he was shown to be decent at manipulation both with or without magic. Even when the people he was manipulating turned on him at first (with Jasmine promising to get rid of him), they still didn't realize he was manipulating them until Aladdin turned out to be alive (twice, at that point) and exposed him.

Granted, what Jafar isn't good at is making sure the hero stays dead.

Edited by KnownUnknown on May 3rd 2021 at 12:17:15 PM

I think cases could also be made for Jafar, Scar, and Gaston.

Gaston's got a whole town literally singing his praises. Jafar would have won if not for a literal genie rescuing The Hero. Scar convinced a pack of lions and hyenas to fall in line with him.

Then again the townsfolk and Hyenas are both chock full of idiots in their ranks if not outright made up of idiots and the townsfolk also follow him because he's a macho men that they admire. Though he gets some points for rallying them up to his cause.

Facilier definitely strikes me as a better manipulator than most of the others, not exactly a mastermind of evil tho

Meanwhile, the worst has to be either Yzma or Cruella because nobody’s fooled even in-universe by their overly villainous behavior.

Yeah, Gaston wasn't the most popular person in the village because he was manipulating them, but because he was superficiallly the kind of person they looked to as a hero.

Edited by KnownUnknown on May 3rd 2021 at 12:44:56 PM

Yzma definitely is the worst, her only real allies are either because of her taking up the throne and Kronk

Cruella's more on a grounded side in that she's an Alpha Bitch than an actual manipulator.

I'd argue Ursula is the best. While it's true Ariel willingly sold her voice after Ursula practically told her the clause, she was strongheaded and Ursula got her in her moment of weakness.

Hades too for that matter.

I'd say Disney's biggest manipulator is pretty obvious: Mother Gothel. She stole a royal child and kept her imprisoned and blind to the outside world for 18 years via gaslighting and emotional manipulation.

As a matter of fact, she's so manipulative that I remember reading that some people even agreed with her misanthropic speech toward the end of the movie.

x2

I'm in agreement. Like, Facilier and Ursula only have to keep the charade going for so long. Then their target is trapped and gone. Gothel kept up the façade for NEARLY twenty years.

I mean, we could debate back and forth as to how much was a façade and how much wasn't; I argue that she probably can't live with a daughter figure like that and get her gifts and things without having *some* level of love for her, but still not the point, she IS a vile toxic manipulator.

And she keeps that manipulative shit going right up to the end too.

Cruella is an entirely physical threat, which is actually kind of rare for Disney films. She isn't a manipulator, nor an evil counterpart or anything like that: she's an abductor who constantly stalks the protagonists throughout the story, using increasingly extreme methods, and can only be outwitted or avoided - with basically no face time between the protags and her. She has personality, but it's mostly used to make her fun to watch, rather than personable to anyone else in the story.

As a result, she's a surprisingly good Knight of Cerebus - imo, maybe one of Disney's best. This is especially the case in the original film, where once the abduction happens Cruella just plain stops getting jokes entirely. Even Scar is kind of foolish and pathetic outside of that one big horrible thing he did that scarred children.

Edited by KnownUnknown on May 3rd 2021 at 6:43:32 AM

She's also pretty creepy in 101 Dalmatian Street where she's even more unhinged than before.

Edited by VengefulBale on May 3rd 2021 at 9:47:50 AM

I really liked her in that show (I really liked that show in general, tbh, and it sucks that its second season has been neglected thus far) because it was the first thing past the original movie to regain the menace she originally had. Most of the post-movie Dalmatians stuff gave her the Captain Hook treatment and made her more of a joke - even the Glenn Close movies eventually mad her more of a goofy nutjob in the sequel.

Edited by KnownUnknown on May 3rd 2021 at 8:35:24 AM

Speaking of the bad guys, aw nuts, I can't find that picture I like. x_x It has Turbo, and he's Turbo on one half of his body and the other half is his King Candy form, and he's saying "Want some candy? It's turbo-tastic!"

Facilier could only manipulate people who'd never heard of him before. You'll note that Tiana's immediate reaction to learning about how Prince Naveen got turned into a frog was essentially "that's what you get for fooling with the Shadowman." Ursula didn't manipulate Ariel; Ariel knew she was on dangerous ground when she elected to deal with her, she was simply desperate enough to do so. The only person Ursula manipulated was Triton, everything else she achieved by use of her magic. Mother Gothel only was able to manipulate someone she'd raised from infancy herself (I will say, though, that Gothel is one of the most insidiously evil villains in the Disney canon, truly reprehensible on a number of levels).

I'd say the best manipulators are Jafar and Scar, both of whom managed to rise pretty high through their own machinations.

Regarding Ursula, others have pointed out that Ursula could have easily messed up her plan by turning Ariel human while she's still several hundred feet underwater. If Sebastian and Flounder weren't there, she would have surely drowned, which would have left Ursula out of a pawn.

Also others have joked that Ursula not giving Ariel clothes could have potentially backfired if Eric had found her before Scuttle put that sail on her.

Edited by Brandon on May 3rd 2021 at 9:14:19 AM

I thought Ursula knew Ariel's friends were there and were counting on them.

Now that I think about it, she was seemingly familiar with Facilier.

Edited by Ookamikun on May 4th 2021 at 12:19:23 AM