The Best Disney Animated Villains Of All Time

Since the groundbreaking release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937, Walt Disney Animation Studios has released nearly 60 animated feature films. An enormous number of them have succeeded, and many are now considered classics of the medium. From the beginning, Disney's films have been aimed at a family audience, centered around clearly defined conflicts between good and evil. That means we've gotten lots of memorable heroes and shining Disney Princesses over the years ... and a whole lot of unforgettable villains.

Whether we're talking about evil sorcerers bent on world domination, royal schemers looking to seize power, or plain old jerks who just like to ruin things for the good guys, the Disney villain is as much a proud tradition at this point as the Disney princess. They're magical and mundane, tragic and triumphant, sinister and sneering. Here are our picks for Disney's greatest animated villains of all time.

Peter Pan is a film about a boy who doesn't want to grow up — and, in fact, never has to. He and his friends, all equally convinced that adulthood is for suckers, live out their eternal boyhood within the magical confines of Neverland. That makes for a dazzling adventure film full of memorable moments, but one of its most striking features is the way Peter Pan treats its villain, Captain Hook.

Captain Hook is, ostensibly, the adult in the room. He doesn't like Peter Pan's childish games — in fact, he wants to put an end to them, once and for all. In practice, though, Hook has all the hallmarks of a playground bully who's terrified to show his own vulnerability. He talks a big game, but he also needs Smee to do virtually everything for him, and whenever his nemesis the alligator looms, he flat-out regresses into childish panic. That combination of grown-up fun-spoiling and utter babyishness makes Hook an unbeatable villain for youngsters: He's all the smarm and rule-making of the grown-up world, brought to his knees by the magic and determination of childhood.

One Hundred and One Dalmatians premiered between Sleeping Beauty and The Sword in the Stone, two massive fantasy films full of warriors, fairies, and dragons. In contrast, Dalmatians is about a massive group of puppies who have to flee the clutches of someone who wants to make them into a fur coat.

How do you make that particularly exciting to an audience you've weaned on magic and mysticism? You create a character like Cruella de Vil. There's a reason Cruella is set to get her own live-action movie, in which Emma Stone explores the villain as a 1970s fashion designer. It's because she's just so wicked that she almost seems to be in a bigger movie than every other character. It starts with the shocking hair, the enormous fur coat, and the extra-long cigarette holder, then progresses to the song that Roger writes about her. That's right: Cruella is a Disney villain so evil, she doesn't even have to sing her own Bad Guy Anthem. By the end of the film, she's driving like a bat out of hell, determined to win at all costs — but darn it if we're not still a tiny bit on her side. I mean, this is a woman who fully embraces being named Cruella de Vil. How can you not root for her?

The period that has commonly become known as the Disney Renaissance — the company's resurgence as an animation powerhouse in the late 1980s and early 1990s — begins with The Little Mermaid. It's easy to see why this was the film that jumpstarted the company's renewed creative prowess: The songs are fantastic, the animation gorgeous, and the characters unforgettable. But even in a film that includes Ariel, Flounder, and Sebastian, perhaps no character is more instantly memorable than Ursula the Sea Witch.

Like all Disney villains, her story begins with her look. In that regard, Ursula is an absolute home run, from her ghostly hair to her sinuous tentacles. Then there's Pat Carroll's husky, sardonic vocal performance. Whether she's cracking jokes or singing her signature song "Poor Unfortunate Souls," Carroll's work is utterly iconic. She's both figuratively and, by the end of the film, literally larger than life, and yet the whole performance suggests something deeper behind the villainy. We're so fascinated by Ursula that we're left wondering just what happened to make her so manipulative and nasty. Maybe it's a tragic tale. Maybe she's just a meanie. But you're left wondering — and that's what matters.

The Disney Renaissance was launched by The Little Mermaid, and just as that film set the bar for quality among Disney releases throughout the 1990s, so too did Ursula the Sea Witch set the bar for unforgettable villains of the era. Ursula is a hard villain to live up to for even the most striking bad guy, but at least characters like Gaston and Scar had the benefit of not being another evil sorcerer character. Aladdin's Jafar didn't have that advantage ... but he still manages to be an absolute scene-stealer. 

Jafar's red, black and gold costume is eye-catching even among Aladdin's parade of gorgeous costumes and characters designs, but what really sets him apart in terms of his look are his pencil thin facial hair and that amazing cobra-headed staff. It gives him something dynamic to do, even when he's just casting spells. Then there's that voice. Jonathan Freeman's wicked, charming performance as the character is as smooth as silk, especially when paired with Gilbert Gottfried's Iago. Jafar is a sneering snake (literally, by the end of the film), Aladdin's total moral opposite. He's a schemer, a liar, and a cheat, and boy is he a whole lot of fun to watch.

As the 1990s wore on, Disney had to invent ever-more creative ways to top itself. The bad guys had to evolve as much as the good, and some films pushed that evolution further than others. Hercules is an example of Disney's efforts to really go big or go home with its villains — and boy, did it work. Enter the unforgettable Hades.

Because Hercules is not a fairy tale but a Greek mythology epic, just about every character in the story gets to be larger-than-life, from the gregarious Zeus to the legendarily powerful Hercules himself. That means Hades could have been a giant, grim specter draped in nothing but black. Instead, we got a flame-haired, wise-cracking incarnation of the character who turns out to be a perfect fit for the kind of pop-mythology aesthetic the film embraces. James Woods' performance is perfection, bringing the sarcastic, snappy, cynical god to crackling life. He's a jerk, sure, but he's hilarious and surprisingly sympathetic. Sure, you're not the god of the dead, but haven't you felt surrounded by incompetent idiots before? He might have attempted to poison a baby, but man, we'd spend an afternoon hanging out with Hades in a hot second.