While I was home over the holidays, my nieces watched Beauty and the Beast. I came into the room right at the climax where Beast and Gaston are fighting on the rooftops/balconies of Beast's castle. My memory of the moment where Gaston plummets to his death was that Beast wheeled around after being stabbed in the side and knocked him off the side of the castle. This was several other's memory, as well (including a Cracked list of the most terrifying Disney deaths). I was surprised and slightly offended to discover that Gaston simply loses his balance after Beast jerks towards him after being stabbed. Can't a Disney hero even kill a bad guy who just stabbed him in the back after to hero showed mercy? This led me to think of all of the other villain deaths in Disney animated films (sticking with the 2-D movies because, while I believe there is a thesis in here, I don't want to spend my life researching it for this blog).
Of course, not every Disney movie has a villain that needs to be killed. In many instances, they receive their just comeuppance. In Cinderella, living well is her greatest revenge on her bitchy step-family. In Robin Hood, the king returns and sentences Prince John and his crew to hard labor. In Aladdin, Jafar's ego compels him to wish to be a genie which traps him in a bottle. You get the point. They don't die, but they are justly punished.
Then there are the films that don't really have a main villain, but several obstacles. The stakes aren't very high individually, but the succession makes life for the protagonist fraught with peril. Think of Pinocchio, which is basically one long morality play, or Bambi, in which man is the "villain," but really he's just one of the many aspects/perils of growing up in the forest.
Finally, there are the movies that don't really have any bad guys of which to speak. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh and Dumbo come to mind here. That's not to say there isn't any conflict or drama, just that these stories don't really need a threat to work.
In my search, I came up with twenty-four Disney animated features that have a strong antagonist. Of these, fifteen end with said antagonist dying or an implied death* (in the cases of Hercules and The Princess and the Frog, it's hard to say if the villains actually died or were just taken away by evil spirits. Regardless, their punishment is significantly worse than the standard comeuppance).
Before moving on to discuss how Disney (and, of course, I mean Disney the studio and not Disney the man) deals with dispatching it's villains, it should be noted that they have trouble showing their heroes playing an active role in stopping the bad guys. In 101 Dalmatians, Cruella de Vil's bumbling henchmen crash into her car resulting in her arrest. As I mentioned, the king in Robin Hood punishes Prince John. In The Emperor's New Groove, much like in Aladdin, Ezma's turned into a cute kitten and can't get the vile open which results in her jumping off the temple, bouncing off a trampoline, and hitting her head which delivers the correct potions to Kuzco (man, I love that movie). Disney is already peckish when it comes to the heroes exerting too much control. Should it be surprising that they balk at having the heroes kill someone?
Here's how all of the deaths I could find play out. I haven't rewatched these and am using Wikipedia as a resource for the one's I haven't seen, so if I get some of the details wrong, do tell.
Snow White -- lighting strikes cliff as witch is trying to roll a boulder onto the dwarves; she plummets to her death
Sleeping Beauty -- Maleficent turns into a dragon and is killed by a sword to the heart
The Black Cauldron -- the Horned King is devoured by the cauldron
The Great Mouse Detective -- Basil and Ratigan are fighting on Big Ben; they both fall, but Basil manages to save himself
Oliver and Company -- there's a crash into a train during a chase in which our heroes get out of the way just in time, but the pursuers don't
The Little Mermaid -- Ursula grows to gargantuan size and is rammed in the belly by a ship
The Rescuers Down Under -- the bad guy's pet lizard is tricked into knocking said bad guy into croc filled waters; evades crocs, but goes over waterfall
Beauty and the Beast -- discussed above
The Lion King -- Simba throws Scar over a cliff, but Scar survives only to be killed by the hyenas
The Hunchback of Notre Dame -- Quasimoda almost kills bad guy, but Esmerelda wakes and he goes to her; fight ensues with bad guy in which they both topple off of the balcony; Quasimodo saves himself as baddie falls to a fiery death
Hercules -- Hercules punches Hades into River Styx where he is dragged down by vengeful souls
Mulan -- Mulan signals for fireworks to be shot at the bad guy and he explodes quite beautifully
Tarzan -- the bad guy accidentally hangs himself pursuing Tarzan through vines
Atlantis -- hero slides baddie with glass which crystallizes the baddie's body
The Princes and the Frog -- princess destroys charm and angered spirits take the villain to the underworld
Of these fifteen movies, two feature a fight and a fall in which the hero lives which, doubtfully, is how the hero planned it. Five actually feature the hero actively killing the bad guy and two of these feature a monstrous villain which, to me, distances the hero from culpability. The bad guy is no longer human and can therefore acceptably be killed (I know Ursula isn't a human, but we're dealing with fish-people, here...). The three other films where the hero is actually a killer were all made in the last fifteen years. The rest exhibit a kind of passive climax in which the hero takes a back seat to outside forces.
As I said, I think there is a thesis here, both in how Disney shies away from portraying it's hero as active dispatchers of evil and in how content has changed in the past 80 years and how children (or people in general) react to that.
*I find it immensely interesting that thirteen of the 15 features in which the bad guy dies were released in 1985 and after.
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