5 Reasons why Ursula from "The Little Mermaid" is the Best Disney Villainess

5 Reasons Why Ursula from the “Little Mermaid” is the Best Disney Villainess

By: Brian Cotnoir

     Well here we are again doing another countdown of the Best and Worst Disney Villains.  I asked my committee who they felt was the Best Disney Villain or Villainess and reasons why they felt that way, and in a stunning upset, Ursula from “The Little Mermaid” was the top pick of my committee (with Scar from “The Lion King” coming in 2^nd and Maleficent from “Sleeping Beauty” coming in 3^rd). I got a wide variety of reasons why too so here are 5 reasons why Ursula from “The Little Mermaid” is the Best Disney Villain.

1.) She’s a sea witch (rather than an ordinary human)

The Disney Villain Mold typically follows the same pattern of the Disney Princess Mold.  There’s a villain who is evil for the sake of pure evil or who just wants power.  You have to admit that most Disney Villains look very humanlike, but Ursula is different.  She has purple skin, a short hair cut and a full-figure rather than a traditional tall slender frame.  Not only is she different from the other Disney Villains, but she is unlike any other character in the film.  Unlike the other undersea beings like the mermaids who have fins for legs, she has tentacles for legs.  She’s also more creature than human and since she was the villain in Disney’s First Princess story film in over 20 years, Ursula set the standard for Disney Villains to be different at the beginning of the so-called Disney Renaissance.

2.) She proves Big Girls can be just as bad.

Ursula is a very—shall we say—curvaceous character.  You have to admit that even Disney tries to make their villains attractive.  The Evil Queen from “Snow White” is an fairly attractive women, Gaston from “Beauty and the Beast” has muscles and a long hair,  and have you seen Angelina Jolie in the live action version of “Maleficent” girl is thin, sexy, and absolutely gorgeous  The fact that Ursula is a heavier built character is quite an impressive feat.  She not only proves that bigger girls can be just as bad as the other Disney Villains, but they can maybe be the baddest of them all.

3.) She has valid motivation (and kept her end of the bargain)

Anyone else think she'd be a great James Bond Villain???

Ursula is one of the few Disney villains out there that actually puts a lot of thought into their evil plans.  It’s not like Ariel just showed up and she made it up on the fly in hopes that everything would work flawlessly; no, she knew exactly what she was doing from the beginning.  She convinces the naïve Ariel to sign a contract with her saying that she will give Ariel legs in exchange for her voice.  Ariel will have 3 days to receive a kiss from her true love or else she will be transformed back into a mermaid and belong to Ursula.  Unbeknownst to Ariel, Ursula plans to sabotage the whole thing so that her father, King Triton, will have to come and rescue her and sacrifice himself to save his youngest daughter.  Once King Triton is out of the way, Ursula will be the ruler of the undersea kingdom of Atlantica, which is what she wanted all along.  And even though, Ursula planned to betray Ariel the whole time, she still kept her end of the bargain.  I’m not saying she was morally right, I’m saying from a legal standpoint she was right.   

4.) She’s a Transgender advocate.

True Story

Ursula’s design, for those of you weren’t already aware, was inspired by a Drag Queen named Divine.  Wow, you know for a company that prides itself on being very Family Oriented and Traditional, I would not expect any writers or storyboard artists from Disney to use a transvestite as a model for one of its characters.  Well, in retrospect, it’s good idea because “The Little Mermaid” does have some subtle—unintentional—nods to transgender advocacy.  In my “5 Reasons why Ariel from The Little Mermaid is the Most Misunderstood Disney Princess Article” I also talked about how Ariel is a Transgender Advocate (she was a born a mermaid, but wants to be human; in a similar way to some people in the world want to change their own genders).  So there’s another way of how Ursula helped change the standard of how Disney Villains are written and designed.

5 Reasons why Ariel from "The Little Mermaid" is the Most Misunderstood Disney Princess

5.) She has Best Disney Villain Song

     How great of a song is “Poor Unfortunate Souls”?  I mean it has to be one of the —if not the BEST—Disney Villain song ever written.  Howard Ashman and Alan Menken wrote a fantastic original number for this film and voice actress Pat Carroll sings it better than anyone else.  I mean it’s better than “Be Prepared”, better than “Hellfire”, better than “Friends on the Otherside” (which are all great Villain songs in their own respect), but “Poor Unfortunate Souls” is set the standard for what a Great Villain Song truly is. 

     So there are 5 Reasons why Ursula from “The Little Mermaid” is the Best Disney Villainess.  Be sure to check out some of my other Disney Villain Articles and stay tuned for future articles on Disney Villains.  Take Care all.

Das Film Junkie

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