Thank you, Captain Obvious.
That remark was a bit unncessary, WR. Littlefoot1616 was stating an important fact, and it fit in with his part of the discussion.
On this topic, there are a number of ways of looking at it. Partially, it comes down to the meaning of "Connect."
Weirdraptor, you previously stated that it is morally wrong to Connect with a villian because a villian is a negative influence. How then, do you define "connect"? I suppose you mean that if a person feels for a villian, hoping he succeeds, that this is a negative feeling. For the most part, I agree with you, as the procedures of many villians are destructive. Such villians normally have "sinful" behaviour, doing unacceptable things for their glory.
There are various kinds of villians. The main type being discussed here is what I shall call the "evil" villian. Examples of which include Jafar, Scar, Ursula, all previously mentioned in this topic. The motives of an Evil villian are normally glory, money, or power. Each villian needs some sort of scheme to obtain their goal and become what they want to become.
Jafar obviously has respectable intelligence to work his way up to be the Sultan's advisor, not to mention his ability to scheme Aladdin to find the lamp for him, and the power to hypnotize the Sultan who has essentially become powerless to him.
Despite his evil ways, I admire Jafar's intelligence and creative means to reach his goals.
As evil as his plans may be, we can still respect and understand him for what he is. He has a witty personality (look at his relationship with Iago), a skilled disguise artist, he is quick-thinking, and is very dedicated to what he wants. He is also highly skilled at getting on the right side of a person to earn their trust before smiting them down to meet his wishes.
Overall, Jafar is a very effective, very interesting character, and I must say I enjoyed his presense on-screen. Did I want him to win? No. Was I happy to see the city rejoice with his defeat? Yes. Did I understand Jafar's point of view, and admire the crafty work he put into his plans? Yes.
RR, you are stating that some people can relate to villians because they may posess some similar traits themselves, correct? I believe this is true, but I must stress the fact that just because a person has some of the qualities of a villian, that doesn't make them a villian. Let's do some comparison shopping for a second:
Aladdin: Creative and intelligent (finding sneaky ways to get a bite to eat, or defeating Jafar)
Jafar: Creative and intelligent (disguising himself as a prisoner to free Aladdin, in order to obtain the lamp)
Simba (as an adult): A strong fighter
Scar: A strong fighter (as we see in the final battle between the two)
Arial (The Little Mermaid): Dedicated and willing to go to extremes for her desires (meeting the human prince by trading her voice to Ursula for human mortality).
Ursula: Dedicated and willing to go to extremes for her desires (taking control of Arial's voice, and eventually almost taking power away from Triton)
My point? The villians are often fairly similar to the heroes. The differences are simply the character's desires and goals.
It has also been stated below that heros tend to be too perfect. I actually must disagree with this. Heroes are rarely even close to perfect. As it has been stated before, our heroes have gotten into troubles, such as:
Aladdin: His lies with Jasmine
Simba: Forgetting his destiny for so long, hiding from it instead of facing it.
Ariel: Letting her heart control her, when she had a loving home where she was.
Generally, the filmmakers allow the heroes a chance to narrowly escape, simply to continue the story. Obviously, if they were to kill off our hero, the film would be at an end. As a result, Aladdin is able to escape the lava flowes in the cave with his life and the lives of his friends (Abu and Carpet). Simba is able to escape the desperate situation with Scar holding him over the cliff at the end, and Ariel and friends are able to defeat Ursula and live happily ever-after. I must say, I prefer the perhaps unrealistic aspects of the hero getting away with countless life-threatening situations to the alternative.
The villian rarely succeeds in a film. Why? The filmmakers understand that most audiences like to see a hero succeed. It's a nice feeling to watch a happy ending. There are a good share of films out there with twist endings or tragic endings, however even in those cases, the villian never truly wins. Unfortunately, I cannot think of any truly tragic films with a hero and a villian at this moment, so I cannot list any examples.
A hero needs to survive the film, at least to the point of defeating the villian in order for the film to have resolution. If everything that happened during the film was in futility, the impact of the ending is reduced and all that time and effort spent during the film was wasted. I would prefer the hero who is able to narrowly escape the desperate cirumstances put forth in front of him.
Another thought is that people can actually Learn from villians. Observing a villian in action is a way to help us understand what they may be thinking, and how to protect ourselves from taking similar evil steps. There is more that can be learned from watching evil, than evil itself. We can learn that evil doesn't necessarily pay, even for the villian. We can learn about how we can maybe change our lifestyles to perhaps be less evil. The existance of evil can be looked at as history. We can either learn from it (whichever side of it we want to learn) or choose to ignore its existance. I for one, believe there is reasoning to learning from both the good and evil sides of our world to become what we truly want to be.
