Summary
Throughout their history as beloved children’s film creators,Dreamworkshas managed to create some truly terrifying villains. While the bestDreamworksfilms have to be family-friendly, and appealing to all ages, that doesn’t stop Dreamworks from pitting their protagonists against some despicable characters, who are completely willing to carry out terrible acts.
Regardless ofwhether these villains are human or animal, what their tragic backstories are, or the scale of the crimes they commit, none can argue that these villains are anything but evil. Of all the characters that could give adults nightmares, let alone children, these dastardly villains are definitely up there.
10Mrs Tweedy (Chicken Run)
On the surface, it could be argued that Mrs Tweedy is just a hungry farm owner, trying to keep her farm afloat via the egg trade or, if that’s not possible, enjoy some tasty chicken pies. Of course, since the protagonists ofChicken Runare the chickens in question, Mrs Tweedy’s actions start to seem vastly more horrific.
Coupled with Mrs Tweedy’s desire to cook and eat the film’s leading characters, she is downright detestable to her poor husband, Mr Tweedy. Her mean character makes her feel like a very real villain, who easily makes a vegetarian diet seem tempting.
Cast
The infamousShrekvillain, Lord Farquaad, is another villain who feels scarily real, perhaps surprising forShrek’sfantasy setting. Lord Farquaad is a pompous man who believes he is entitled to a place within royalty. In order to achieve this, he needs a princess to marry.
It doesn’t seem to matter a jot to Farquaad whether the princess in question wants this or not. On top of his blatant disregard for the feelings of any potential love and his quest for personal gain, Farquaad is a tyrannical ruler with a severe mean streak.A truly evil character, it makes jokes at the expense of his height seem plenty deserved.
8Hal (Megamind)
What happens if you take a character like Lord Farquaad and give them superpowers? You get someone like Hal, of course, or Titan, to give him his superhero name.Megamindis a wonderful film thatsubverts an audience’s expectations of good and evil. The strange blue alien who seems to relish being a villain turns out to have a heart of gold and a desire to do good.
On the flip side, Hal, the timid and slightly socially awkward camera operator with an innocent crush, turns out to be truly despicable when he gains an ounce of supernatural power. Hal is a terrifyingly real depiction of people who believe that nice intentions leave them entitled to power and romantic reciprocation.
7Pitch (Rise Of The Guardians)
It goes without saying that Pitch is an evil character, given that he is a literal embodiment of nightmares.Rise Of The Guardiansdepicts beloved mythical figures, from Santa to the Easter Bunny, to the Tooth Fairy, whose existences are fueled by the belief of children. Pitch’s evil goal is to destroy these Guardians by preventing children’s belief in them, leaving the world with nothing but nightmares.
Naturally, this all makes Pitch a very evil villain. Despite this, it could be argued that, as the embodiment of nightmares, he is simply doing his job. Still, it can be rare to see a villain in a children’s film kill a character, and Pitch does cross that line.
6Chantel DuBois (Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted)
TheMadagascarseries is a children’s film franchise featuring beloved animal characters, who escaped from Central Park Zoo. In the third installment, they travel across Europe alongside an animal circus. Surprisingly, it isn’t the circus that is depicted as cruel to the animals. Instead, as the title suggests, the group is being closely pursued by law enforcement.
As animals, this means the animal control unit. Unfortunately for them, the lead officer, DuBois, has far darker intentions than restoring the peace. DuBois is an animal hunter and collector, willing to go to any length to see the beloved characters' heads mounted on her wall. Her dark drive to kill these beloved animals makes her rank very highly as an evil character.
5Le Frog (Flushed Away)
For a character with a name as hilarious as Le Frog, he is a truly evil villain.Flushed Awayprimarily takes place within Ratropolis, a rat-inhabited city in the sewers. Le Frog is as evil as he is because he intends to release the city’s floodgates during half-time at the World Cup, at which point all the humans will theoretically be taking toilet breaks, to flood and destroy Ratropolis, allowing him to take over.
Le Frog’stragic backstory and a primary motivationfor wiping out the entire rat population is that he was once a pet who got flushed down the toilet when his owner replaced him with a rat. Poor Le Frog. It doesn’t remotely excuse his actions or stop him from, hilariously, being one of Dreamworks’s most evil villains.
4Lord Shen (Kung Fu Panda 2)
The brilliantKung Fu Pandaseries has a multitude of brilliant villains.None seem to top the evil of the peacock, Lord Shen. Shen saw the beauty of fireworks and realized their potential as weaponry. When he overheard a prophecy that he would be killed by a black and white warrior, he took it upon himself to preemptively destroy a village of pandas.
To make it more personal, this turns out to be the home of the panda protagonist, Po, and includes his parents. Shen’s evil goes so far as to mean that he won’t accept mercy, instead taking the opportunity to finish Po for good. Filling a similar intensity of evil to Le Frog, Shen’s is even worse as his slaughter is successful and comes before any wrong is ever committed to Shen.
3Jack Horner (Puss In Boots: The Last Wish)
Puss In Boots: The Last Wishhasquite a few characters who oppose the protagonistsat some point, notably including the lupine personification of death itself. Despite this, the most evil character of them all has to be Jack Horner.
Jack Horner is an entirely self-centered character, who is willing to sacrifice anyone and anything to achieve ultimate control over magic. He causes the deaths of all who begrudgingly support him, is fully willing to kill a cute puppy dog, and is in fact so downright evil that his own personal conscience gives up on trying to help the man be anything other than a tyrannical and spoiled man-child.
2Drago (How To Train Your Dragon 2)
Things get very personal regarding Drago, the villain inHow To Train Your Dragon 2. Drago captures and enslaves dragons into a personal army, an evil mentality to the island of Burk, who live in harmony with dragons after the events of the first film. Already, this ranks Drago highly on the evil scale. During the climax, however, Drago reveals his control over a dragon called a Bewilderbeast,who can mind-control other dragons.
Using this dragon’s power, Drago forces the protagonist’s beloved dragon, Toothless, to kill the hero. He would have succeeded too, if not for the heroic sacrifice of the protagonist’s father, resulting in his tragic death. With horrific aims and such a personal and murderous blow at the end of their encounter, Drago leaves his mark as a truly evil villain.
1Seti (The Prince Of Egypt)
Given that it is an animated retelling ofThe Book Of Exodus,this early and iconic Dreamworks film was always bound to be more gritty than much of its later works. This applies to its villains, too. While it would be easy to see the prophet Moses’s adoptive brother, Rameses, as the primary villain of the film and Biblical story, specifically his refusal to free the Hebrewsthroughout the plaguesthat his people face, this mindset is established by their father, Pharaoh Seti.
Pharaoh Seti, after all, taught the boys that the Hebrews were merely slaves and ordered and enacted the infanticide of newborn Hebrew boys. Regardless of who is the real source of evil, both Seti and Rameses after him enact some of the vilest evils in all the Dreamworks films.
