How a small theatre company does a Hollywood trend better

You ever obsess about a musical so much that you decide to write a full 2000 word essay talking about postmodernism and the villain-archetype which launches you down a rabbit hole that makes you realise this goofy show made by a group of UMich graduates is the perfect way to frame the trend of humanising villains in Hollywood?

Probably not a common experience, but if a crazy niche like this fascinates you, then you've come to the right place! I'll be breaking down why 'Twisted' works as a musical, and how it works better than most other films in the same genre

Why Twisted Works

'Twisted: The Untold Story of a Royal Vizier' is a 2013 musical created by Team Starkid, which retells the 1992 animated classic Aladdin from Jafar’s perspective. And before you click off because this seems like it devolves into cliche, it doesn’t. Weirdly, this goofy show is a perfect lesson in subversion and humanism.

On the surface, this musical is purely satire aimed to generate laughs. It is full of Disney references and socially relevant bits, with even some trivia-worthy jokes like the conspiracy that Disney had hidden a NSFW joke in the sky in the Lion King (if you know you know). It is an objectively hilarious and sometimes eye-roll worthy show. But once you start to actually listen to what the characters are singing, it becomes one of the most well crafted stories of all time.

To understand how good it is, we need to understand how to successfully humanise a character. This is best explained by the advice Oscar Hammerstein gave to Stephen Sondheim, where “[Sondheim’s] main consideration should be how to relate the work to the audience’s experience.” Essentially, if you cannot get sympathy, you can’t have a successful show, no matter how good the story you are telling is. The way in which writers can do this is by building on fundamental human experiences. Take Sweeney Todd. Yes, he is a murderous villain who killed many and rightly met his end in the same violent way. But the reason we are so drawn to him is because despite his methods, he doesn’t kill without a proper cause. He comes back to London with a vengeance, killing those who destroyed his life and who he believes took his wife and daughter. Ultimately, Todd is driven by a justifiable revenge from a terrible loss. If you are interested in this, here's a link to a fantastic chapter that talks about Sondheim and the Theatre of the Real.

Twisted does the same thing by building a more complex backstory for Jafar. The song “Golden Rule” serves as a flashback, where we see how Jafar became a Vizier. He is a bright-eyed, young man with dreams of making the city a great place by rising to a position of power where he can do good. As he is ultimately still a part of a Disney tale, his ‘goodness’ is simple. He believes that everyone should follow the golden rule, which is to treat everyone with respect - essentially, “treat others the way you want to be treated”.

But in the following number, which is a gorgeous inversion of this song, instead of the “golden rule”, the Sultan’s advisors “follow the gold AND rule”. Just to drill it all in, the old-timey swing of the first song, takes a sleazier tone that feels more like a villain song Dr Facillier would 100% jam to. Here, we get the first taste of the complexities of Jafar - despite his goodness, he is in a world where no one in positions of influences thinks like him.

The audience is able to pick this up because of how well Twisted understood how good lyrics work. The sound is all Disney for obvious reasons, but the lyrics perfectly balance telling the audience exactly what is going on, and making them feel it. As Sondheim described, “lyrics have to be underwritten. I firmly believe that lyrics have to breath and give the audience’s ear a chance to understand what is going on”

This all culminates in the most important song of the whole musical. In the song Twisted, Jafar starts with an intense internal conflict, before a whole host of Disney villains are introduced and added to the humanisation across the whole musical. But the most important part of the song is at its end, when Jafar, after hearing the reasons the other villains are seen as evil, decides that his reputation is less important than the fate of the city:

What remains of a man when that man is dead and gone? Only memories and stories of his deeds will linger on. And if a man's accomplishments aren't in the tale they tell, Are the deeds that go unheralded his legacy as well? If a war breaks out tomorrow we'll all have hell to pay. Why protect my reputation? I'm a dead man either way.   How will they tell my story? How will they tell my tale? Will anybody even care? The question then is whether 'tis nobler in the mind to be well liked but ineffectual, or moral but maligned? I'll never be a hero all the citizens adore, but if I hide to save my life what has my life been for?   What has my life been for? The road ahead may twist, but I will never swerve. I'll give them all the unsung anti-hero they deserve! I've nothing left to lose, so the only path to choose is twisted! Let them twist my words let the people scorn me, Who cares if no one will ever mourn me?   Let them bury the side of the story they'll never learn! Let the truth be twisted. Let my life be twisted. I'll be twisted, it's my turn!

By accepting his fate, we see the culmination of all the wrongs that Jafar experienced becoming his final 'form'. This is the Jafar we see in the original film, and the original Aladdin is now being reframed as a story told by the victors. But his actions are no longer evil - they are a necessity, and therefore we end up with a villain that is humanised into not just an anti-hero but almost the actual hero of the entire story.

Hollywood's Trend

Despite the musical being released in 2013, it contributes to the current global trend of humanising villains. It speaks to our obsession with seeing villains or anti-heroes as more complex than their original selves. 'Killing Eve' has Villanelle, the 1976 film 'Taxi Driver' has Travis Bickle. Even Disney has hopped on this trend with 'Cruella', an interesting take on a villain many considered to just be purely evil. The song Twisted even makes reference to Hamlet with "The question then is whether 'tis nobler in the mind/To be well liked but ineffectual, or moral but maligned", where Shakespeare's revenge-tragedy parallels Jafar's internal conflict.

This obsession speaks to our innate psychology - we see our own flaws in these villains being realised, and there is an instinctual desire to want to be 'bad' as well, but all our other impulses prevent us. This is what ultimately defines us as humans, and is something Hollywood has realised about the more cartoonish, black and white villains we all grew up with. Maleficent and even the musical Wicked take the same path, and with both being widely popular, we can clearly see how this works with modern audiences.

What is the most interesting about this, is how 'Twisted' does it slightly differently. The layers to it is insane, and Starkid takes full control of their medium to do things that films are often unable to. The suspension of disbelief is crazier in 'Twisted', and that's because the self-awareness of it feels more like a funny story rather than something the audience feels the need to be invested in. In taking a satirical tone, we get references to practically the entire Disney catalogue, with the melodies and tones of 'Beauty and the Beast', 'The Lion King', 'The Little Mermaid' and so much more being heard throughout the musical. While not something that a mainstream Hollywood audience would likely take interest in, the show's recognition of its own absurdity can allow us to see what Hollywood is doing as a whole, especially Disney with all of their remakes.

Disney is the best example because of its established catalogues of villains. What it has failed to do is give us a reason as to why certain characters need origin stories. Cruella was a cool movie to watch, and without looking too far into it, was subjectively an enjoyable film. But they handicapped themselves by taking a character whose entire plot line was attempting to take dogs to make a coat out of, which people have universally recognised as evil.

Maleficent is, however, a more adaptable character, as Wicked essentially showed. But again, the reason why it didn't work, and why something like Twisted did, is because it refuses to escape from commercial standards. It ends up being a feminist tale, which I'm sure many young girls would have enjoyed watching, but leaves a bad taste in your mouth when you think about it. This video perfectly summaries why people hate bad writing and NOT strong women. When you have a character that starts out strong, there is little direction you can take them (unless you can find a way to have them grow, which the Rings of Power failed to do with Galadriel). Maleficent is flawed, but she experiences little growth. Yes, she has a tendency towards revenge, but the softness she adapts at the end doesn't make sense when all she wanted was peace from the start. The story becomes an ouroboros - it is going somewhere, but where it ends up is what we confusingly already had at the start.

'Twisted' is very simple, but that is what makes it work because the audience fills in the gaps and becomes invested. Jafar is not really the flawed one - the flaws exist in the concerningly optimistic and corrupt society he lives in. His transformation occurs because his beliefs are in direct conflict with his world, and he ends up as a satisfying anti-hero who escapes from the villain-archetype in the minds of the audience, but can't do so within the world of the musical. This complexity is what makes the show so good because it spawns organically. It's not manufactured like Disney's films, but instead naturally builds when the audience connects the dots and truly empathises with Jafar.

While this is certainly not a complexity that mainstream media will likely be able to accomplish due to the industry's need to tick boxes rather than tell a compelling story, the one lesson they can learn is what villain to pick. Not every villain needs to be humanised. There was no need for Cruella to be humanised, she could just be evil for the sake of being evil. A bridging point exists in movies like 'Silence of the Lambs', where Hannibal is definitely evil, but the audience is fascinated because of how he is evil. The audience's mind bridges the gap between the evil acts we are told he has committed, but the eerie calmness we witness throughout the film. This is where the complexity of the story exists, and there was no need for the film to push to "humanise" him because in a dark, macabre way, he is human.

So while it is unlikely we will see this level of intriguing complexity, the next time you watch a film, take a look at the supposed "villain" of the story. Perhaps there's more to them than meets the eye.