Hey, I’m back and I mean like….for real this time! No more bullshit. I’m here to stay and I’m going to prove it this month. Welcome my new section Character Development! Needless to say my first love is music, my second VIDEO GAMES. Not just any type of video games, but video games that have story, in-depth development and loveable and not so loveable characters.
Character Development is going to be my analytical and biographical pieces that reflect on certain game series characters and what makes them great or not so great. This month I’m going to be doing the Kingdom Hearts series.
Ok, I won’t go too much into why Kingdom Hearts is great, but lets just say that probably the biggest “WTF” moment I had ever experienced in gaming was when I first saw the commercial for Kingdom Hearts when I was 13 years old. Seeing Donald and Goofy of Disney interacting with Squall and Arieth from Final Fantasy automatically made me think that Disney was going to ruin one of my favorite gaming franchises as a kid. Despite my initial skepticism, this game won me over from the first cut-scene and I am still a huge fan of the series. This most unlikely
I could never get over how stupid this sounded on paper.
collaboration blew my damn mind when I was a kid and it still does now even with their latest installment Dream Distance Drop. It’s just a constant reminder that when Disney isn’t ruining radio and TV with cheesy, generically made pop stars that turn into raging whores, it is one of the greatest creative forces that man has ever seen and Kingdom Hearts is a true testament of that!
I would first like to remind you that these pieces are huge SPOILER ALERTs.
In Walt Disney’s A Sleeping Beauty, an evil fairy from an enchanted kingdom set her sights on the daughter of the royal kingdom, Aurora, and the princess is sent into a deep sleep only to be awakened by her one true love. Maleficent pretty much set the bar for “Disney Evil.” Her name literally means “of evil intent.” Her importance to the Disney franchise is staggering based almost solely on the fact that all other villains after were most likely blueprinted from her design, but very few live up to her status. On top of that, she turns into a fuckin’ dragon. That’s pretty cool for a film targeted mainly towards young girls. Jafar, Pete, and The Queen from Snow White are the only villains I can think of that live up to her standards.
Almost unanimously identified as the best Disney villain of all time, Maleficent’s role in Kingdom Hearts is actually quite interesting and well thought out as a villain. Many people questioned why Maleficent was even chosen in the first place to lead the group of Disney Villains that would bar the path of Sora and his companions, but when looking at her resume it’s quite obvious. Jafar and Hades sort of played out as her right hand men until their defeat, but Malificent’s calm, but eerie presence made her the most prominent choice as head honcho.
In the first game of the series, Malificent is name dropped not even five hours into the game, which immediately gives you the idea that this is the top gun in the evil organization trying to drown the world in darkness. At her side, she has the heartless. Pure darkness embodiments that go around taking people’s hearts and even had the ability to tap into the evil ambitions of men and use them as weapons. The most prominent example of this is in Tarzan’s Jungle in the first game where Clayton’s heart succumbs to his evil ambitions and the heartless use him in an attempt to eliminate Sora. On top that she also has allied Riku, best friend and rival to Sora, who she manipulates into becoming a vessel for the darkness to take control of.
Throughout the game, Maleficent is seen working with a group of Disney villains who want to take over the worlds that they’re opposing protagonists inhabit in an attempt to control all the worlds and drown them in darkness. This leads her to discover the heart of all worlds, Kingdom Hearts and in order to unlock its secrets she required the seven princesses of purest hearts; Jasmine, Aurora, Belle, Alice, Snow White, Cinderella, and, one of the Sora’s closest friends and possible love interest, Kairi. Despite Sora being able to defeat her Disney partners-in-crime, she succeeds in gathering them, but before she can enter the heart of all worlds she needs to retrieve Kairi’s heart, which she assumes has been taken by the Heartless. Unknown to her, as a sort of defense mechanism, her heart hid within the heart of Sora, but that’s beside the point. Seeing Sora’s nuisance to be no longer worth dealing with, Maleficent confronts Sora in what is assumed to be a final battle, but she is defeated. Then in a last ditch effort to get rid of Sora, Riku, now under the control of the heartless Ansem, unlocks the true darkness in Maleficent’s heart giving her the purest darkness to use as a weapon. She transforms into her dragon form and, though formidable, she is struck down by Sora. Ansem explains that it was in fact the Heartless pulling her strings and not the other way around.
So now you kind of know her backstory in the first game, but it goes even deeper. This is where I am about to tell you why her role as a character is so great. Despite succumbing to her weakness, Maleficent is able to revive herself in the second installment of the series and becomes more powerful. With Ansem now defeated by Sora in the first game, she then assumes control over the heartless once again in attempt to extract revenge on Sora. This already tells me that her resolve is greater than the weakness she has. This is the mark of a true villain. It’s kind of like a more childlike version of the Joker and Batman. Every villain in this series has met their demise at the hands of Sora and Riku, except for her and a select few others. Her resolve is her strength as is Sora’s and so no matter how many times they clash, they’ll both come back locked in a constant power struggle. The immovable object meets the unstoppable force, as they say.
She may not be as powerful as the forces of light that oppose her and she is certainly not as powerful as some of the other villains to come against Sora such as Organization XIII and the true antagonist behind the whole plot of Kingdom Hearts, Master Xehanort, but it doesn’t matter to her because no matter how far she is set back she will always bounce back and wait for the right opportunity to make her move. She is also very good at turning her adversities into advantages. For example, in Kingdom Hearts 2, the leader of Organization XIII, Xemnas challenges and takes away Maleficent’s control over the Heartless and turns them against her and Sora. She then protects Sora by taking on the leader and the heartless alone which is a fight she loses, but still survives and explicitly instructs Sora to find a way to defeat the Organization. Through this event, she understands that the heartless don’t ally with just anyone, but the strongest darkness. Knowing this she realizes that if Sora takes out this threat that will leave her to assume control again once that threat is eliminated. When power alone can’t save her, she’s crafty enough to know when to operate from the shadows until the best opportunity arrives. In the end it worked out, because the Organization did meet its end at the hands of Riku and Sora and Melaficent is still standing and still a great threat to Sora and the worlds he is trying to protect.
Maleficent’s greatest quality as a villain, however, is her powerful influence over the minds and hearts of people who dab in darkness. She has made seemingly heroes of the series do her bidding in a way that is always monumental to the series plot. The first example of this I explained
You can trust me, man! Take a hit of darkness man! It'll blow your damn mind, bro!
earlier with Riku in the first game. Even when Ansem was pulling the strings, without Maleficent’s manipulative words, Riku never would’ve succumbed to his own darkness, a powerful asset when trying to take over the world. Another example of this is in the prequel to the series Birth By Sleep. One of the main protagonists, Terra, is tricked into stealing Aurora’s heart by Maleficent simply through crafty persuasion and a few white lies. Whether it’s through politics or evil dragon fairies, rhetoric can sometimes be the more powerful tool in combatting your enemies than actual violence and Maleficent certainly has that gift.
Through relentless resolve, careful planning, strategic rhetoric, and dragon power, Maleficent is truly a masterful villain both inside and outside the game counsel and while many fans of the series are focusing on the future of Xehanort and the Organization in the hopeful Kingdom Hearts 3, I would not cut Maleficent out of the hunt for world domination just yet. Who knows, like Ansem (who is actually Xehanort’s heartless) did to her before, maybe in the end she will be the one to pull his strings.
Epic Quote: You poor simple fools! You think you can defeat me? Me, the mistress of all evil?!