Quote Originally Posted by The Glyphstone View Post
Who else would make sympathic-villain remake material? Cruella? Jafar? Frollo? Gaston? The last one could be interesting if you framed it right.
Cruella doesn't work because it's near-about impossible to reinterpret her without making a fully new character with entirely different goals. A rich woman kidnapping and killing someone's dogs to make a fur coat to add to her collection isn't something you can really rationalize with today's audiences. It's utter sadism at worst and amoral greed at best. Unless you're going to paint her as mentally ill, which, while understandable, isn't the kind of sympathy you'd want to evoke for such a movie.

Jafar could work if you make it more of a Macbeth anti-hero thing. Particularly as the original movie ignores any nuanced political issues and makes Jafar merely a power-hungry usurper, give him more of an external motivation for why he thinks the Sultan needs to be replaced and I think most of your audience can get behind him.

Frollo shouldn't have been a Disney character in the first place. Yes, he can be sympathetic in a wider everything-is-terrible Victor Hugo sense, but I still don't want to sympathize with the man, for he is awful.

Hercules' Hades could make a great sympathetic character. Particularly as Hades isn't really a villain in his own mythology - at least relative to the Greek pantheon - but even with the slime-ball James Woods version you could find a more Loki-esque character. I personally would love to see a movie premised on the trials and tribulations of the god of the underworld.

You could do one with Captain Hook. I've seen several adaptations which re-frame him in a more sympathetic light than being a moustache-twirling buffoon, including Disney's Once Upon a Time. Frankly, Peter Pan makes a better villain for me conceptually, in an amoral fey-like way. Granted by that same token, this has been done.