10 Villains Who Were Completely Screwed By Movie Adaptations

5. Ursula -€“ The Little Mermaid

In Disney's The Little Mermaid, Ursula the sea witch is like a tentacled Rumplestintskin, cutting evil deals with terrible small print designed to trick unsuspecting merfolk out of their souls,and generally enjoying her status as a grotesque, heinous trickster.

She is a monstrous creation; an abomination designed to be the antithesis of the beautiful and virtuous merfolk kingdom, who exists only to profit from the hopeless dreams of innocents who are doomed the minute they seek her help.

In short, she's one of Disney's most enduring villains ever conceived.

The Truth

Don't worry, we're not suggesting for one minute that there's a half-Octopus lady witch living under the sea looking like a terrible transvestite.

But the sea witch does exist in the original Hans Christian Anderson-penned fairy tale, which Disney based the cartoon on, and while she was an unnerving presence, she was never as openly evil as Ursula. She appears to make the deal with the mermaid, swaps her tongue for legs and pretty much leaves it at that.

And rather than being the conniving trickster of the Disney flick, the sea witch is presented in a much more favourable light - the caveats of the deal with the Little Mermaid are sacrifices that must be made for the great pay-off of a soul (in this mythology, mermaids don't have souls, but live for 300 years, which is part of the inspiration for the titular character's longing to be human.) She is not needlessly torturing the mermaid, but rather teaching her the value of having the things she lusts after, and while the contract comes with some serious clauses, they are not hidden, and the little mermaid knows the cost of her decision.