The Dark Reflections of Villainy: Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022)

Fig. 1 - Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (Joel Crawford, 2022)

Puss in Boots the Last Wish (2022), directed by Joel Crawford, boasts a sizable cast of characters all racing for the Wishing Star’s one wish to grant. The eponymous protagonist, Puss in Boots, is met with resistance from three antagonistic forces: Goldilocks & The Three Bears, Jack Horner, and Death, each of which in turn plays the role of a villain, albeit in ways entirely unique to one another (Fig. 1). Jack Horner's Machiavellian mannerisms are played to be as humorous as they are threatening; Goldilocks & the Three Bears are played as sympathetic villains as Goldi grapples with the struggles of her adoptive family; and Death serves as a physical manifestation of Puss’ fears of mortality. If protagonists appeal to audiences through means of being likable, and admirable, then wherein lies the appeal of villainous characters that often serve as negative foils to these traits? Villains still garner appeal through their appeal to personality traits found within the dark triad, mimicking appeal tactics used by protagonists, or serving as not relatable people but as relatable struggles personified, as I will demonstrate in this blog post that examines the three main villains of Puss in Boots: The Last Wish.

On the subject of appealing to the personality traits of the dark triad, the DreamWorks spin-off film first introduces Jack Horner (Fig. 2). According to the framework of villainy outlined by Jens Kjeldgaard-Christiansen et al, all three elements of the dark triad are found in Horner’s character: He is a large portly man who crucially exhibits narcissistic, Machiavellian, psychopathic behaviour. Jack owns an assortment of magical trinkets that he nonchalantly threatens puppies with, and kills his own minions by accident due to having little regard for the well-being of anyone other than himself. The only explanation provided for Jack’s cruelties is that he’s jealous of magical beings, given he was only ever a forgettable nursery rhyme. This backstory is played more for laughs than sympathy, as it’s only briefly shown in a flashback gag, and Jack’s only motivation to pursue the wishing star is to have “All the magic in the world, for him, and no one else gets any. Jack’s immortal actions and psychology are balanced out with a Jiminy Cricket-type character who adventures with Jack in an attempt to correct Jack’s behaviour, and the two serve as a comedic duo of contrasting morality. Dramatic logic dictates that a despicable, unloving character such as Jack would garner little affection from audiences. However, these exact traits appear to be the characters’ greatest strengths in terms of appeal. In their study that analyzed villain positivity in audiences, Jens Kjeldgaard-Christiansen et al found that unmitigated agency—an agency that actively avoids communal concern—correlated higher with villain positivity than having the agency to make things happen alone (2021). Jack Horner's Machiavellianism serves as a fun reflection of our own dark desires to tell the little angel on our shoulder to quiet down and allow us to get what we want by whatever means necessary. Villains like Jack Horner garner appeal by allowing audiences to engage with dark triadic traits of the self (close, perhaps, to what Freud would describe as the instinctual ‘id’ of our subconscious).

Fig. 2 - The villainous Jack Horner.

A villain archetype rising in popularity within Hollywood storytelling is the righteous or sympathetic villain, a redeemable villain who attempts to appeal to audiences through positive traits underlying their antagonistic nature. In Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, Goldilocks and the Three Bears are portrayed as sympathetic villains, as while they are a crime syndicate seeking the wish, they are also an endearing family shown to care for one another (Goldi wishes to have a human family despite being adopted by the Three Bears). The film also has plenty of scenes in which the family’s antagonistic nature is undercut by humorous innocence, such as when the bear family attempts to steal the map to the wishing star from Jack and then devolves to asking for a dozen pies. In addition to the comical results of the bears' innocence contrasting their antagonistic exterior, their heartfelt familial bond also surfaces in how the wishing star map terraforms the land. When Goldi holds the map, the bear family cabin is formed, causing her to reflect upon her life with the bears. Mama Bear reminisces with Goldi, telling her that when she arrived at their cabin, their world became “just right”. Villainous characters may bear negative traits, however, the sympathetic villain archetype – however much a figure of fantasy they are – aims to create appeal through an understanding of the circumstances that caused such traits and humanizes such villains and their struggles in a way that audiences can sympathize and relate to.

Fig. 3 - The personification of death in Puss in Boots: The Last Wish.

Finally, Death is personified as an anthropomorphic wolf, armed with two scythe-like sickles and dressed in a reaper-like hood that physically manifests Puss’s struggle with his own mortality (Fig. 3). Puss is a cat with nine lives, although he spends most of the film down to his last life. The film's opening sequence shows Puss singing about how he is a fearless hero who has never been touched by a blade. This moment sharply contrasts with Death's first scene in which he draws blood from Puss and instills Puss’s fear of dying, a conflict that drives Puss’s motivations throughout the narrative. Death serves as a recurring personification of Puss’s fear of losing his last life, often revealing himself to Puss when he reflects on his past lives or in the middle of life-threatening situations. Villains serve as a vital counter-balance to the protagonist's story, and a Hero’s Journey (Campbell) often has a thematic core or moral to share revealing the story’s purpose. Death’s looming presence challenges Puss’s arrogance, his “legendary” solitary lifestyle, his ego, among other personality traits, and this conflict creates the film's overarching moral quandary. In one such scene, Death confronts Puss in the “Cave of Lost Souls'', a cave that bears Puss’s past lives. These past lives have Puss’s traits of arrogance and ego, and as the scene progresses, Death dips in and out of the shadows, shattering these past lives one by one. Tension is built as the lights of these rocks begin to vanish. Puss is then framed within Death’s scythe, as though he’s in Death’s grasp, and the musical score is a threatening, tense, low rhythmic strumming of a stringed instrument.

Death verbally tears Puss apart, cutting into how he lived his life frivolously (as we have seen in the earlier Shrek films introducing the character). Death also mocks Puss for “laughing in the face of death” with such egotistical arrogance before smashing the representations of those arrogant past lives. When all of the previous lives have been shattered, the cave becomes completely dark, leaving Puss as the last life left to either give up his arrogance, ego, and fear of mortality or fall in line with his previous lives. The audience may find themselves disagreeing with the moral conclusion of Puss in the end, however the struggles that a villain such as Death challenges its protagonist, and furthermore, its audience, to consider through a story’s narrative can be appealing due to the villain serving as a representation of a recognizable set of conflicts.

In conclusion, the villains of this latest Puss in Boots instalment provide a dark reflection of the human experience. Whether it’s through a form of cruel schadenfreude, or serving as a way to explore and understand negatively characterized individuals in a sympathetic and humanizing way, or even by being presented as physical manifestations of relatable human struggles, villains of all types of archetypes in Puss in Boots: The Last Wish playfully represent some of the nastier elements of the human experience.

**Article published: November 3, 2023**

References

Kjeldgaard-Christiansen, Jens, Anne Fiskaali, Henrik Høgh-Olesen, John A. Johnson, Murray Smith and Mathias Clasen. 2021. “Do dark personalities prefer dark characters? A personality psychological approach to positive engagement with fictional villainy.” Poetics 85 (April). Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0304422X2030259X?via%3Dihub.

Biography

Antonio Carrero is a University of Texas at Dallas Graduate with a degree in Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communications with a concentration in Animation. He was inspired by 3d computer generated animation as well as traditionally drawn animation for film and games alike and is excited to work in an animation industry that, as things look now, are going to blur the lines between his two animation inspirations. Earlier versions of this text were developed with the help of Dr. Christine Veras and peers from the Animation Studies course.