Why "This is The Thanks I Get?" Failed As a Villain Song

You'll often notice in bad children's movies like Wish that the villain actually has a valid point, but because the hero has no adequate rebuttal, the writers make the villain kick a puppy or something so that the audience doesn't have to think about pesky things like nuance.

The one compliment I’ll give this song is that “This Is the Thanks I Get” is a great title for a hypothetical really great villain song.

It's not just the song. The entire movie failed to make Magnifico a villain like you said, which is so weird because he could have easily been a great one. Just make him sick and tired of granting selfish wishes to the point he secretly develop a deep sense of hatred and distrust in his people, eventually leading to him punishing everyone regardless of how good their wishes are because he sees everyone as evil

The dodododododooos in the chorus legit make it sound like this song is from a Target commercial.

Also, a villain song should be thematically appropriate for the location or time. "Charging rent" is too modern of a term for a medieval fantasy setting.

This song feels more like Kuzco's opening song than a villain song. Like Magnifico is a protagonist with a lot to learn.

"Hellfire" isn't my favorite villain song, but when you combine it with the song that immediately precedes it, "Heaven's Light", that makes for one of my favorite scenes in any Disney movie. It's not just Frollo's insane lust for Esmeralda, which he's unable to reconcile with either his religious impulses or his hatred of gypsies as a group, that makes that five minutes of musical theater brilliant; it's the contrast between that feeling and Quasimodo's ineffable happiness at being lightly kissed by her that makes it so striking. Both of these men interpret her presence as a kind of light, but in totally opposite ways. To Quasimodo, who's been hated and despised his whole life (even by the man who raised him), Esmeralda's kindness is a sign of God's love and it uplifts him. To Frollo, who has led a life of power and privilege, her beauty represents the first thing he has wanted and cannot have, and this enrages him. Quasimodo and Frollo are so different that they interpret the same person in utterly conflicting ways, and the central irony of this is that Frollo raised Quasimodo and thought that he had successfully imposed his values on his "son". There's a reason that these two songs are lumped together as one track on the movie soundtrack. Alan Menken wrote these songs to be compared with each other, and they demonstrate a brilliant insight into both the appeal and the moral pitfalls of the Catholic faith. The entire soundtrack is brilliant, but "Heaven's Light/Hellfire" is its emotional peak. P.S. I'm sure you and lots of other people have noticed this, but the musical sting that introduces "Heaven's Light" has the same basic melody as the chorus of "Hellfire", except it's in a major key.

"How Bad Can I Be?" from The Lorax walked, so "This is the Thanks I Get?" could stumble and fall. All jokes aside though, in an age that's vacant of Sideways, I'm really happy that you're filling that void. Really hope you get exposure in the future.

"I let you live here for free and don't even charge you rent" This is the songwriting we get

What grinds my gears the most is he isn't even a villain, they forced someone who made a utopia to become evil because someone threw a tantrum about who gets the right to grant wishes... This movie could have had great themes about how you must carry out your own dreams but there literally was no problems until someone forced problems to exist. Edit: that's a lot of likes 😳 Well because a lot of people have and will see this, stay civil and keep an open mind, this applies to everything :)

5:12 hot take. A song can be a pop song and a villain song if done correctly. For instance, the How Bad Can I Be song from the Lorax is a catchy pop song but also a villain song that does well with its gleeful tone because it's whole point is to be blissfully ignorant/careless which is why the cheerful instrumentals and tone fits so well with it (even though personally I think they should have gone with the more ominous "Biggering" song that they ultimately axed in the end.)

This is an addition to Hellfire because I love that song and there is a detail I absolutely adore. In Hellfire Frollo is begging Maria and God to free him of the spell Esmerelda cast upon him. At this a guard enters the room, his silhouette is clad in moonlight and we can't see his face and he tells Frollo that Esmerelda escaped. At that point God gave Frollo his wish, we can interpret the guard as an angel sent down to tell Frollo that he is free, that if he chooses he can redeem himself. He was given the hand of salvation BUT HE REFUSES! He wishes and begs for this but when he sees the opportunity to be redeemed his true colors show the most and he goes in pursuit of her once more.

I reading an interview with Alan Menken (the guy who wrote the 90's songs). It was when he was brought back for Tangled. Someone asked if he was glad to be back at Disney, and he said something like: I appreciate that they understand that it takes a special skill to write these songs. They could easily go out and hire any pop artist, but they know that it wouldn't be the same. Clearly, he couldn't have been more right.

The thing is, you can make a pop song evil, they just did it badly

I watched the movie in my native language (Danish) and my only complain was that it was quite pop-y and not what i expected out of a villain song. I went and found the song in danish and pretty much all the horrible lyrics have been changed to propper rhymes, smarter phrases, allegories and imagery. And example would be he sings translated "i let you live here for free, (if you) say please and thank you, then thats good/all i need/enough'.

For the infamous line: “I let you live here for free, I don’t even charge you rent.” could be fixed if it was something like this: “I let you live here for free, I would never charge you rent!” That’s less of him saying the same thing twice and more of confirming what he just said further. And for the chorus (second one specifically) it could be something like this: “This is the thanks I get?” “Just something that I can’t expect!” “It’s this that I won’t forget!” “Why is this the thanks I get!?”

It's not even like you can't make a poppy sounding villain song still work. See "You'll Be Back" from Hamilton which sounds like a Beatles song. The lyrical dissonance works to highlight how psychopathic and insane King George is.

The thing is, you CAN make a disassociated hero turned into a jaded villain work, but it requires the new hero to be wrong at some point and both of them meet midway. You CAN make a villain have a pop song, you just gotta be far riskier and go all in. Hell you can even make 'this is the thanks I get' sounds really cool, because it is ABSOLUTELY loaded with the gaslighting vocabulary that a narcissistic parent would use. Disney had no excuse for making such a bland movie, these were all ingredients that were EASILY usable into something VERY interesting, fun, quirky, and GOOD. They just... went into a boring formula. In movie making, Formulas are a great way to give a story a skeleton... but if you stick way too hard to it then all you got is a skeleton with some sharpie drawings on it.

I totally disagree with everyone who thinks that a bouncy pop song can't also make for a thrilling villain scene. Shiny is RIGHT THERE, guys. And it was even more terrifying because of his JOY at causing them suffering and turmoil, and his self involvement. The disconnect WORKED. And I for one would love to see more of it. This is the Thanks I Get was an absolute trashfire that wasted a good title tho, we can all agree there.

The one thing I love about villain songs is that they’re aware that they’re evil or are totally focused on what they want personally regardless of whether it’s right or wrong and the collateral damage it will cause to everyone else. They make it clear it’s all about them and they even enjoy who they are, where instead the villain in Wish just denies everything. He’s just not that interesting.