“Maybe Satan just needs a little love. Maybe that’s why he does bad stuff all the time.”
I’ll never forget my devout Catholic mom’s reaction to that suggestion, which I made as an innocent child. I was living in a world of 1990s Disney princesses, where bad guys could only be reformed or banished, and the heroes always won in the end. My mom made it clear that the devil can’t be redeemed.
These days, entertainment companies are selling children something very different. There’s a trend in movies for yesterday’s villains to embrace their darkness — painted as edgy and attractive — while dragging the hero along a less conventional path with them.
There’s nothing wrong with a redemption story, and no sinner is beyond forgiveness. But this subversion is doing something else entirely. Now the villains are the main characters. They’re hip and cool. They’re not turning away from darkness; they’re figuring out how to channel it into the mainstream.
A new trailer for the upcoming Netflix movie “Steps” highlights this trend perfectly. The film is pitched as a fresh twist on Cinderella, told from the perspective of Lilith, one of the so-called “evil” stepsisters.
“So-called” evil. Lilith. Do you see what they’re doing here?
In the trailer released last week, Lilith breezily introduces herself as a misunderstood character, telling viewers they’re “smart, good-looking people” who “deserve to know the real story.” The animated character is dressed in black, chopping off her long hair, stomping a combat boot, and applying dark eyeliner and lipstick. Her skirt features a peek-a-boo skull. “This one’s for all my mean giiiiiiiirls,” the musical accompaniment from Charli XCX swells as Lilith finishes getting dolled up and kicks through the door.
There’s no mistaking that this is goth-lite for young kids and that Lilith Halloween costumes aren’t far behind. Notably, comments are turned off for the trailer on YouTube.
The movie isn’t out yet, so it’s unclear where her fate lies. There’s a chance Cinderella — a character revered for her beauty, kindness, and selflessness — convinces Lilith to quit her mean-girl ways.
The synopsis suggests otherwise.
“Tired of living in Cinderella’s shadow, Lilith (Ali Wong) steals the Fairy Godmother’s (Bette Midler) magic wand and hijacks the royal ball with her sister, Margot (Stephanie Hsu). This dooms the kingdom to the tyrannical rule of the villainous Priscilla (Nikki Glaser), who swoops in and snatches the throne.”
It continues: “Lilith must team up with Cinderella (Amanda Seyfried) to fight biker trolls, outrun evil henchmen, and escape the Screaming Woods. Breaking with the Cinderella story as we know it, they go on an epic quest to save the kingdom — but most importantly, to save their relationship.”
Netflix describes it as “equal parts classic fairy tale and badass quest.” Co-director John Ripa said the goal was to break the fairy-tale mold by making every character three-dimensional and worthy of a happily ever after. Co-director Alyce Tzue said her own life inspired the narrative — growing up as an artsy Taiwanese kid in suburban New Jersey, she often felt like an outsider and wanted to make a film for anyone who’s ever felt like “happily ever after” wasn’t meant for them.
But the original Cinderella story isn’t about out-of-place kids from New Jersey. It comes from ancient folklore and, like so many Disney adaptations, from the much darker Brothers Grimm version. In “Aschenputtel,” Cinderella’s stepmother and stepsisters have “black and ugly” hearts.
They force her to do heavy chores, mock her, and make her sleep among the ashes. They cut off parts of their own feet trying to force them into the gold slipper, and are punished for their cruelty when birds peck them blind on Cinderella’s wedding day.
That version is less appetizing, but in many ways more honest, than the subversive reboot Netflix is brewing. One important thing it does is draw a line between good and evil, leaving no room to question where one ends and the other begins.
This inversion of moral clarity is happening everywhere. In the upcoming adaptation of C.S. Lewis’s “The Magician’s Nephew,” Uncle Andrew is painted as bumbling and possibly well-intentioned rather than outright evil, as he was written. Lewis meant the character as an allegory for the inevitable outcomes of selfishness, cowardice, cruelty, and moral blindness. Daniel Craig’s version isn’t quite so dark.
“I’d like to say that his intentions are good, but I’m not sure that they are,” Craig said of the character in a recent interview with Empire. “It’s not to say that he’s cruel and mean and awful. He gets overexcited about what could be, and therefore overlooks the people around him and the consequences of what he’s doing.”
This treatment isn’t confined to fairy tales. Another example: the effort to paint Cathy Ames, the villain of John Steinbeck’s “East of Eden,” as merely misunderstood.
“[Showrunner Zoe Kazan] wasn’t interested in making her just a monster,” actress Florence Pugh, who plays the role in an upcoming Netflix adaptation, told The Atlantic. “She was interested in understanding her, and digging deeper, and giving her maybe just a moment for the audience to recognize, or for them to have empathy for her …. That was just so thrilling to me, because then it is my job to try and make that happen, and it is my job to try and get you guys to sympathize and maybe fall in love with her a little bit.”
Kazan confirmed Pugh’s read on the character, describing her work as staying true to Steinbeck’s original while “unfolding” Cathy’s nature rather than inventing something new. “Everything that’s in the series has at least a root in the book,” Kazan said. But Steinbeck meant Cathy to be a psychotic monster. He wrote her as someone born without a normal human soul, empathy, or conscience, a malformed creature who views humanity with total contempt.
Hollywood wasn’t always this way. Superhero movies used to give us bad guys vanquished by good guys. Even would-be villains found their way to the light. In Disney’s “Descendants,” which premiered in 2015, the children of storybook villains attend a magical boarding school on an evil mission from their parents. It easily could have become a statement on how bad isn’t really bad and good isn’t really good. Instead, the kids realize their parents are actually evil — and choose to embrace their own innate goodness.
In 2026, Disney would never.
The problem isn’t a matter of complexity. Real people are complicated. Real stories can and should explore why someone becomes cruel and whether redemption is possible. The danger is when the culture systematically refuses to call darkness what it is. It’s when “misunderstood” becomes the default setting for every villain and the only unforgivable sin is judging that darkness or expecting people to turn away from the bad to embrace the good.
Fairy tales once taught children that evil exists, that it has consequences, and that goodness is worth defending. When we invert that lesson, when we dress the stepsister in combat boots and call her the protagonist, we are confusing the obvious. It’s hard to believe that’s not intentional.
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