Yeah, I hear you. I think the "villains are just misunderstood" trope started with Elsa in Frozen. It still bugs me that we could have had a cool - literally - Snow Queen villainess to add to the stable along with Maleficent - oh wait - um, Cruella De Vil - damn - well, anyway, we still have Capt. Hook (for now), Scar (for now), the Wicked Queen, (for now) etc. Anyway, if you want to see a Snow Queen done right, rent the vintage Russian cartoon "The Snow Queen" from Amazon. Warning: the film has its technical issues - lighting and missing scenes, etc. The film deserves a restoration. Someone get Putin on that!
To me, the only villain that deserves some compassion is Dr. Facilier. As I've said here before, he was a black man in an age when black people had little to no power. He found a source of power, and yes, he chose badly, but at least his turning to evil has some logic behind it. IMO, he should have been the leading man in Princess and the Frog instead of boring Prince Naveen. A sort of Beauty and the Beast thing where the bad guy is turned around by a good woman. THAT would have been a stellar film, as opposed to what we got: the first black princess spending most of the film as a frog. It IS, however, somewhat better than the mess that is the Maleficent movie (yeah, make the villain look good by making all the good guys cretinous morons, woo hoo). I haven't see the new Cruella film and have no desire to.
Anyway, if Disney does try a 2-D ANIMATED FILM about redeeming Facilier, I'd be first in line at the box office. But yeah, that'd be too cool an idea, and would take guts. Disney plays it safe these days. And the stockholders rejoice!
