Rapunzel, Rapunzel, Let down your overused non-biological mother problems!

WARNING! Spoilers for Tangled ahead!

I'm a big Disney fan. Like have my own Princess Aurora themed Tumblr Disney fan. So when I started seeing trailers and concept art for Tangled, I was excited. I did enjoy Tangled, really I did. The music was great, Rapunzel and Flynn were both awesome, all the minor characters were hilarious, and the art was beautiful, but there were some looming problems with it that just kind of made me want to punch something.

Mother Gothel is evil, and not in just the over-protective sort of way that she lets on to in the trailers, but honest-to-goodness, going to kill people to get Rapunzel's hair sort of evil. My question is why exactly does she have to be? I know that the witch in the original story was evil, but Disney bends over backwards to make these characters have personalities, to add songs to the storyline, and to make the storyline not creepy. So why does she have to remain flat and evil?

Basically, I'm just tired of non-biological parents getting the generic evil role for no good reason. Disney has recently backed off of step mothers at least, but the role of adoptive parent in the media has never been easy either. Even when adopted parents are awesome, the adopted child always has some weird unending feeling that they don't belong there. I had this same problem with Hercules, his parents seemed like really nice people, and Herc mostly just seemed to have a problem being awkward, something he would get over with time. But no, he insists that he doesn't belong, ditches his lovely adoptive parents and wanders off.

What bothered me most about Rapunzel's adoptive storyline though is that damn sudden realization scene. It's completely ridiculous! She has that little piece of fabric with the sun on it, then she suddenly sees suns everywhere, then of course she must be the lost princess! Only logical conclusion. Retention of memories from infancy manifesting itself in her artwork. What the hell. I really can't find words to describe how stupid I feel that is.

Now, this weird adopted-kids-must-feel-strange/adoptive-parents-must-be-evil thing doesn't always happen. Part of the reason I love Sleeping Beauty so much is that Aurora is adopted by the three good fairies, they live happily, clearly love Aurora, and she's rightfully shocked and disturbed to find out that she's a princess. Superman's parents are awesome too. Sure, Clark has his moment of needing to find out his back story, which makes sense, but then he always loves Ma and Pa Kent as his parents and looks to them for advice and guidance. As an adopted kid, I love to see stories like these, that have happy, well-adjusted adoptive families. It just frustrates me that there aren't more of them.