The underlying problem with most of these “tired and disturbing trends” is that the proposed solution means doing a complete 180 and doing everything in reverse. More so, even, to the point where it doesn’t show up in the normal form at all. If not, they’ll still complain.
Its also worth noting that a lot of modern instances use a disfigured villain to either expand on their backstory and make them more sympathetic (IE, this character is a dick because they were tortured and psychologically damaged), which contrasts with the undamaged and unscarred heroes to show that the villain was essentially betrayed by life while the hero had it comparatively easy, OR to demonstrate that the villain is much more experienced than the fresh faced hero. A viking raider with twenty face scars is not likely to be pretty, but he has clearly been taught by experience compared to a well trained but sheltered hero. This establishes him as a total threat.
Also, the fuck is Vader doing on this list? Dude was the biggest badass across every star wars movie and tv series and arguably most of Legends to the extent that any time the Sith show up they have a Vaderlike lying around somewhere. He is regularly ranked as one of the most popular Star Wars characters (depending on how the ranking is done, 1-3 is most common). He is solely responsible for my Empire fanboying. And if you’ll notice, both of the things I said in the previous paragraph apply here. Vader was physically damaged and lost his family, establishing sympathy, and being able to survive wounds like that and still get up to kick all kinds of ass is intimidating as all hell. His wounds may slow him down, but he is a no legged man coming first in every ass kicking contest and everyone loves him for it.
There’s also the fact that not only does the inverse happen a fair bit, it regularly doesn’t even come up. There are plenty of series in which in villain is a perfectly attractive, able bodied individual. Perhaps they have some minor scarring to visually establish their badassitude, but casting directors know full well that the bad guys get to do all the cool shit and its fairly common for them to be as or more attractive than the hero.
There are also plenty of heroes which are disfigured or monstrous. However, when they show up half the fucking point is that their appearance hasn’t hurt their morality so it doesn’t get talked about usually. It does sometimes, but that runs the risk of looking like its being shoved in our faces to score points. And I really wish producers would remember that doing that often hurts a series.
Hell, 40k. The Salamanders Space Marines are typically considered the most noble and well liked chapter in the galaxy (admittedly, being noble and honourable in 40k really just means “don’t be a douche waffle”), often sacrificing themselves for the sake of saving civilians and picking up the slack in relief efforts while everyone else runs to get glory by killing Orks. They look like they were dipped in tar, with glowing red eyes. Scars and wrinkles end up looking like cracks in earth, making older Salamanders look like golems formed from freshly cooled and solidified lava.
Gargoyles has a bunch of at best rugged but more typically completely inhuman looking flying monsters who are regularly demonstrated to be completely wonderful and helpful people who attempt to do some good in the world despite having a reason to hate humanity that any audience would accept.
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