Villains Profile: Shere Khan

Hello & welcome back to A Look at Disney and today, we continue our look at villains of films that are being remade. And this one is timely as this week, we are looking at Shere Khan and this weekend, the remake of The Jungle Book is being remade. And so far one of the most praised aspects of Jon Favreau's remake is Idris Elba as Shere Khan. 

And today, we are going back to the 1967 original to look at the original lord of the jungle. As always, this'll include Voice Actor, First Appearance, Personality, Grand Desire, Lackey, Demise, & Is Shere Khan A Good Villain? With that out of the way, let's begin.

Voice Actor

George Sanders

George Sanders played Sere Khan with grace & dignity. Making Khan seem like a charmer and a bit suave. Making Khan seem as though he is higher up than every other animal in the jungle.  Sanders' British accent helped to elevate Khan into a classy type villain.   Interesting note,  Sanders also played Mr. Freeze in the Adam West Batman.

That was interesting to note.   Sanders did a fantastic job playing Shere Khan and is easily one of the best aspects of the movie and his voice performance truly makes for a memorable villain.  

First Appearance

Shere Khan doesn't until late into the film but he is built up throughout the film and you can feel his presence looming.  Making it clear that he is a threat and one that is to be taken seriously. And when he does make his first onscreen appearance, we see him stalking a deer and this sets up what kind of villain he is.  

He sees anything smaller than himself as prey.  

Personality

He's the Lex Luthor of the Jungle.  

... Not that one. More like this one...

As I said, when talking about George Sanders, he's suave, charming and is able to keep his calm.  Unless angered and that is when his evil nature.  As the Villains Wiki states, he's arrogant and boastful. He approaches his victims with a calm demeanor such as when he thanks the vultures for keeping his victim for him. He's not known to be fearful of many things save for man's gun and man's fire. One of the biggest things that feeds into his cockiness is the fact that he considers himself, Lord of The Jungle and this is brought up, when the vultures refer to him as "Your Highness".  Again, as I said up top, he has a very classy demeanor that makes him very compelling to watch. 

Grand Desire

Shere Khan hates man, all man and wants to keep "his" jungle free of man and will kill all men that he comes across including the young man club, Mowgli and when he learns of the man cub, he makes it his mission to kill the man cub. This is what makes Shere Khan so terrifying. It's a simple goal but the effort that he puts into attempting to kill the young man cub is what makes the audience fearful of him. That and he before he'd kill you, he'd probably give you a backhanded compliment. And after that, he'd go in for the kill.

Lackey

Kaa

Shere Khan is listed as Kaa's on/off boss. And I do get that but they share very little screen time together and from the one big scene that they do share, you do get the sense that Kaa fears Shere Khan but at the same time, he seems to have no respect for Shere Khan and this scene also shows how powerful, Shere Khan is as he is not affected by Kaa's hypnosis at all and is able to resist it with ease.  

It's quote a sight to behold.  

Demise

The final fight scene between our heroes and Shere Khan is in a word, intense.

Mowgli, Baloo, and the Vultures put everything that they have into the fight with Shere Khan   And after clawing Baloo,  it seems that all is lost but thunder to the rescue as the Vultures tell Mowgli that the lord of the jungle is scared of fire and thankfully, a tree catches on fire and the man cub takes a tree branch that is on fire and ties it to Shere Khan's tail and that causes the tiger to run off. This fight just shows how much our heroes have to put in to stop Shere Khan and it'll take everything that they have.  And you are on the edge of your seat throughout this whole fight scene just hoping for Shere Khan to be taken down.

Is Shere Khan A Good Villain?

Absolutely, I'd put him up there with the best of the best. Shere Khan is easily one of the greatest Disney villains of all time and also in my opinion, one of the most threatening and the one of the scariest.  It's shown that just his name strikes fear in the animals and he lives up to the reputation of being one of the most frightening villains in the Disney canon as while his goal is simple, kill, it's how he carries himself and how he is willing to go about to get it, that makes him truly terrifying.  Join me next time as I close out my look at villains as I look at...

Dr. Terminus