Thread:LostGod2000/@comment-27586321-20141021174328/@comment-1762629-20141021222012

Oh, that's tough. Now, one on hand, Jenner is a very effective villain; probably as effective as say, Scar, and he was a deadly realistic villain as well, especially for an animated villain. Ratigan never managed to be genuinely menacing until the climax and had the drawbacks of the classic cartoon villain, while Jenner was a threat to be taken seriously that, astonishingly, a few people can actually relate to.

However, this doesn't mean Ratigan isn't any fun. Vincent Price does a great job just hamming it up in the rat's body. The character is animated well to go along with this. When you have the deliciously hammy Vincent Price just having a blast in any film, the character tends to be memorable. Being a standard cartoon villain isn't anything bad, either; it's just that his evil deeds were played for laughs for the most part while Jenner's murder of Nicodemus (and proceeding rampage and near-murder of almost every named major character in the movie) made him an effective, serious, and credible threat.

But there's one part that sticks out to me that I've always noted: the Villainous Breakdown of both. This lends itself in Ratigan's favor because by the time he breaks down, Ratigan loses all sanity and becomes terrifying, becoming a deadly threat in his own right. Jenner, on the other hand, was within a hairsbreadth of victory, and literally decides to screw up everything he's worked for by attempting to kill Mrs. Brisby because he got impatient. The Magnificent Bastard manages to quickly lose all of his magnificence and botch up his plan in the most stupidly overblown retribution, and because of this it didn't take long for Justin to figure out just who killed Nicodemus.

As for the final battles that happen during these breakdowns, I can't really say because they were both amazing. Ratigan's fight employed some of the first computer animation and history and felt huge because of it while also showing the feral animal that Ratigan was all along. Jenner against Justin was really good because a lot more actually happened. As opposed to Ratigan just beating up Basil until being done in by the (rather deus ex machina-y) clock's toll, Jenner's final fight has both the hero and the villain fighting in equal measure while Jenner also reveals who he was, a power-mad rat who only wanted to take what he could.

As for a final judgment, it's close. However, I might have to give it to Ratigan. Despite Jenner's threat level, he had relatively small screentime, and I don't even know the name of his voice actor. Ratigan, on the other hand, was enjoyable to watch, funny, memorable, and the final battle with him still managed to amp him up to a vicious threat even in spite of the cartoony villainy that preceeded it. My opinion is ultimately in Ratigan's favor, the world's greatest rat.