Sabor (Disney)



Sabor is the secondary antagonist of Disney's Tarzan and the tertiary antagonist of Tarzan 2. She was a female leopard who killed Tarzan's parents and Kerchak and Kala's son. In a way, she is the reason Kala adopted Tarzan. Her voice effects were provided by Frank Welker. She was introduced as the main antagonist of the first film but that was to hide it's real main villian.

She also appears in Tarzan II, but her role is largely the same.

Tarzan
In the Walt Disney produced animated movie "Tarzan", the meaning of the word was changed yet again, to "leopard", despite the prior existence of a different and quite serviceable Mangani term for leopard (Sheeta). The alteration appears to have been made for two reasons. The first was for factual accuracy; lions are in fact creatures of the veldt, not the jungle as portrayed in Burroughs's tales; in African jungles, the dominant (and only) large predator is indeed the leopard. The second was more aesthetic; Sabor, they felt, is simply a more evocative and interesting word than Sheeta.

The specific Sabor appearing in the film is the female leopard that kills Tarzan's parents and kills Kala's and Kerchak's child and is later killed by Tarzan in turn. This occurs during a running fight between the two that culminates when Sabor leaps down on Tarzan and plunges them both into a pit, and is incidentally impaled on the head of Tarzan's spear tip as the ape man raises it against the leopardess. Tarzan then calls out the famous ape man cry, as he lifts up Sabor's dead body.

Sabor also made a brief appearance in "Tarzan II", in which she chases a young Tarzan into a valley. She nearly kills Tarzan, but the sudden cry of the Zugor frightens her off.

Sheeta, the discarded original Burroughs designation, was later used in The Legend of Tarzan show as the name for one of two black panthers that attack together (the name of the other was Noru). Black panthers are actually a color variety of leopards and they do exist in African jungles, although they seem to be rare. Sabor has been mentioned in the series.

Despite being a leopardess, Sabor was portrayed in a very stylized way, with a body and head with strange angles, very long thin fangs, and scarce spots unlike those of a real leopard. This design contrasts sharply with that of other characters in the movie (like Kerchak) who were designed on a relatively more realistic style. As usual in film depictions of big cats, Sabor's roars are a mixture of sounds of several felines, including leopards, lions, and tigers but especially cougars.

Kingdom Hearts
Sabor features as a prominent antagonist and boss in the Deep Jungle world in the 2002 Disney-Square videogame Kingdom Hearts. After the main character, Sora, crash lands in the treehouse, Sabor attempts to kill him, but Sora beats Sabor back until Tarzan appears and drives her off. She later attacks Sora, Donald, Goofy and Tarzan several times but is always forced to back off. Eventually, just when Clayton goes missing, Sabor appears for one final battle with Sora, who kills her.

Trivia

 * Sabor is classified as a female leopard.
 * Her sound effects (growls, roars, and hisses) were voiced by Frank Welker.