| “ | You ever wonder what happens to a dolls soul when it burns? | „ |
| ~ The Rat King exposing his evil plan. |
The Rat King is the main antagonist of the 2010 Christmas fantasy musical The Nutcracker in 3D (released on DVD as The Nutcracker: The Untold Story).
In this version of The Nutcracker ballet, the Rat King is a dictator who has overthrown the Nutcracker's kingdom and leads an army of human-rat hybrid soldiers to take children's toys and burn them in piles as they are sentient beings.
He was portrayed by John Turturro, who also played Mo Flatbush in Mo Better Blues, Bernie Bernbaum in Miller's Crossing, Jesus Quintana in The Big Lebowski, Monkeybone in the film of the same name, John Shooter in Secret Window, the Goat in Green Eggs and Ham and Carmine Falcone in The Batman.
Biography[]
Background[]
The Prince was ruler of his kingdom until the Rat King released his army into the city center. The Rat King's soldiers emerged from metal tanks that came out of the ground and they marched through the kingdom. The Rat King overthrew the kingdom and his mother turned the Prince into a nutcracker. Now ruler of the Prince's kingdom, the Rat King enslaved the people and would burn everything, including the children's toys, from within factories in order to maintain an enormous smoke cloud that would block out the sun, since rats were afraid of sunlight.
The Nutcracker in 3D[]
The Rat King's men discover saboteurs trying to detonate a bomb inside his base and bring them to him. The saboteur says that he will be nothing more than a mangy, dirty rat, so he performs a magic trick by cracking a walnut open with the saboteur's head. The Rat King snaps his fingers, conjuring up a band and he sings a musical number about his evil doings. The song ends with the Rat King killing his great white shark in a tank for no apparent reason. After the song, the Rat King orders his men to take the saboteurs away. Soon after, the Rat Kings spies, the Bat Rats, arrive and inform the Rat King that the Prince is still alive and the curse that turned him into a nutcracker was broken.
The Rat King goes to visit his mother, The Rat Queen (Frances de Latour) to inform her that the spell on the prince had been broken so she recasts her spell, turning the prince back into a nutcracker. Also, she's given a strange drink that causes her eyes to bulge. The Rat King, Queen and his army sneak into the family house in their rat forms, kidnapped all the toys and asks Mary and Max to join them. The Rat King asks Sticks the Little Drummer Boy to play him something, but refuses. Outraged, The Rat King rips of Sticks' head and tosses it around like a ball. After that, The Rat King takes the toys away. Mary threatens to tell her father on them, but The Rat King tells her that she can't even convince him that they're real. He influences Max to join him and they get away on their rat bikes. So Mary tries to get help from Gielgud who was left behind. They travel through a magic mirror into the the Nutcracker's city where they find that the sky is covered in smoke because the Rat King is burning piles of sentient toys with crying children being rounded up. The Rat King performs an over the top musical number during the devastation and he takes photos of the crying children while hollering like a madman.
Mary saves the Nutcracker from getting burned, but the spell turned him into an inanimate toy. The fairy tells Mary that she has the power to bring the Nutcracker back to life: The power of love. Her loves reverses the curse and the Nutcracker is turned back into a real boy. This inspires the workers to rebel against the Rat King's army causing the Rat King and Queen to retreat. So, the chase is on to catch Mary and the Prince. The Rat King kidnaps Mary as they take her and Max about a helicopter. They try to get away, but the Prince and Gielgud try to stop them, causing them to crash on a pile to unburned toys. Completely defeat and out of power, the Rat King and Queen transform into rats and get away in the sewers, where they are never seen or heard from again, and the Prince rules his kingdom again.