| “ | You have to do whats best for the company, and your momma. | „ |
| ~ The Once-Ler's Mother manipulating the Once-Ler. |
The Once-ler's Mother is the overarching antagonist of the 2012 adaptation of The Lorax.
She was voiced by Nasim Pedrad, who later played Gigi Caldwell in the first season of Scream Queens.
Personality
The Once-Ler's mother is a greedy and failure-intolerant woman who just cares for money and success. She is somewhat manipulative and abusive, especially to the Once-Ler, his eldest son. Judging from what we see in the flashbacks, she belittles the Once-ler for his business ideas and just starts to treat him well after his Thneed business proves to be a success, under the pretext that she was just trying to motivate him into striving to achieve his goals to make up the fact that she neglected him. Even so, she treats Brett and Chet, her two other sons, as workers or tools just because they aren't productive.
She also has a lack of business insight since she never takes into account of reserving resources (the tree) to create a long and stable business instead her greed blinds her to the fact that she willing to pressure the Once-Ler to chop down all the tree until nothing left to make the business function. Of course, when the Once-ler loses his business, she returns to belittle him and leaves him for good but not before she names Brett her new favorite child. In the end, her greed and short-sighted contribute greatly not only to the Once-Ler's downfall, but also to Aloysius O'Hare's rise to power.
Biography
The Once-Ler's mother helped cut down the trees and is the mother of Bret, Chet, and the Once-Ler. She is snobby, money-crazy, somewhat manipulative, selfish, and cruel to her youngest son.
She constantly belittles the Once-Ler, and was said that he would not amount to anything all his life. However, this was not the case when the Once-Ler created and mass-produced the successful Thneed, which has become very popular.
Even when the Once-Ler happily taunted his mother of his success as a businessman, she simply brushes this off by claiming that she was only motivating him into creating his business.
She is the one who convinced the Once-Ler's continue cutting down the trees, making her somewhat the true antagonist. Mostly its clear that she wants the Once-Ler to make the business more successful to keep her well kept. Once the last one falls, she says that she is disappointed and names Bret as her new favorite child (it is either because she was disappointed in her son for cutting down the last tree, that there are no more trees to cut down, or that the Once-Ler cannot keep selling Thneeds). She is the only villain in the film to get away with her crime but without the Once-Ler's money, she has to live the less luxurious life again, indicating that she at least gets her karma (unless she took the rest of how much money the Once-ler still had).
Gallery
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Trivia
- Despite the fact that she is a minor antagonist in the film, the Once-ler's Mother is a major factor that led to most of the film's events, essentially serving as the Greater-Scope Villain of the film: if she hadn't order The Once-Ler to cut down all trees for his Thneed business, the trees would have never went extinct until only just one Truffula seed survived.
- While the real name of the Once-ler's Mother is never mentioned in the film, many fans have named her "Isabella". However, this is fanon and thus isn't her official name.
- What happens to the Once-ler's Mother after the shutdown of the Thneed factory remains unknown, but it is most likely that she died before the recent events of the film, since the Once-Ler is now elderly. While the DVD commentary states that only five years passed after the flashback sequence and the present time (leaving open the possibility that the Once-ler's Mother is still alive), it's obvious that this isn't the case, as most people on Thneedville are implied to have never seen a tree because they were born after they went extinct, and coupled with the fact that Granny Norma remembers having seen trees when she was young and the Once-ler's older appearance, it's safe to assume that at least many decades had passed.
- The Once-ler's Mother seems to be much more hated by fans of the film than Aloysius O'Hare, the film's main antagonist, due to the fact that she is the one who made the Once-Ler destroy the forest in the first place, as well as apparently contributing to his miserable life, making her The Heavy of the film. Furthermore, O'Hare's rise to power is also attributed to her as the trees are the main factor that prevent O'Hare's fresh air business to be configured in the first place.
Template:Illumination Villains