“ | Shere Khan: Does my face not remind you of what a grown man can do? Shift your hunting grounds for a few years and everyone forgets how the law works. Well, let me remind you; a man-cub becomes man, and man... is... FORBIDDEN! Raksha: What do you know about law? Akela: Raksha. Raksha: Hunting for pleasure. Killing for power. You've never known law. The cub is mine! Mine to me, so go back to where you came from, you burnt beast! |
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~ Shere Khan fully expresses how much of a pity tyrant he really is. |
Ok everyone, I know this may come off as controversial and may even seem like a wasted effort, but dammit...I'm gonna try. I feel like this character has been rejected too many times in an unfair way, and I feel he deserves more discussion. I give you none other than Shere Khan from the 2016 film, The Jungle Book, as well as its novelization, The Strength of the Wolf is the Pack. I am mainly gonna be talking about the film, but I believe the novelization should still be acknowledged. I will be copying a bit from my proposal on his book counterpart I did under my old account.
What is the Work?[]
The Jungle Book is the 2016 live-action (I mean that loosely) remake of the original 1960s animated film, itself based on the Rudyard Kipling stories. The film revolves around Mowgli, a young boy who was orphaned as a baby and taken in by a back panther, Bagheera, who brings him to a wolf pack led by who would become Mowgli's adoptive parents, Raska and Akeela. Mowgli struggles to fit in with the other wolves due to being a "man-cub". But the struggle becomes even more real when the crazed tiger, Shere Khan threatens to kill Mowgli should he not leave his pack, which leads to Bagheera attempting to take him to the man village. But that doesn't stop Shere Khan in his pursuit of the young boy.
Who is Shere-Khan? What has he Done?[]
Shere Khan is a vicious Bengal tiger who killed Mowgli's birth father, which led to him being scarred by his father's torch. He then declared all men evil because of this, even though he was trying to kill him to begin with, and Mowgli's father was acting in self-defense. He then orders Mowgli's family to have him gone, not being specific about how he wants him gone. When they send him to the man village, Shere Khan follows Mowgli and Bagheera, almost killing the boy and Bagheera for interfering. The tiger then arrives at the pack, where he kills Akeela to bring Mowgli to him and puts the blame on the pack because he claims he made his orders "clear" when he never specified anything.
Shere Khan takes over the pack and tells a story to Raksha's cubs about a cuckoo bird and how the mother steals eggs from other nests while putting her own into said nests, which leads their actual young to die of neglect because she loved a bird that wasn't hers. When one of the cubs tries to come to Raksha, Shere Khan puts his paw in front of it before letting it go. This is basically his own not-so-subtle way of threatening to kill Raksha's wolf cubs, and it would be her own fault because she took in Mowgli as her own.
In the novelization, Shere Khan takes his evil actions a step further. As he's sleeping, a hungry Jackal arrives to give information to him about Mowgli's whereabouts in hopes that the tiger will give him scraps of food in return. Shere Khan is aware of this, and even though the information turns out to be useful, he pretends to grant the jackal his wish before he eats the unfortunate canine.
When Mowgli finds out about Akeela's death from King Louie, he grabs a torch from the man village and brings it with him as he goes to Shere Khan-burning several bushes and trees by accident in the process. Once he arrives, Shere Khan manages to convince everyone that Mowlgi is a killer just like he claimed he would become, which leads to Mowgli's own friends and family being afraid of him. Mowgli throws the torch into the river, and Shere Khan attempts to kill him, however, he is thwarted by Mowgli's friend Baloo the bear, Bagheera, and his wolf family. Shere Khan says he will basically eat everyone Mowgli cares about before almost killing them all to get to Mowgli. However, the man-cub manages to lead Shere Khan to a broken branch, which causes the unfortunate tiger to fall to the flames below to his death.
Miltigating Factors?[]
None at all. Nothing about the film nor the book version can ever qualify as an extremist. Throughout the film, it's made clear that he only uses his talk of how dangerous man is as an excuse to hurt Mowgli, completely neglecting the fact that his being scarred by Mowgli's father was his own fault for attacking him. He does not display any sense of honor, which is so accurately put by Rashka herself. I feel the fact that he kills Akeela despite him following through in his orders anyway certainly proves this. The novelization goes further into his reasoning for wanting to kill Mowgli:
"The tiger could already taste the boy. He burned his way through the Jungle, bright hide lighting the brush with flickers of black and orange as he cut through the night. There was no real fire, no spark of man's Red Flower-not yet but the fury in his belly could have razed the world. Only one thing could sate his hunger...He thought of his prey with sinister delight. He wanted his prey to be strong, to have fight in it. easy would be an insult. Easy was not the tiger way".
This quote alone makes it clear that despite Mowgli not even posing a threat, the tiger wanted to hunt down the young cub for sport. I also find it hypocritical how he wants to kill something that wouldn't be too easy because it wasn't the "tiger way", yet he targets a child. This alone emphasizes just how pity he is, especially since it's made clear he thought of Mowgli with "sinister delight" which also shows how sadistic he is. But, like I said I feel it's pretty well established in the film that he does what he does for sadism and power. He even cruelly taunts Mowgli by the end of the film about how he murdered both his fathers. In the novelization, he rejects Mowgli's offer for peace by trying to kill him one last time.
While Shere Khan does respect the water truce, he only does so because those specific laws, in his own words, "keep us safe". US safe. This implies he's only respecting the law as a means of self-preservation. In regards to him telling the story of the cuckoo bird to the cubs, as I said, that was his way of guilting Raksha and threatening to kill them.
Heinous Standards[]
Ok guys, this is the big thing that kept Shere Khan from counting both in the book and the 2016 film. This is that he failed the heinous standard as an evil king. To whom may I ask? Scar, from The Lion King, who used his position to condemn his people to die of starvation. I just have to ask. Why? Why are we comparing how he meets the heinous standard to a character from a different film? However, for argument's sake, I will address why he stands out alongside Scar in Disney's evil rulers. One of them is that Skere Khan has fewer resources than Scar. He lacks the roar of the elders, and he doesn't have Scar's large group of hyenas to do his bidding. Yet he manages to kill as many victims as he can despite his lower resources and also manages to be just as personally cruel to the hero. I also feel the fact that he has such a fierce reputation that the other animals are afraid of him, as well as the fact that vultures follow him wherever he goes, is enough to prove that he probably has a higher body count than the film shows. His killings of both of Mowgli's fathers further help signify a pattern. Plus, he does not care about the fact that his actions indirectly caused Mowgli to start a fire that endangered the whole jungle. Now that is a lot more death and destruction under his belt than, say King Louie, who has an entire army of monkey henchmen, yet he uses his resources to target only the heroes for his extremely vague plan to rule over the jungle with the "red flower". And there's no need to feel Kaa is a threat. She literally only appears once to try to kill Mowgli and that's all.
Conclusion:[]
A vicious tiger who murders a young boy's fathers and tries to murder him for pettiness? I say he counts.