In what movie was the villain actually right?


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This guy right here:

Shere Khan from the Jungle Book live action adaptation.

When he first spots Mowgli he intends to kill him, he reminds everyone of the law of the jungle that says that men are forbidden, and that the wolves are the ones breaking the law by taking him in.

“Shere Khan: Shift your hunting ground 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!”

And there’s a good reason for that: when man goes into the jungle it brings the red flower (fire), and the red flower destroys anything it touches. Most of the law of the jungle is precisely to prevent man from going there, as it doesn’t only forbid it from the jungle, it also forbids the jungle animals from going into the man’s villages or kill its livestock. And he has reason to fear them: he was the one that killed humans that were (in his view) trespassing the jungle (Mowgli’s parents), as the law of the jungle says, and was heavily burnt because of it; he bears the red flower scars all over his body and on his eye.

His goal is to kill Mowgli the man pup before he becomes a grown man and brings the red flower and its destruction to the jungle, but he follows the law which decrees that animals won’t kill each other while there’s a drought, to make it possible for everyone to drink water safely.

So, what does Mowgli do?… he was found as a baby, raised on the law of the jungle (even if his very presence was breaking it), and according to the law he is given the choice to leave and go live with the humans… instead of that he does exactly what Shere Khan warned everyone he’d do, even before becoming an adult man: he goes into the man village, grabs the red flower and brings it to the jungle to use as a weapon, burning everything on his path, causing a huge forest fire.

How many animals died in the fire? How many more lost their homes, their food, their families? The only reason the entire jungle didn’t burn out because of him was that the elephants were around and were able to divert the river and put down the fires.

And yet Shere Khan was the villain and Mowgli the hero.


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