Scar (The Lion King) "handle[s] all of the dramatic heavy lifting." Even film critics who generally disliked the film tended to enjoy Scar's characterization and Irons's performance. Terrence Rafferty of "The New Yorker" wrote, "Among the celebrity voices on the soundtrack, two performances stand out," namely, "Jeremy Irons, as the villainous lion Scar" who "does an elegant, funny George Sanders impersonation." (Sanders himself had voiced Shere Khan for Disney in their 1967 version of "The Jungle Book"). Stephen Hunter of "The Baltimore Sun "described Irons's voice as "plummy-rich with rancid irony." Television Without Pitys Ethan Alter admitted to enjoying Scar, praising the character as
Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle in select theaters on November 29, 2018, followed by its subsequent digital Netflix release on December 7, 2018. It received mixed reviews from critics, who praised the cast, visual effects, and Serkis' direction, but many compared it unfavorably to the Disney film and criticized the uneven tone, calling it a "messy—if ambitious—misfire". In the jungle, Kaa, an Indian python seer, watches as Shere Khan, a crippled Bengal tiger, breaks jungle law by hunting down a family of humans, with only the child escaping. Bagheera, drawn to the scene, rescues the man-cub, Mowgli, and takes him to a family of wolves