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
The Jungle Book (1967 film) with "One Hundred and One Dalmatians" and "The Sword in the Stone". However, after the disappointing reaction to "The Sword in the Stone", Walt Disney decided to become more involved in the story than he had been with the past two films, with his nephew Roy E. Disney saying that "[he] certainly influenced everything about it. (...) With "Jungle Book", he obviously got hooked on the jungle and the characters that lived there." Peet decided to follow closely the dramatic, dark, and sinister tone of Kipling's book, which is about the struggles between animals and man. However, the film's writers