The Voice-Over Bracket, Round 3 -- Day 2
One-quarter of the Elite Eight of the Disney/Pixar voice performance bracket has been decided. But today, there are two more matchups to vote on, to see who else is moving on.
Let’s go.
(1) Jeremy Irons, The Lion King vs. (5) Eartha Kitt, The Emperor’s New Groove
I will probably go against the grain with the voters, but I must live my truth. What this means is that I’m sticking with the top-seeded performance and going with Jeremy Irons for my vote. As I’ve mentioned before, my two favorite parts of The Emperor’s New Groove are Eartha Kitt and Patrick Warburton. But Scar, to me, is one of the great Disney villains because Jeremy Irons breathes such life and dry, dark personality into him. (Andreas Deja’s beautiful character animation does the same, but we’re only voting on the voice now.)
Scar is a terrifying villain: a lazy, pampered man who is less willing to lead than angry that he hasn’t been asked to do so. He orders his minions to do his bidding for him, even after he’s sucked the marrow dry from the kingdom he oversees. He’s strangely charismatic in spite of (or perhaps because of) his innate cruelty. He wants to control and dominate everyone, and probably hates himself most of all. Only after he’s gone does the land he oversaw begin to heal itself. Anyway.
I vote for Jeremy Irons.
(3) Jonathan Freeman, Aladdin vs. (2) Pat Carroll, The Little Mermaid
Two more great villain performances here. Jafar is sneaky, slimy, and genuinely disgusting. (It’s rare in Disney films for the bad guy to even briefly get the girl, and even rarer for the other characters to be visibly disgusted.) Jonathan Freeman’s quite good as Jafar, injecting personality into a dour-looking baddie. He’s played the character for so long, in so many different media, because he’s just that good.
But he’s not Pat Carroll. “Poor Unfortunate Souls” alone is enough to jettison her to the top of this battle (in part because Ursula’s not in a ton of The Little Mermaid). You simply cannot do better than her nastiness and disdain during this song, emphasizing that young women really shouldn’t talk up on land because silence is how men will be attracted to them. A brilliant song, yes, but Carroll’s liveliness adds a layer that even Howard Ashman couldn’t create with his lyrics.
It’ll be a hell of a battle in the Elite Eight if this shakes out as much, but I vote for Pat Carroll.