Sabor's Mentality, a look into the depths of a hunters mind(but first a few words about Animals in Animation Every character in a story should have plausible motives for his or her actions, Animated movies characters are no different and most characters tend to show human minds inhabiting the characters, while this is fine and dandy for a human character(Tarzan or Jane) It makes the animal characters function like people in animal suits. Unfortunately in most movies this is the norm, Lets look at an example from earlier Disney animation. The jungle book, Baloo's charm and persona was very human, and as in many of the Disney movies animators used the actors voice to sculpt the character. Both of the great cats(Bageera and Shere Kahn also suffer from this, both decidedly acting very British in their behavior and certainly more reserved than the hunter and carnivorous cat's they are.) Logical motives suffer when the people in suits theory rears it's head. Why do Bageera and Baloo help? No instinctive reason would make them take care of Mowgli, the wolves acceptance of him was suspicion but could be waived for simplicity sake. I will get into their possible justification next. Now let us look at Tarzan, He is immediately adopted by Kala in a very reasonable circumstance, similar in make up Gorilla's and humans(unlike human and wolf), and the mother was suffering from loss(Unlike the wolf pack who just had room for the boy), this is far superior to place a feral boy in his animal parents care. Even though the apes are far more animal than the Jungle book cast they still are blessed with the powers of speech. this is a necessary for the simple reason that a silent movie wouldn't do well in this day and age(though I would think it would be interesting using a narrator to do voice oversee). Even the great animators at Disney rarely try their hand at animating animals, though occasionally they come close with silent ones that use human gestures and reactions to facilitate their natural grunts and whistles(Pegasus from Hercules, ) rather than antropormorphic hybrids of varying levels. Most of the time the animal like characters are villains, the only good creature I could recall was Meeko from Pocahontas, compare this to the villains, The Wolves from Beauty and the beast and the far more complex Sabor from Tarzan) What does this have to do with the statement above? It is a foundation that dictates why Sabor is an Animal, a character without the simple human aspects of 95% of Disney's animal cast, in order to enter her mind this must be clear. Now we can examine the decisions of her life from an animals vantage point. She first finds Kala's infant, a small prey that can't fight back, foolishly wanders away from it's bigger parents, a easy meal for a hunter, nothing more in Sabor's mind) The next assumed action is the slaying of Tarzan's parents with an intent to devour young Tarzan, more than likely Sabor heard Tarzan cry or scream and went to investigate, waiting till his parents left, he moved in for the kill, unfortunately one or both of Tarzan's parents returned before Sabor could make the final pounce on young Tarzan, and struggled against the leopard, calling the other parent if not already present. Sabor wins the struggle and hides in the rafters to give herself a chance to escape if more humans enter and pose a threat to her. When Kala appears the already tiered Sabor goes into a furious attack at the threat of losing her hard fought meal, the struggle ends up with a humiliated Sabor lucky she didn't break anything vital while strung up, and thus we see little more of her till Tarzan is an adult, in this time Sabor must have hunted and killed many hundreds of other beings in the jungle, varying in danger between infants of various species with probably the occasional gorilla(The largest prey she would be able to attack with a decent chance to avoid a maiming injury(attacking a full grown elephant or hippo makes your career as a hunter woefully short), the upshot of this is that she doesn't see any one attack as anything special, mundane and very ordinary, at least done every four days or so. So what reason in her mind would make attacking Tarzan as an Adult different. She makes her initial attack on Tarzan and his little group, as she suspects they all scatter, unfortunately she runs into Kercheck, after a struggle she has defeated the large gorilla and likely been wounded a little herself, again she is robed of her victory when Tarzan stands between her and the downed Gorilla, unfortunately sabor remembers the initial humans she killed, and thinks that Tarzan has no real means of attack, a cardinal error but one that can be understood. Nothing in her experience has used a non natural weapon against her. Sabor attacks until she feels the spear point cut her, infuriated with anger from being wounded her mind becomes focused on only one thing, killing Tarzan, ignoring both Fatigue and the fact that she was ambushed, not the other way around she continues to play cat and mouse with Tarzan, chasing him around for a significant period, burning energy all the while. Sabors final moments must have been clouded in fury as she brutally assaulted Tarzan only to end up being stabbed in her chest by the sharp stone spear end Tarzan managed to reclaim before her lunging attack connected. Sabor was an animal from beginning to the end, but she was an excellent portrayal of the animal at all times. Had fate been a little kinder Tarzan would be feeding the worms while Sabor continued to haunt the jungle..
