Uncle Max is one of the main characters of Disney's 2004 film The Lion King 1½, midquel to the 1994 film The Lion King. He is Timon's uncle.
Background
Personality
Max is flinchy, irritable, easy to disappoint, a stickler for the rules, and very pessimistic about life in general. He is especially against the concept of being eaten. He is also incredibly paranoid and prone to tangents about his pessimism, which often make his nephew doubt his sanity.
Physical appearance
Max has scruffy gray fur on his head and fur that has presumably dulled tan from old age. He has dark circles around his eyes, darker gray stripes on his body, and bushy eyebrows. He is overall slender, although having a slightly pudgy tummy.
Appearances
The Lion King 1½
- “Max: "She's right! We're food for other animals! A movable feast! Feared by no one and eaten by all!"
Timon: "But when they die, they become the grass and we eat the grass...right?"
Max: "Not exactly, we can't digest grass. We're grass intolerant..."” - “Max and Timon, parodying young Simba and Mufasa's exchange on Pride Rock”
- ―Max[src]
Uncle Max is the uncle of Timon, and it is assumed that he is the brother of either Ma or Timon's deceased father. He lives in a colony of meerkats, far from the Pride Lands. In the film, Ma asks him where Timon is until the tunnel is collapsed by Timon's "handy work". Because Ma wants Timon to fit in with the meerkat colony, she requests of Uncle Max to assign Timon to lead the sentry duty. At first, he is very reluctant, but he ends up mentoring him. When Timon is caught off-guard singing "That's All I Need" while on sentry duty, he was nearly eaten by Shenzi, Banzai, and Ed, who infiltrated the colony, but he recovers.
Later on in the film, Rafiki tells Ma that Timon is "looking beyond what he sees" and Max (though he at first tells Ma this was crazy) follows Ma as they go look for Timon. Near the climax towards the first film's final battle, he is reunited with his nephew Timon and meets Pumbaa. Timon and Pumbaa make a plan with him and Ma to build a trap (which to Max's delight involves lots of tunnels) to keep the hyenas away from Simba who fight his uncle who was really responsible for Mufasa's death.
Along with Ma, he digs a tunnel, with him singing, while Timon and Pumbaa stall the hyenas. The tunnel he digs with Ma initially fails to lead to Timon to finish the tunnel which leads to the downfall of Scar and the hyenas. When Timon finishes the tunnel, he hugs Timon so hard that he feels nearly chokes. Finally, he is present with Timon, Pumbaa, and Ma, as they see Simba take back his throne after Scar, is being killed by the hyenas for blaming the murder of his own brother on them. Max then celebrates their victory and gives Timon a choking hug.
Finally, he is seen demonstrating a pose in a session of tai-chi with other meerkats in the oasis, and when Pumbaa states he wants to watch the movie again, Ma tells Max that they're watching the movie as she rewinds it. Max comments he has brought extra butter to go with his grubs as he enters the theater.
Gallery
Trivia
- Originally, there was going be another meerkat in Max's place: Timon's father, but the character was deleted due to the film having too many characters in it. However, it is presumed that Timon's father is dead.
- Despite Timon's father being deleted in the final version of the film, some of his lines were transferred to Uncle Max and Ma.
- It is unclear whether Uncle Max is Ma's brother or not, but since Timon's father was deleted, it is more likely that he is on Ma's side of the family.
- Ma also refers to Max as "Uncle," implying that Max could be Ma's uncle and Timon's great-uncle. However, in the special featurette Timon: Behind the Legend, the label for Max says "Timon's Uncle".
- Max is Timon's uncle but refers to his nephew as "sonny boy" during the film.
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