Charles Muntz

Charles Muntz is a famous explorer admired by Carl Fredricksen and his wife Ellie as children. Through the events of the movie, he tried to prove the existence of a rare giant tropical bird whose bones he found in South America, but others claimed that were fake. Insulted, he travels in a zepplin with his many pet dogs of whom he equips with special collars he invented that enables them to speak. They are lead by Alpha and his assistants Beta and Gamma.

Role in the Movie
In his later years he became extremely paranoid and dangerous, and he is hinted to have murdered other people he thought came after the bird. Later in the film he meets up with Carl and Russel and invites them over to his zepplin for dinner, telling them of his search for the rare valuable bird, whom Kevin is a perfect match for his description. After Russel blurts out that Kevin is his pet and the bird he's looking for, Muntz becomes convinced that they are out to take credit for the bird's existence,so he sends his dogs after them and they manage to escape by getting Kevin to fly over a cliff with her leg becoming injured by Alpha. The next day, their location is given away by Dug's (one of his dogs) collar and he captures Kevin using a net. Later, Russel goes off to rescue Kevin thinking Carl doesn't care about him, and ends up finding Kevin but Muntz ties him into a chair and dangles him over the ramp as bait for Carl who comes to rescue him and frees him. Muntz confronts Carl and they fight while Russel goes to rescue Kevin. Dug saves Carl from Muntz, no longer trusting him as his master. Dug, Russel, and Kevin make their way to Carl's floating house with Charles in pursuit, trying to bring down the house with a hunting rifle. He makes his way into the house and tries to kill them, but Carl shows Kevin a piece of chocolate which she is addicted to, luring her out of the house with Russel and Dug on her back while Muntz tries to grab a hold. He leaps out of the house and grabs Kevin's tail feathers, but gets tangled in the balloons which detach from the house, wich makes him fall to his death thousands of feet below. Charles Muntz was voiced by Christopher Plummer.

Trivia

 * Spike.com ranks him 4th in their list "The Top 10 Hollywood "Villains" Who Got Totally Screwed" under the section titled "What People Forget" is says "He never actually did anything altogether evil until the main characters boarded his zeppelin by force and attempted to steal his bird, at which point he tried to throw them overboard. What one has to understand is that he spent over 50 years trying to catch that bird. 50 years in the jungle trying to catch the damn thing and now that he has, some kid and an old guy that smells like prunes are trying to steal it back from him? He’s completely within his rights to have that bird on his ship! It was a legitimate capture in the name of science, and they’re trying to stop him because they think that’s mean? He didn’t even plan on killing the thing. He just wanted to get back his respect from the scientific community. Sure it’s implied that he attacked the other people who he thought were trying to take his discovery from him, but we aren’t given any details, so for all we know he just chased them off with his cane."


 * Charles Muntz is the first Pixar villain to fall to his death, but the seventh Disney Villain in overall to do so (after the Wicked Queen, Ratigan, McLeach, Gaston, Scar, and Frollo).


 * Also, Muntz is the third villain in a Disney/Pixar animation to actually die, preceeded by Syndrome and Hopper.