My Favorite Forgotten James Earl Jones Roles

January 17, 1931 – September 9, 2024

Hollywood has lost another cinema treasure. Word came last night that James Earl Jones has passed away at 93 years old. My condolences to his family and friends.

Jones had an amazing career in theater, movies, and television. Many of those roles were forgotten to time. I didn’t know he appeared on two different soap operas. He’s mostly known for Darth Vader in the Star Wars franchise, Mufasa in the good version of The Lion King, and maybe Thulsa Doom in the first Conan The Barbarian movie. Those are great roles, but he’s done so many stories, from pushing a man to turn his cornfield into a baseball park to a lemming on Sesame Street (unless IMDB is lying about that last one), Jones has done many movies and shows both physically and in voice roles. Everybody has their favorites.

What follows are four roles you might not know Jones played. I love Darth Vader as much as the next sci-fi geek, but it’s not the only role I’ll remember him for. Check these out.

A Different King: Coming To America

This is probably the more well-known role on this list but I had to mention it. I have yet to watch the sequel, but the original Coming To America is a fun movie. As King Jaffe, Jones delivers lines about how great it is to be pampered and kissed up to with such sincerity you can’t help but laugh at how little he understands his son. He even admits in front of his wife to having sex with his bathers and she totally accept that as royalty. (Maybe she does the same with hers?) It’s just how it is. I hear he passes away in the sequel, but it would be his second to last role as he got to play Vader one more time before giving LucasFilm the rights to continue his Vader voice in AI, which will never be the same. There have been other Vaders. There couldn’t be another King Jaffe

The Reading Rainbow Read

Back before LeVar Burton went crazy with the rest of Hollywood, Reading Rainbow was (and honestly still is) a great introduction to reading for kids. We all remember the theme song. What you should also remember is Jones reading Bringing The Rain To Kapiti Plain, the story of a herder who had to force a raincloud to make it rain on a drought-stricken plain in Africa. African tales are interesting, and it’s too bad we don’t get to hear more of them. The tale itself is already well written in a poem style that built on the previous lines like a less annoying version of “The 12 Days Of Christmas”. Read by Jones, it’s even more amazing.

Both Burton and Jones also starred in the Roots franchise, but I haven’t read the books or watched the movie. Burton of course was Kunta Kinte, ancestor of the books’ author, Alex Haley, and Jones played Haley in the sequel miniseries.

The Meteor Man’s Rapping Buddy

I wish I had found a longer clip, but Mr. Moses was a bit part in the first actual all-black superhero movie. Robert Townsend, at the time known for raunchier humor thanks to Hollywood Shuffle and his HBO specials, wanted to make a superhero that urban black youth could identify with. Not getting the type of movie they were expecting from Townsend, who does mostly family-friendly or dramatic productions these days, I think allowed this movie to fall by the wayside, and that’s too bad. It’s not the best superhero movie ever but it’s actually quite good, and Mr. Moses trying to be hip with the kids was part of that.

Reading The Raven For The Simpsons

The first every “Treehouse Of Horrors” had Bart and Lisa reading horror stories to each other. In one case, Lisa leads Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven. While Bart can’t relate to Poe’s style of horror, Homer isn’t the only one shaking after Jones’ reading. This is why my namesake’s armor in the failed sprite comic Tales From The Spriteverse had raven-themed armor, or at least that was my intention. I’m not sure I pulled it off, but that was the least of my failings with that comic.

Meanwhile, I saved the best for last.

The villain you didn’t know he played: The Flight Of Dragons

Rankin Bass is known for ThunderCats and holiday special, especially Christmas. However, it’s not all they dabbled in. The Hobbit and two of the three Lord Of The Rings books (for some reason Ralph Bakshi got the second) are also part of their vast library, and they took what they learned from those to make The Flight Of Dragons. Loosely based on a “reference” book about dragons by Peter Dickerson, which would also the name of the hero in this story, and including the story The Dragon And The George by Gordon R. Dickson as part of the narrative, the story follows the magical world trying to cut itself off from the world of Man to keep magic safe in creation, a plan opposed by Jones’ Ommadon the Red Wizard, who rejects science in favor of his dark magic. It’s a movie that utilizes its celebrity and voice actors well, showing that any acting job where the actors care about doing a good job leads to something amazing.

Not wanting to spoil the ending I went with this video so you’d have a sample, but here’s the final battle of science versus magic between Ommadon and Peter, voiced by the late John Ritter. It’s a great moment, a battle of words rather than weapons but just as dramatic, and one of my favorite TV moments. I’m not usually a fantasy person but I really like this movie.

A great performance by Ritter and Jones, as well as Harry Morgan as the Green Wizard, Carolinus. All three have left us with great stories, and we’re worse off for their passing, but better off for their having brought us those stories.

Thus we say goodbye to another legend, as James Earl Jones left to be with his wife in Heaven. Thank you for all the great stories you helped bring to live. Not bad for a stuttering kid from Arkabutla, Mississippi.