The most powerful person on Planet 51. General Grawl is the commander of the armed forces, ruthlessly dedicated to his mission to protect his planet from any —no, all— alien invasions, completely prepared to fight until the end. Strong, willful, and highly intimidating. Grawl's relentless (and rather mindless) pursuit of Chuck is very much informed by his dependency on Professor Kipple, whose apparent authority on aliens he never questions.
Described in the script as "handsome and stern; Burt Lancaster with antennae," General Grawl clearly stands apart from the other alien characters: taller, althogether more muscular, and with a suitably commanding bearing. Grawl's imposing physicality also provides an assuming contrast to the comparatively tiny Professor Kipple, who is never far from the General's side.
One of the core concerns with Grawl was that despite his obvious threat to Chuck, he wasn't particularly evil. "There were initial problems with Kipple and Grawl," Abad adds, "given that they are essentially the antagonists of the film. We played around with the dynamic between them, where Grawl was worse than Kipple and vice versa, but the aim was to have neither worse than the other."
Indeed, the amusing relationship between Grawl and Kipple exposes the General as somewhat more pliable than he'd ever like to admit, instantly ordering his own arrest when Kipple suggests that even he might be a mind-controlled zombie! Grawl is equally as reactionary as Kipple when it comes to Chuck and his apparent threat, yet he allows himself to be guided by Kipple's imbalanced view.
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