Kopponen

Evil-doer
Full Name	Kopponen
Alias	None
Origin	Tad, the Lost Explorer
Occupation	Leader of Odysseus Inc.
Powers / Skills	Control over his henchmen Robotic hand
Hobby	Working for Max Mordon. Leading expeditions.
Goals	Help Max Mordon find the Idol of Paititi (failed). Kill Tad and his friends (failed).
Crimes	Attempted murder Kidnapping Blackmail Weapons dealing
Type of Villain	Egotistical Leader

Kopponen is the secondary antagonist of the 2012 Spanish computer-animated film Tad, the Lost Explorer.

He is the leader of Odysseus Inc. bent on recovering the lost idol of Paititi. He is known to have a robotic hand, which he uses as his primary weapon. He is Max Mordon's right-hand.

He was voiced by Miguel Ángel Jenner in Spanish (who also played Jack Rackham in the film's sequel), and by Kerry Shale (who also voices Tad) in English.

Biography

In the film, Kopponen first appears when a local brick-mason named Tad Stones arrives from the airport at Cusco, Peru with a stone key regarding to the location of Paititi. He had his men to kidnap him, assuming that Tad is Professor Humbert, a close friend of the famous archaeologist Professor Lavrof. However, he soon realizes Tad's true identity after Tad fearfully shows his passport. Tad would later escape with the help from Lavrof's daughter Sara and her close friend Freddy, causing an annoyed Kopponen and his men to pursue them.

Through the first half of the film, Kopponen and his men chase Tad and his friends until they finally catch them in a hot-air balloon (thanks of one of Kopponen's men firing a tracking device which Tad's dog Jeff accidentally swallowed). The Odysseus men then take the heroes to their dig-site near the desert, Kopponen is shown to have kidnapped Sara's fiance Max Mordon. After having Professor Lavrof to use the key to translate the location of Paititi, Kopponen orders his men to take Professor Lavrof and Max to the location while having others to remain here and watch the others. Needless to say, Professor Lavrof had deliberately lied in order to throw Kopponen off the track while allowing Tad and his gang to find out the true location of the lost city.

After twenty-four hours of digging at the wrong location, Kopponen suspects that Professor Lavrof was lying. It is later revealed that Max was the one who hired Kopponen and Odysseus Inc. to help him find the lost idol of Paititi, and was the one who planned the kidnapping of Professor Lavrof. Eventually, Max, Kopponen, and their men soon learn about the true location, so they head over there. During that time, Tad learns of Max's true nature after witnessing him signaling two of Kopponen's men to kill him and Freddy. Fortunately, Tad escapes, and as he hurries to the temple, he exposes Max's alliance with Odysseus Inc. to Sara and Professor Lavrof, causing the former to dump Max. With his cover blown, Max orders Kopponen and his men to continue on with the search while holding Tad, Sara, and Professor Lavrof in gunpoint. During the journey inside the temple, Kopponen loses three of his men due to the fire ball booby trap of the temple, but he is anyway able to reach to safety along Max, his remaining men and Tad's party.

After reaching a room full of quipus, Max ends up pulling the wrong one, causing the floor to break apart, sending the rest of Kopponen's men to fall to their doom. During his attempt to pull the right Quipu to open the chamber to the idol, Tad manages to defeat Kopponen by using a grappling gun to detach Kopponen's robotic hand from a Quipu, sending Kopponen to fall to his doom below. Of course, Max didn't care less about the fate of Kopponen and his men and carried on to uncover the idol himself, which only sealed his fate.

Gallery

Kopponen's villainous breakdown

Kopponen's defeat

Trivia

• Kopponen seems to be a parody of Major Arnold Ernst Toht, the secondary antagonist of Raiders of the Lost Ark, the first film of the Indiana Jones film series (which Tad, the Lost Explorer parodies): like Toht, Kopponen wears glasses, serves as a right-hand to the film's main antagonist (a mercenary archaeologist) and can be considered more dangerous than him.
  • Even more, though not confirmed, Kopponen's robotic hand could have been inspired by Toht's early character designs, as one piece of concept art of the character by the late Ron Cobb included Toht being half-cyborg, wearing a metallic arm which could turn into a machine gun or a flamethrower, but George Lucas dropped the concept, deeming it "too futuristic" for the film's 1930s setting.