So, Disney is hitting it out of the park lately, am I right? I was as skeptical as anyone else about all the live-action remakes (and no power on this earth could compel me to see another freaking re-interpretation of Cinderella), but we all know how Disney is: when they get it right, they kill it. I'd nominate The Jungle Book for the 2017 Oscars, but there's just one problem: I don't even know what category I'd put it in.
The thing about the "live-action" Jungle Book is that it is not, strictly speaking, live-action. It's not even motion-capture like A Christmas Carol. It's got the green-screen sets of Star Wars, but none of the live actors--none of the grown-ups, at least. The film is comprised entirely of loose props, CGI jungle, and CGI animals voiced by (and occasionally, visually referenced to) A-list actors. The movie is held together, at its core, by the performance of one eleven-year-old making his acting debut. Think about that for a second. Maybe what Avatar, the biggest movie that no one remembers, really needed was a little, big-eyed kid at the center of the eye-popping graphics to give it some real gravity.
Or maybe not. On second thought, maybe a kid wouldn't have fixed Avatar. But I maintain what I said when Ian and I left the theater: The Jungle Book actually does what Avatar tried to do. It's immersive. It's special. It's different. And most importantly, it has what other CGI-fests often overlook (yes, I'm looking at you, Harcore Henry): humanity. Which is, quite frankly, an odd compliment to give to a movie that's 99% computer-generated animals, but that doesn't make it any less true.
We all know the story. Kid gets lost in jungle, panther takes kid to wolf pack, kid grows up and by sheer virtue of his existence manages to piss off a tiger who hates humans, kid has to leave the jungle and, as would we all, he resists the idea of leaving the only home he's ever known. As a child I was in love with the original Jungle Book, as were a fair number of my friends. We all could identify with Mowgli in some way. Maybe, like me, we were reluctant to move when our parents sold the house. Maybe we preferred the company of animals to humans. Maybe we just plain loved being outside. Doesn't matter, the point is that we were all rooting for the kid.
Which brings me to the first major change in Jon Favreau's reworking. In the original Jungle Book, Mowgli is one of the most reactive protagonists I've ever seen. Think about it, does he ever really make any major decision on his own? The inciting incident is Bagheera telling him he has to leave the jungle. Then it's one string of rescues after another, culminating in a chance meeting with a pretty girl--hell, you know what, we might as well call it what it is: Mowgli, in the original 1960s animated film, is a freaking Disney princess. Even his big hero moment, tying fire to Shere Kahn's tail, comes at the suggestion of someone else. The vultures tell him to use the fire, he doesn't think of it on his own. It's brave, yes, but brave in a bratty ten-year-old, I'm-not-afraid-of-you-because-I-don't-know-any-better kind of way.
But in the new one, the kid isn't reactive, he's proactive. In the original Disney film, Bagheera has to literally drag the kid kicking and screaming from his home with the wolf pack. In Favreau's remake, Mowgli volunteers to leave to protect his wolf family. And this is just the first in a series of decisions that Mowgli makes to propel the plot forward. Almost all the events that just happen to him in the first film are direct results of decisions that he makes in this one. Even the fight with Shere Kahn, which in the original movie just sort of happens, is initiated by Mowgli rather than coming from a chance meeting. In the day and age of private pre-schools and heavy parental supervision, it's exactly the kind of thing kids need to see: a child standing up for himself and making his own decisions. It's empowering, and it is--to use the Disney word--absolutely magical.
Even the ending has changed to reflect Mowgli's true independence. What's so striking about that is that this new ending happens even while the film hammers home a point revolving around the true importance of family. Rarely have I ever seen a film that stresses independence and family at the same time, let alone a children's film with the same message--Matilda comes to mind, but few others. That Favreau managed to accomplish this is, in my opinion, frankly amazing.
I can't get into the parts that I truly loved without spoiling the whole thing. But without giving too much away, Christopher Walken makes exactly the perfect King Louie that we all knew he would, Scarlett Johansson can sing (if you are a Disney music fan and haven't downloaded "Trust in Me" yet, do it NOW), and if you loved Bill Murray before, you will even more now. And at the very center of it all is an 11-year-old kid, acting opposite puppets. There was no real set to speak of either; it all happened on a soundstage, with only the necessary props on-set--as in, the things Mowgli would have to physically interact with--and a ton of special effects filling in the gaps. But it's so easy to forget that during the entire process, Neel Sethi never interacted face-to-face with Idris Elba, Lupita Nyong'o, or Ben Kingsley because no matter what he's doing, whether it's facing down a tiger or sharing an emotional farewell with his wolf mother, the kid sells it. Interacting with something that isn't there is difficult even for a seasoned actor (see: the entire Star Wars prequel trilogy), but for a first-time child actor to pull it off? Incredible.
My one complaint with the film is that some of the character introductions feel just a little...rushed. This is a minor quibble, but it does happen twice: first, when Kaa is introduced. The whole scene is so beautifully done--and if you see it in surround sound, which I did, it actually sounds and feels like she's in the theater with you, which is terrifying and amazing at the same time--but it's the first and last time we see the snake in the whole film. In the original Jungle Book we at least get a sense, roughly, of who Kaa is as a character: selfish, snarky, and not quite savvy enough to actually get himself a meal. In the new one it's more like "oh hi, don't mind me, I'm dropping in for some exposition because we know I'm not really going to eat this kid lolz BYE." It shortchanges what could've been a really good character, and I say that because in Disney's first crack at The Jungle Book, Kaa was simultaneously great comic relief and a fairly threatening secondary antagonist.
And I wouldn't complain, except they do it in literally the very next sequence with Baloo. We go from "ok, I saved your life, you owe me" to "hey, we're bestest friends now!" Granted, it's a little more character development than in the original, wherein Baloo shows up, sings a song, and promptly becomes Mowgli's new father. But there's an emotional payoff later that would have felt more earned had their friendship not developed so instantly and unbelievably. With that being said, the movie quickly rights this mistake by having Baloo make a killer entrance in the scene with King Louie. If we doubt his attachment to the man-cub before, after that scene it's painfully clear how much Baloo's new pet human really means to him. So yes, these complaints are minor, and while the story may feel rushed at times, Favreau quickly makes up for these lapses with a one-two punch of emotional payoff--and, when the situation demands it, a cute wolf pup or two to remind us that Mowgli isn't the only innocent who needs protecting in this jungle.
I mentioned that it's easy to forget that the actors never really interacted, but you know what? It's even easier to forget that none of what you're seeing is there at all. I kept forgetting during the course of the film that no, these aren't real elephants or panthers or wolf pups. There are no real animals in the film at all. And of course it's just as well that there aren't, because if that wasn't the case I would really love to know where they found a snake the length and width of a McDonald's playplace tunnel (so I could never ever go there in my entire life), but it's a mark of how far CGI has come since 2009's Avatar, when James Cameron tried and failed to make a world so immersive that we forgot we weren't really on the Forbidden Planet (Pandora...good God, man, I could've come up with better names than that, and I was a freakin' sophomore in high school at the time). The Jungle Book succeeds where Avatar fails, precisely because in this case, the filmmakers aren't trying to create a whole new world. They're just trying to tell a story. And the way they tell that story is nothing short of absolutely beautiful.
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