Trussst in me

[Talya]

https://youtu.be/HcgJRQWxKnw

Scarlett'sss never been so ssscary.

I object, in principle, to calling a movie with one live action character and hundreds of CGI ones a "live action remake," however, the stellar cast, good CGI, and respect/tribute paid to the animated source material (The Jungle Book has long been my favorite animated Disney classic) has me interested, just the same. These Disney remakes of late do not feel like replacements to the beloved originals, more like tributes to them.

[thorgrim29]

I was very "meh" until I saw that Christopher Walken plays King Louis, now this is something I have to see.

[danzibr]

I was very "meh" until I saw that Christopher Walken plays King Louis, now this is something I have to see.
Yeah, that cast got me excited.

I hope it's better than the last live-action Jungle Book.

[Toastkart]

Seems pretty meh to me. The cgi is so-so. Bagheera and Shere khan are fighting because...

I don't know. It could just be too soon to tell, but I'm not really hopeful.



Yeah, that cast got me excited.

I hope it's better than the last live-action Jungle Book.

From the trailer alone, the cast is the only thing going for it so far.

Also, I kind of liked the last live-action Jungle Book. It wasn't a faithful adaptation, but it was still mostly enjoyable.

[brionl]

Seems pretty meh to me. The cgi is so-so. Bagheera and Shere khan are fighting because...

I don't know. It could just be too soon to tell, but I'm not really hopeful.


Because Shere Khan wants to eat Mowgli, and Bagheera doesn't want to let him?

Could be OK, but I probably won't bother to see it unless I hear good things from people I know.

[Giggling Ghast]

I liked the little "Bear Necessities" whistle at the end.

[The Glyphstone]

I watched it without audio, but it honestly looked to me like what you'd get from a 'Grimdark Jungle Book remake' faux-trailer made by CollegeHumor or something. All dark and gloom and fight scenes - sure, JB Classic had some tense moments, but there's no light-hearted humor here.

[Talya]

I watched it without audio

Trust me, Glyphstone - you want to watch it again with audio. I honestly don't care about the visuals; I could listen to this trailer over, and over, and over...

(Also, that giant scary orangutan is King Louie...voiced by Christopher Walken. I can't imagine that's going to be played entirely seriously.)

[Kitten Champion]

I'm kind of nonplussed with regards to Disney's live action re imaginings of their classic animated movies since Maleficent. Though I'm not exactly adverse to them as a concept, they just need to be... more clever, I guess.

Basically, if The Jungle Book reviews well I'd like to see it. I'm worried it will be - not bad exactly - but kind of blase.

[Eldan]

Hrm. I'm on the side of "generic dark remake" with this one, so far. That said, I liked the actual book by Kipling as a kid and never quite warmed up to the movie, so I'm probably not the target audience. (Actually, I never quite liked any of the Disney movies. The singing always annoyed me, I skipped through those scenes most of the time.)

[Toastkart]

Because Shere Khan wants to eat Mowgli, and Bagheera doesn't want to let him?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but in none of the source material, nor any of the adaptations I'm familiar with do Bagheera and Shere khan ever come to blows. It just seems so out of character for Bagheera.

[Traab]

That is true, its out of character, but its because as two apex predators, neither would willingly fight the other if there was another option. Too likely to end in one dying right away, the other dying of starvation due to its injuries. Health care sucks in the jungle. However, its not like it would never happen. Its just something to be avoided.

[MLai]

All the CGI animals remind me of creepy reanimated taxidermies. :smalleek:
All I can think about is how most of those animals will become extinct in my lifetime. :smallannoyed:

[hamishspence]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but in none of the source material, nor any of the adaptations I'm familiar with do Bagheera and Shere khan ever come to blows. It just seems so out of character for Bagheera.

He came pretty close to it in How Fear Came (first story in The Second Jungle Book) when Shere Khan was boasting of his latest man-killing - before Hathi stepped in and drove Shere Khan away.

[The Glyphstone]

After a re-watch with audio....still not impressed. The only actual dialogue is Kaa talking over the various panoramic shots and fight scenes, and as weird/unnerving it is to hear Black Widow's voice coming out of a snake's mouth, that's not enough to sell it for me.

Sure, Christopher Walken might be voicing King Louie, but considering he is trying to grab Mowgli in one clip and an army of monkeys is attacking who I'm pretty sure is Baloo in another clip, he could be playing the role entirely seriously as a semi-antagonist (since they have also changed him from an orangutan into a gorilla). Louie wasn't exactly a friend in the original animated movie (and he didn't exist at all in the book), though he wasn't an outright enemy the way Shere Khan or Kaa were.

Also, Mowgli does a lot of blind jumping off ledges/cliffs, apparently. This just feels like a JB action-movie reskin.

[hamishspence]

Louie wasn't exactly a friend in the original animated movie (and he didn't exist at all in the book), though he wasn't an outright enemy the way Shere Khan or Kaa were.


That said, the basic plot of "primates kidnap Mowgli in the hope of making use of his skills" is in the book - but instead of there being a King Louie - none of the individual primates are named, and the action is taken as a group.

[Closet_Skeleton]

The original film version of The Jungle Book was the 1942 Sabu Dastagir live action version, so the Disney film was a remake anyway.

[Eldan]

Aren't there tons and tons of Jungle book adaptations anyway? Dozens, probably.

[Killer Angel]

It doesn't seem so bad, but probably not a thing I'm going to see in theatres. Unless, you know, a daughters' different decision. :smalltongue:

[AvatarVecna]

I want to trust. I want to believe.

...but the yellow brick road is paved with broken dreams. I reserve judgement.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Aren't there tons and tons of Jungle book adaptations anyway? Dozens, probably.

http://www.imdb.com/find?ref_=nv_sr_fn&q=the+jungle+book&s=all

I'm sure that list is incomplete.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2388771/?ref_=fn_al_tt_10

That's just too ridiculous.

[Eldan]

So wait. They are making two. One has Scarlett Johansson, Idris Elba, Bill Murray, Ben Kingsley and Christopher Walken and the other has Benedict Cumberbatch, Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett and Andy Serkis. That's just weird.

Also, what's with the strange casting for Bagheera. Christian Bale and Ben Kingsley? Really? Also, maybe I'm wrong, but Andy Serkis just seems wrong for Baloo.

Also, yeah. That list has to be incomplete. I remember watching a TV series in the 90s, with a Mowgli in modern times. Probably fighting crime or something, I don't quite recall.

[Giggling Ghast]

Are you thinking of Talespin?

[Eldan]

No? I'm thinking of a live action TV series I saw as kid in the nineties, that had Mowgli as an older teenager. Honestly, I don't remember much about it. It may well not have been American, I saw it on German TV, after all.

[The Glyphstone]

Click the More Title Matches at the bottom.

[Bulldog Psion]

Two, eh? What is it with these films lately?

I mean we got Spy, American Ultra, The Transporter Refueled, Mission Impossible, Agent 47, and the Man From UNCLE all crammed into a month or two, until crazy spy action movies were coming out of our collective ears. They're all mostly pretty good, IMO (mostly) but one on top of another it's a bit too much.

I mean, I like American pseudo-Italian food, but if I had lasagna for breakfast, pizza for lunch, and spaghetti for dinner every night for a month, I would yarf, as Lurky Corpsewhiskers put it so eloquently. :smallbiggrin:

[Bhu]

Two, eh? What is it with these films lately?

I mean we got Spy, American Ultra, The Transporter Refueled, Mission Impossible, Agent 47, and the Man From UNCLE all crammed into a month or two, until crazy spy action movies were coming out of our collective ears. They're all mostly pretty good, IMO (mostly) but one on top of another it's a bit too much.

I mean, I like American pseudo-Italian food, but if I had lasagna for breakfast, pizza for lunch, and spaghetti for dinner every night for a month, I would yarf, as Lurky Corpsewhiskers put it so eloquently. :smallbiggrin:

It happens because a lot of studios come up with similar ideas at similar times, and then race to get tehirs to the screen first to avoid the idea that they copied off the others.


I watched it without audio, but it honestly looked to me like what you'd get from a 'Grimdark Jungle Book remake' faux-trailer made by CollegeHumor or something. All dark and gloom and fight scenes - sure, JB Classic had some tense moments, but there's no light-hearted humor here.

Kiplings written material is pretty dark. Disney really prettied it up for the 67 toon. Given the time period it's written in it's also fairly racist to modern readers as well.

[The Glyphstone]

Kiplings written material is pretty dark. Disney really prettied it up for the 67 toon. Given the time period it's written in it's also fairly racist to modern readers as well.

Almost everything Disney makes into a kid's movie is unrecognizably dark in its original source material, so that's not surprising.

[Zrak]

Kiplings written material is pretty dark. Disney really prettied it up for the 67 toon. Given the time period it's written in it's also fairly racist to modern readers as well.

I wouldn't say that's a given for the time period. Neither racial superiority nor the moral righteousness of imperialism were really universally taken for granted at the time Kipling was writing. There were sides and Kipling chose his, his time did not choose it for him.

[hamishspence]

It's still a possible qualifier for the "Fair for its day" trope though:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FairForItsDay

[Zrak]

To an extent, but his views were still somewhat extreme in comparison to his contemporaries; contrast the awkward, embarrassed silence on the subjects of slavery and colonialism for which so many other Victorian novels are criticized with, you know, White Man's Burden. In any case, it shouldn't just be taken as a given for the time period.

The "man of his day" arguments have always particularly annoyed me not because I believe the argument itself is necessarily invalid but because it's generally used without regard for whether or not it's actually true; being from the past is transformed into an excuse for all transgressions against modern moral standards, without regard for it they would have also been a transgression against contemporaneous moral standards.

[The Glyphstone]

Isn't there a solid case for White Man's Burden being satire? I always interpreted it as such.

[hamishspence]

Isn't there a solid case for White Man's Burden being satire? I always interpreted it as such.

Apparently it concerned a specific incident - the United States's occupation of the Philippines.

As Tropes puts it - the poem:


is generally read as a justification for Western imperialism but was in fact the exact opposite - an exhortation for the United States to leave the Philippines (which it had just won from Spain) a better place than it found it, with no expectation of profiting from it.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WhiteMansBurden

Kipling was quite explicitly telling Americans, "It's your turn now, and this is what you're letting yourselves in for. And we too will be watching and criticizing you!"

[Zrak]

Isn't there a solid case for White Man's Burden being satire? I always interpreted it as such.

Yes and no. From a Death of the Author perspective, that's a totally reasonable reading because it's so extreme that it generally scans as satire, and was even read as one by a number of critics at the time. From a perspective of authorial intent, not really; the poem was explicitly written to encourage and celebrate U.S. colonization of the Philippines. Kipling even sent a letter to Theodore Roosevelt saying as much.

As Hamishpence says, however, it doesn't encourage selfish, mercenary imperialism, but rather emphasizes the responsibility of the colonizer to "civilize" (and thus improve) those they colonize. So, it even really is supposed to reflect a burden white colonizers must carry, that burden being the task of civilizing the ignorant savages of the world.

To be fair to Kipling, he sees those people as intrinsically equal to white Europeans, it's merely their culture he considered inferior; he was vocally opposed to the idea that any race was inherently superior to any other, and even said Europe rose to global prominence largely by chance, but nonetheless earnestly believed in the basically complete superiority of European civilization and the moral duty to impose it upon others.

[hamishspence]

"Civilization" as a faction in the E. E. Smith Lensman series was similarly portrayed as a vast improvement on previous systems - with a "moral duty to improve others' way of life".

[Bulldog Psion]

I'm not suggesting that anyone should or shouldn't post anything, but isn't this thread starting to wander into slightly dangerous waters?

[hamishspence]

Perhaps a bit.

Maybe return to focusing on the movie itself. It'll be interesting to see what other differences from the animated version there will be.

[Manga Shoggoth]

Maybe return to focusing on the movie itself. It'll be interesting to see what other differences from the animated version there will be.

Well, since a couple of scenes (like the jump off the cliff) look as if they came from Red dog, perhaps they have Kaa as one of the good guys.

While I liked the Disney version, I never really forgave them for what they did to Kaa.

[hamishspence]

I know the 1942 version drew heavily from The King's Ankus - it would be interesting to see other Mowgli stories get drawn from as well.