I have serious reservations about bringing Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book back, which I discussed last year when it came out that there are TWO new versions of the story coming to the big screen. Well, we now have a trailer for one of those adaptations, the one from Jon Favreau and Disney. It is not—and man do Disney flaks love to remind you of this—an adaptation of Kipling’s (racist) story, but a live-action remake of the classic Disney cartoon, in line with other remakes like Maleficent and Cinderella. The Disney cartoon has its own problems with race, but everyone keeps telling me that Favreau and screenwriter Justin Marks are sensitive to those issues and will be dealing with/improving them in their version of the film. Disney is certainly very excited about this movie—they are spending a f*cking FORTUNE on it—and now that we have a trailer, I can see why.
Because this sh*t is GORGEOUS. Watch this trailer and then consider something—everything except Mowgli isn’t real. The animals, the jungle, the river, it’s all CGI, and it doesn’t suck. People only ever complain about CGI when it’s bad, but no one really talks about it when it’s good, so let’s take a moment to give props where props are due. This looks unbelievably good, and the shot of Kaa the snake talking and not looking f*cking ridiculous is amazing. Scarlett Johansson voices Kaa and she narrates the trailer and sounds incredible. Other cast members include Bill Murray as Baloo, Lupita Nyong’o as Raksha, Idris Elba as Shere Khan (INTO IT), and Sir Ben Kingsley as Bagheera. The Jungle Book isn’t due until October 2016, but if it pans out and the whole movie looks as good and tangible as this trailer, I have but one question. CAN WE GET A VERSION OF ROBIN HOOD LIKE THIS?
