The Jun­gle Book

There’s a won­der­ful scene in The Jun­gle Book where Mowgli (Neel Sethi) bonds with a herd of ele­phants. In direc­tor Jon Favreau’s action-packed take on Rud­yard Kipling’s fable, the scene stands out for the casu­al seren­i­ty it achieves. These pachy­derms are not depict­ed as an anthro­po­mor­phised patrol of com­i­cal­ly pompous colo­nials, but rather as the cre­ators and spir­i­tu­al pro­tec­tors of this frag­ile ecosys­tem. In fact, they don’t utter a sin­gle word between them, instead mov­ing solemn­ly through the shad­ows, main­tain­ing order amid the chaos by ensur­ing that every crea­ture abides by the Law of the Jun­gle. Well, almost.

Shere Khan the tiger is gov­erned by his own set of codes, the com­bi­na­tion of his innate blood­lust and fear of man’s red flower mak­ing him the most fear­some preda­tor around. Voiced with snarling intent by Idris Elba, he’s the most sin­is­ter and dan­ger­ous­ly charis­mat­ic Dis­ney vil­lain since anoth­er big cat with a size­able chip on his shoul­der and a nasty wound across his face. Khan’s sheer size makes him an impos­ing foe for Mowgli and the ani­mals who swear to pro­tect him, name­ly moth­er wolf Rak­sha (Lupi­ta Nyong’o), Bagheera the pan­ther (Ben Kings­ley) and Baloo the bear (Bill Mur­ray). What makes this Khan such an impres­sive spec­i­men, how­ev­er, is the stun­ning pho­to­re­al­is­tic detail in which he – and every oth­er non-human char­ac­ter – is rendered.

Disney’s live action/​CGI update of their 1967 ani­mat­ed fea­ture stays true to Kipling’s fic­tion­al tale of an orphan boy raised by wolves in India’s dark heart. It’s as faith­ful a retelling as you’re ever like­ly to see, not just in pure sto­ry­telling terms but in the way it reestab­lish­es the con­nec­tion between Kipling’s char­ac­ters and the Hin­du folk­tales that inspired them. Yet although Favreau clear­ly has a lot of affec­tion for Disney’s ear­li­er adap­ta­tion, he’s smart enough to know bet­ter than to try and improve on a clas­sic. So while ​‘The Bare Neces­si­ties’ and sev­er­al oth­er crowd-pleas­ing ele­ments remain, the hand paint­ed back­drops, car­toony humour and prac­ti­cal mag­ic of the orig­i­nal are gone, replaced by some­thing much dark­er and more immersive.

To that end, per­haps the most inter­est­ing char­ac­ter here is the jun­gle itself. Peter Jackson’s Weta Dig­i­tal and the UK based Mov­ing Pic­ture Com­pa­ny, the visu­al effects stu­dios tasked with bring­ing this dense dig­i­tal menagerie to life, have cre­at­ed a vivid, rich­ly-tex­tured envi­ron­ment that’s more spec­tac­u­lar than Rud­yard and Walt could ever have imag­ined. From the tini­est insects to the tallest water­falls, the film is alive with the colours, sounds and spir­it of this ancient jun­gle. At its cen­tre, a laid-back bear and a young boy drift down­riv­er hum­ming a famil­iar tune. They may be head­ing in the oppo­site direc­tion to the man vil­lage, but we’re already home.