THE MOVING PICTURE BOY ARCHIVE
THE JUNGLE BOOK
Title: The Jungle Book
Year of release: 2016
Director: Jon Favreau
Screenwriter: Justin Marks
Genre: Fantasy adventure
Country of Production: USA
Length: 1 hour 45 minutes
Language: English
Principal boy actors: Neel Sethi plays Mowgli
Availability: Official blu-ray release
Synopsis
Mowgli is an orphaned man-cub raised as part of a wolf pack in the jungles of India in the 1890s. However, Shere Khan the tiger, intent on killing Mowgli as revenge for injuries sustained at the hands of the boy's father, threatens the wolves if they should continue to protect him. In order that the pack should not suffer on his account, Mowgli decides to leave the jungle, and has various adventures accompanied by Bagheera, a black panther, and Baloo, a bear. When he discovers that Akela, the leader of his wolf pack, has been killed by Shere Khan, he decides to confront and defeat the tiger, armed with the 'red flower' (fire) of his own people, which all the jungle animals fear.
Source material
The film is a live action remake of the 1967 Disney animation, complete with Mowgli wearing a wholly redundant (and suprisingly clean and durable) red loincloth. The CGI animals are voiced by various well-established stars. The one live actor, Neel Seethi, undoubtedly plays his part well. The 1967 Disney animation was in turn loosely based on stories from Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book (1894), drawing elements from the first three stories: “Mowgli’s Brothers”, “Kaa’s Hunting”, and “Tiger! Tiger!”. In the 2016 film, as in the 1967 animation, 'Mowgli' is pronounced so that the first syllable rhymes with "go". The only production known to the Editor in which 'Mowgli' is pronounced the way Kipling intended, so that the first syllable rhymes with "cow", is the 1976 TV animation Mowgli's Brothers.
Screenshots
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