8 Reasons The Jungle Book Remake Is Better Than The Original Animation
No worries or strifes here.
Disney sure are on a remake binge at the moment. They have at least fifteen movies in various stages of development right now riffing on previous animated classics, meaning we're now at the point where it's more sensible to say what won't be remade than what will next.
The viability of such a regurgitative model has been called into question ever since Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland sparked this current trend (although it had already been sparked by 101 Dalmatians in the nineties): what do you do when you run out of things to remake? The likes of Frozen and Zootopia mean there's always going to be new stories to spin-off and sequelise, sure, but that's a bucket in a boat sinking into the quagmire of indistinguishable culture, surely?
But you know what? If they're all going to be as good as The Jungle Book, Disney can remake whatever the hell they want.
That's right, the star-studded live-action do-over of the 1967 adaptation of Rudyard Kipling's novel is a massive success. In fact, it's better than the original 1967 animation in just about every conceivable way.
No, seriously. That's the real genius of this current remake trend - it's not just about repetition, but expansion and improvement. Disney's back catalogue is far from untouchable (out of their fifty-five released films, at least half are middling-at-best) and going back to stories with untapped potential is a great way to provide unique, borderline original experiences. And that's exactly what Jon Favreau has done with his CG epic.