8 Reasons The Jungle Book Remake Is Better Than The Original Animation

5. The Cast Is Phenomenal

The vocal work in the 1967 film is solid. You have some of the best voice actors of the time - Phil Harris, Louis Prima, George Sanders - playing some of the most enduring icons in the Disney pantheon. So it's not that the remake is good where the original failed, just that it does it better.

Favreau's amassed a trailer-friendly collection of A-list stars, but they're not picked just for their weighty names. Every actor approaches their role as an original creation and, along with a bit more in-movie development, deliver unique, fully-rounded characters that don't just live in the shadow of those who came before: Bill Murray's Baloo is lackadaisical by choice; Christopher Walken's King Louie is a violent gangster, able to sell the orangutan's menace like the original never did; Scarlet Johansson's Kaa is slippery without a lisp.

There isn't really a weak link, but the highlights have to be Murray, Idris Elba as Shere Kahn (who couldn't be further from the gentile original) and, above all, Lupita Nyong'o's wolf mother Raksha, who deftly carries much of the film's animal-based emotional weight.