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

3. The Music

Woah, woah. Calm down. Don't set a Bengal tiger on me. The songs are far and away the most beloved part of the animation, and rightly so - they are the best thing in there. So, just to make it clear, I'm not here to discredit Bare Necessities or I Wanna Be Like You or any others you have a strong affinity with, but even accepting every song as a classic (and Colonel Hathi's March definitely isn't), the remake offers a better musical package.

The two best songs get a cover version in the film itself (and a third is over the closing credits), and while these versions aren't going to be as repeated as the originals, they fit better into the movie's world and narrative (and definitely don't feel like corporately-mandated distractions).

You then also have the rest of the score. In the original, all the orchestration is pretty generic, but here Favreau's brought in regular collaborator John Debney, who's made something that both honours the original and works by itself to increase the movie's sense of scale. Best of all though, you have that incomparable symphonic version of Bare Necessities. Wondorous!