The world is engulfed by remake fever.
Or Hollywood to be more exact.
Everywhere cinemagoers turn, an old, much-loved classic is being re-imagined, re-tooled, re-done because modern audiences need bright, shiny, new … or something.
Who knows what’s behind it, other than perhaps studio-driven artistic laziness, but occasionally, in the middle of all this cinematic gentrifying, some gems emerge such as the first trailer for Disney’s 2016 live action remake of The Jungle Book.
Anyone with any sort of decent animation-filled childhood will know this is not the first time Disney has made moviemaking merry with Rudyard Kipling’s classic book, an 1894 anthology of tales featuring anthropomorphic animals imparting all kinds of moral lessons about the ideal way people should treat each other and society should be run.
Back in 1967 they released an animated take on the book that took as its focus the three stories in the anthology about Mowgli, a “man cub” raised by wolves in the jungle who learns life lessons from an array of animal friends.
It was full of musical interludes, some snappy unforgettable, touching moments and some gripping storytelling, but one look at the trailer for its live action successor, directed by Jon Favreau (Iron Man, Chef) and it becomes patently obvious, this is The Jungle Book, but not as we’ve known it Jim.
It’s full on, adrenaline-pumping action from start to finish, an immersive eye-poppingly full-on rush through the jungle that suggests thing have sped up a great deal in Mowgli’s world since the late 1960s.
Tiger attack? Tick! Giant talking python? Tick! Stampedes, bubbling lava, cliff alive with hundreds of hurrying apes, fierce fight between a tiger and a panther? Tick, tick, tick … and tick!
With a luminously great cast of actors voicing the motion-captured animals including Scarlett Jonansson as Skaa, Bill Murray as Baloo – there’s a lovely moment at the end of the trailer where Disney makes an affectionate musical nod to the original film – and Ben Kingsley as Bagheera, along with newcomer Neel Sethi as the “Man Cub” at the centre of things, this all-new, all-action remake of The Jungle Book may well be an exception to the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” rule.
Certainly this trailer, and the rapturous applause the extended footage of the film attracted at this year’s D23 convention, would seem to indicate Disney has something very special on its hands.
Maybe we do want to be just like you, live action take on The Jungle Book, after all.
The Jungle Book releases in Australia on 7 April 2016 and USA 15 April 2016.