The bear necessities
JON FAVREAU UPDATES THE JUNGLE BOOK FOR A NEW GENERATION
• Judgment day approaches with the release of Jon Favreau’s The Jungle Book.
Mind you, Favreau knows all about coping with great expectations after directing the superhero movie Iron Man. Luckily, decent reviews and a healthy box office greeted the 2008 flick.
With the re-imagining of The Jungle Book, Favreau faces a more daunting test. He needs to please Rudyard Kipling devotees and multiple generations of kids who grew up enjoying the 1967 Disney animated movie in theatres or at home.
“Can you still preserve the soul and the charm of the first one, changing it from a G- rated musical to a PG- rated adventure?” wonders Favreau at a Beverly Hills hotel. He’s hoping the answer is yes. “I also knew I had to find the balance between the iconic power of the Kipling story and the images I had gown up with from the animated feature.”
The mission wasn’t impossible, just complicated and time- consuming for the 49-year-old.
“I had to figure out how to combine those important (Jungle Book) things,” he says. “And raise the technology to take it to a different place, so we could build upon the legacy.”
So it’s true. Unlike the cartoon, the latest Jungle Book is not necessarily a musical, although there are a few familiar song references.
Generally, the movie is an ambitious motion picture, blending live action, state- of- the- art CGI, motion capture and assorted variations on the theme.
“I was very impressed with films like Planet of the Apes, Avatar and Life of Pi and what was done in Gravity,” says the director of his visual inspirations.
Of course, Favreau hired first- rate help to get him where he wanted to go. His Oscar-winning visual effects supervisor Robert Legato worked on Avatar, Hugo and The Wolf of Wall Street. Other award- winning special effects teams conjured up the virtual Jungle Book universe, including Peter Jackson’s Weta Digital, which developed backdrops for The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit films. Mostly, the cast of photoreal animals behave as creatures would in the wild with an occasional adjustment for the slightly revamped story written by Justin Marks. He also adds a few cloaked nods to Kipling, The Jungle Book cartoon and other Disney classics such as Dumbo and Pinnochio.
Still, Favreau is quick to point out that he’s loyal to the original anima- tion’s plot, which focuses on the orphan Mowgli ( played by Neel Sethi) raised by wolves in the jungle.
When ferocious tiger Shere Khan (voiced by Idris Elba) threatens the naive man-cub, he is encouraged to escape. It leads him on a dangerous journey of survival where he meets the good and bad inhabitants of the wilderness.
Favourites are front and centre; the panther Bagheera (Sir Ben Kingsley), the affable bear Baloo ( Bill Murray), the hypnotizing serpent Kaa (Scarlett Johansson), and gigantic ape King Louie (Christopher Walken).
However, pivotal to the film’s impact is Sethi, who beat out 2,000 other hopefuls for the role of Mowgli. Amazingly, the New York- based 12- year- old had never acted before but Favreau says his casting “felt right.”
Over the nine-month shoot, the director worked closely with the rookie on blue-screen soundstages with puppets replacing the animated animals.
“It was like an acting workshop,” says Sethi. “Jon taught me everything I needed to know.”
As often as he could arrange it, Favreau made sure Sethi worked alongside the other voice actors, notably Kingsley and Murray.
“I wanted ( The Jungle Book) to feel like a live action film and not an animated film,” Favreau says of the dialogue. “And one of the keys to that is to have a conversational performance.”
Certainly, the adolescent was equal to the physically demanding challenge of running and jumping Mowgli style. At times, though, Favreau says that he felt more like his coach than a director.
Still, the Swingers funny guy has experience mixing effects with story. Before Iron Man and the 2010 sequel, he prepared for his Jungle Book future with the kids’ space adventure Zathura in 2005.
He admits, though, that when The Jungle Book wrapped, he had trouble letting go. “It was sad when it was over,” he says.
Now he waits anxiously for the official reaction to his efforts.
So far, preview audiences seem to approve, which counts as a relief for all involved, and especially the director who agrees “we are excited about the early reception.”
“One hundred years ago was the ( Kipling) book,” says Favreau. “Fifty years ago was the (animated) film and 50 years later it’s time to update the film for (another) generation.”
The Jungle Book opens wide April 15.
I HAD TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO RAISE THE TECHNOLOGY TO A DIFFERENT PLACE, SO WE COULD BUILD UPON THE LEGACY.