So how true is this one to the book?
I haven't read it myself... I've heard that the old cartoon had pretty much nothing to do with the book it was based on so I'm wondering if this movie does any better with it
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MovieChat Forums > The Jungle Book (1994) Discussion > So how true is this one to the book?
This movie owes far more to Burroughs's Tarzan than it does to Kipling.
If I could drop dead right now, I'd be the happiest man alive.
Watch it with an open mind, and you'll be less disappointed. Expect something more like Indiana Jones.
One of my biggest surprises about the book was how nice Kaa was, and how much time Mowgli spent with humans in the village.
It's a very loose adaptation of the book. It borrows elements from the Mowgli stories "Letting in the Jungle" and "The King's Ankus" and features the Law of the Jungle theme from the novel.
Due to this being a live-action version, they couldn't show animals talking and singing without it appearing silly. As a result, the whole aspect of the animal friends guiding Mowgli has been played down.
Rather this film focuses more on the British Raj and the action-adventure aspect of setting the story in 19th Century India. Mowgli is also older; here he's a young man in his twenties as opposed to the book where he's a preteen kid.
Watch the film with an open mind and you might enjoy it. Think of elements from Kipling's original stories mixed with the Disney Jungle Book, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Burrough's Tarzan and you'll have a good idea of what this film is like.
This basically takes one of the short stories (the King's Ankus) from kiplings second jungle book and changes the characters to be those in the main mowgli series of stories....
It's set later in mowglis life than the 67 animated film, if you read the books after mowgli goes back to the village he is cast out for being a witch and goes back to the jungle, the village basically then self distructs and ends when mowgli gets hathi to let in the jungle