Movie Thoughts: Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle (2018)

• Released: 7 December 2018
• Directed by: Andy Serkis
• Running time: 1 h 44 min
• Rating 3.5/5

Synopsis

A boy in India is raised in the jungle by wolves, all the while a tiger wishes to kill him. Mowgli must now find out where he belongs and stand up to his enemy.

My Thoughts

Let's dive right in with what everyone and their grandma has already said it and so will I: this movie is reallyu ugly and uncanny valley. I don't know why they chose to go with these character design choices, but they did. 

Okay, so what does this movie do with the character designs? It gives the animals human-like eyes and faces. The CGI is otherwise great and blends in very well with the live action parts. The animation is pretty good, too. But damn...their faces are just so ugly and hard to look at. They just look...wrong and uncanny. Sorry, Serkis, but sometimes leaning more towards realism can be a good thing. 

Because, to be honest, if this movie actually looked better, it would be a very strong one. First of all, this is actually one of the first actually pretty book-loyal adaptations of The Jungle Book I've seen. Honestly I think the only major changes are the way in which Shere Khan dies and the addition of Lockwood's character (and Bhoot, I guess, but he doesn't play a big role). Maybe I missed some here and there, but in comparison to other adaptations I've seen this one is actually pretty dedicated to sticking close to the book. For the record, I don't like the book, but I do like this movie.

The way the plot and characters were handled was honestly pretty damn good. And, like said before, it also looks good if you discount the ugly as fuck uncanny valley animal characters. So while I originally expected to give this movie a low rating...I just can't. It doesn't feel right when it has so many good elements to it.

This is also the first adaptation where I actually really like Mowgli's character. And some others, too. I liked his relationship to his family, Bagheera, Baloo and Bhoot. And I liked seeing him adjust to the human village, but eventually realizing where he truly belongs and becoming the new leader of the wolves after Akela dies. 

When Lockwood was initially introduced I was kind of afraid we were gonna get a white savior character to save the day and kill Shere Khan (a glory that should obviously go to Mowgli and our other heroes), but he was actually a side-villain instead, which was good and I liked his execution (hehe get it?). He seems like a semi-decent guy at first but you can quickly tell he has a shadier side. Oh, also, he decapitated and taxidermied Mowgli's best friend. That was dark beyond belief. 

So, yes, ultimately a rather ugly-looking but still book-loyal movie that has good writing and characters. It's not perfect and I don't think it's my favorite adaptation of the book out there (that honor for now goes to Disney's 2016 adaptation), but it's still pretty damn strong if it weren't for the fact it was so hard to look at.