The Jungle Book: Research Task

Differences in Production Between JB and JB16

The Jungle Book (1967) at one point was completely scrapped and then recreated. This happend as Walt Disney believed the original script and ideas of the movie to be far too dark and not in line with the family friendly and happy vision he had for the film. So almost an entirely new crew was brought in to help Walt Disney create his film.

The music and songs were the first things to be created which is also how Marry Poppins was made. This was considered to be part of the Disney method.

Some characters were cut from The Jungle Book. These characters being Rocky the Rhino and Ticker the Tickworm. Walt Disney however believed that having these characters would make the film feel more cluttered and have too many events and so they were cut out of The Jungle Book while it was still in its development stage.

The Jungle Book 2016 did not have the problem of writing songs or creating characters as all of that had already been done from the original production of the original movie. However JB16 did have to redesign some of the characters to fit within the live-action world. JB16 set out to be a darker movie to distinguish itself from the original but there were no complete rewrites and recreations of the movie.

Both movies required high tech technologies for their respective times. JB was an animated movie so high tech was needed and JB16 had heavy use and reliance on CGI.

Technology Used on the 1967 Production

In the production of The Jungle Book the main piece of technology used was the Multi-plane camera. A Multi-plane camera splits the field of view into different planes or levels. Separate planes are used for the foreground, middle ground and background.

Operating the Multi-plane camera required several technicians to adjust the numerous lights, cel-setups and plane positions for every single shot. Each shot also required many tests in order to establish the desired perspective, proportion, and timing of the scene.

Technology Used on the 2016 Production

For the 2016 remake of The Jungle Book CGI (computer generated imagery) was used to create both the animal characters and the world in which events took place. This was partly to give to movie a sort of magical feel despite its darker tone.

Jon Favreau (director): It was never going to be animated. But the idea of going to the jungle with a kid and no real animals and all the environments we'd have to replace, seemed like it was going to be scary. [Disney Chairman] Alan Horn started talking about films like "Life of Pi" and "Avatar" … the idea of building a whole world with this new technology, having seen films like "Gravity" and "Planet of the Apes," got me excited.

The Jungle Book 1967 - Critic Reception

Jungle Book 1967 is rated quite highly with both critics and audiences. It is considered to be a fun and family friendly movie. 

Some have complained that the movie is too violent for younger audiences but this is a very small minority.

The Jungle Book 2016 - Critic Reception

The Jungle Book 2016 has far higher ratings than the 1967 adaptation in from both critics and audiences.

This film even has a 95% rating from rotten tomatoes. 

The movie is praised for its high tech CGI and for being wonderful to look at.