Researching, yeah seems so. But I'd say it's safe to say it wasn't big news until after release and I didn't hear of it (despite looking it up many times after seeing this one) until after the news of Alfonso Cuaron jumping in.
I just hope they don't scrap it like many sites keep trying to suggest. I personally want to see something closer to the source material as there really hasn't been anything (that I've seen) that really translates the themes and laws of the jungle onto the big screen. I sound like a broken record, but there's a particular Mowgli x Shere Khan scene that I really want to see adapted, verbatim if possible.
I saw it yesterday and found it enjoyable but three things bothered me.
1. The new ending left me with mixed feelings.
2. The new story structure downplayed Baloo. Sure his character is not meant to be serious, but that doesn't mean he wasn't vital to the story.
3. What I really didn't like most of all was the implementation of Kaa. This character could have been edited out of this version and nothing would have changed.
Saw this the other day. Overall impression was very good, and it washed out the taste of Batman v. Superman for me (which I thought was meh, though not as bad as the reviews said).
Elba's Shere Khan was incredible. I'd see the film again just to see that character specifically. Was left disappointed by Kaa, who was my favorite character from the original. The voice acting on her felt phoned in, and she was only on screen for about a minute.
Disappointed in the amount of merchandise for this compared to some other Disney films though.
Just got back from this, what a fantastic movie. The effects are stellar. I must see some behind the scenes footage on this one. The scene with Baloo in the river, I mean, that is crazy good visual effects.
Just got back from this, what a fantastic movie. The effects are stellar. I must see some behind the scenes footage on this one. The scene with Baloo in the river, I mean, that is crazy good visual effects.
The shots of Mowgli on Baloo's chest were off because the chest and fur were stiffer (as a result of practical effects) than the more "fluid" shots of Baloo (from behind Mowgli). I wish the cg could have married the two better.
In other words, one shot had wet fur on a stiff chest that looked realistic enough while the other was more submerged and waving around in the water which contrasted the other shots. That was really the only part that took me out of it.
Mowgli has some character development in his scenes with Kaa in the original. He's very naive, and that's not surprising, but it's hardly throwaway when the story is about him. Here it was deemphasized to the point that Kaa's inclusion was completely unnecessary.
Took my 8 year old son. He was rather bored, and I found it to be a little too dark. It lacked in much fun and whimsy. Too serious for its own good. B-
Wow... I was going to check back on this and see it being panned all over, and apparently people love it (generally).
Very disappointed, and I didn't know much about it to begin with. It felt like the Hobbit movie version of the original (movie 3, the rest were good) and instead of patching stuff up with the appendices, they put in scenes from Lion King and hoped people wouldn't notice.
All voice actors were mumbling around and the Babe style mouth animation looked ridiculous. If you're going to have animals speak, they have to emote. This tried to look like actual animals with CG:d mouths.
Then there's no real connection between scenes, space compression even worse than PotC (but I guess Lion King did the same for its conclusion that also happened to be basically the same as this), and the completely pointless fan service scenes with Bear Necessities, Kaa and Louie. The first song references stuff as it happens in the original movie - why are they singing about ants in this one? And why did Louie channel both Kurtz and the Great Goblin?
The CG is great, I suppose. But the overall impression is like if a high school drama group consisting of animals decided to do their own interpretation of the cartoon.