Yesterday we got a trailer for a live-action version of the Jungle Book, it looks cool, the cast couldn't be better, the CGI animals look great and most of the set-pieces from the original appear to return. The problem here is tone, the original was light-hearted, witty and fun family action. This one appears to be dark, realistic and brooding. Not to say that the original didnt have its fair share of nightmare fuel, but it had more than that, it had apes singing and dansing, it had Baloo!!! this one has the apes and a bear, neither of wich appear to be having that much fun, King Louie is turned into a king kong and Baloo is a generic bear, in fact all the animals lack their distinct features, the best part about Shere-Khan was his square form as the opposite to Baloos round shape.
But we havent seen it yet and it might be good, but Disney has made live-action versions of so many classics already, with many more announced, Winnie the Pooh is for some reason among those. Now Im not saying theyre going to be bad, just that they are uninspired cashgrabs and show that disney has lost its grip on imaginative and fresh stories. Frozen was a great movie about how the first one is rarely the right guy, among other things. But what happened, we havent gotten anything original since, every movie since has been an adaptation on an old Disney classic. Pixar is doing some great stuff, why cant disney come up with new ideas? They used to be the king!
A part of the problem might be the fact that they dont know where to go from Frozen, they believe they cant top what they did with the tale of sisterly love. But they dont have to, they could try more diverse characters, I can count on one hand the amount of non-white main-charachters, so theres one idea, or maybe try less conventional love-stories, maybe a movie about a lesbian princess and her struggles in a prejudice world for once? No progress can happen without some risk-taking. So heres to hoping that well get some originality from disney in the future!
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