Telling a story that has been told several times before may require a fresh approach. And in Mowgli: Legend Of The Jungle, yet another retelling of Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, director Andy Serkis has decided for a more sombre tone to set his film apart from the rest.
"This was always gonna be a slightly darker retelling, which is more aligned to Rudyard Kipling's book," said Serkis of his new take on the age-old tale of a boy raised by wolves, which will be available on Netflix today.
"I don't think we've ever seen a version of [The Jungle Book] which is actually the emotional journey of Mowgli as an outsider -- that he is trying to discover his own identity," Serkis explained at Netflix's "See What's Next: Asia" event in Singapore last month.
"When you see the movie, it's an extraordinary, almost-an-adult journey for a child actor. What he goes through emotionally, physically and psychologically is a proper epic journey. A rite of passage. And I don't think we've really seen it before because, most of the time, The Jungle Book story is used as a spectacle to have fun with the animals, and Mowgli and his journey is not that important, in a way."
Well-known adaptations of The Jungle Book are Disney's animated musical comedy in 1967 and Jon Favreau's blockbuster that became a hit two years ago.
Andy Serkis.
While Disney's 2016 flick was a mix of live-action and CGI with a voice cast, Serkis' Mowgli saw a stellar cast of A-listers providing their motion-capture performance on top of their voices. This includes Christian Bale as Bagheera the panther, Benedict Cumberbatch as the villainous tiger Shere Khan, Cate Blanchett as Kaa the python, Serkis himself as Baloo the bear, and more (Serkis is best-known for his motion-capture acting as, among others, Gollum in the Lord Of The Rings trilogy and Peter Jackson's King Kong). American child actor Rohan Chand plays Mowgli. At closer inspection, we can see the resemblance the onscreen animal characters share with their human-actor counterparts.
"I think the cast all wants to examine the possibility of playing something other than themselves and to disappear into a character. Some of them have done voice-acting for animation before, but no one -- apart from Benedict Cumberbatch -- has done performance-capture," said the king of the art himself. Serkis has carved out quite a career from his performance-capture roles over the years in Lord Of The Rings, King Kong and Planet Of The Apes.
"I really do believe [performance-capture] is one of the greatest 21st-century tools for an actor. It allows you to inhabit [a role] -- regardless of what you look like, your sex, colour or anything. It's a very egalitarian tool that allows you to become anything."
While people may view performance-capture is an entirely different form of art, to Serkis it's not too different from traditional acting. He rather views it in the same way as he views costume and make-up, as well as getting to know a character and play its nature.
"At the end of the day, you're not playing a tiger or a bear or a snake. You're playing Shere Khan and Shere Khan has personality. It's all about understanding the emotion of that character," he said.
With all its lush graphic and CGI work, Mowgli: Legend Of The Jungle could be more suitable to be experienced on a big screen, in a cinema as it was originally slated for. Netflix purchased the worldwide-distribution rights of Mowgli from Warner Bros earlier this year. The film has seen a limited theatrical release overseas before going straight to streaming.
When the subject of the changing audience experience was brought up, Serkis admitted he feels the movie would work "incredibly well" in 3D format due to its powerful and immersive visuals. Still, he believes people will be able to enjoy this movie in different ways nevertheless.
"It was originally conceived as a cinematic production, so it has big production values and scale. But ultimately it's a drama, and will work like a talking-head drama on the smallest screen, too."
This shifting cinema landscape from silver screens to streaming services has been widely discussed lately, especially concerning Alfonso Cuaron's Roma, which was so beautifully shot that many feel it's a waste if it's never shown in cinemas. Like Mowgli, Roma ended up getting a limited theatrical release before it will be available on Netflix, making it eligible for the major honours as awards season rolls in.
