“Oh, they have brownies!”
Most movie stars don’t burst into interview suites this way. But Neel Sethi is 12 years old, so maybe you’d expect that he’d have this reaction to the assortment of snacks at the Peninsula Hotel. Though the young actor had to wait until later for the sweets, during our conversation he was as unlikely to sit still as his character, Mowgli (a young boy raised by wolves and working to stay alive in the jungle among a variety of animals voiced by stars such as Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson) in the new, CGI-enhanced, live-action adaptation of “The Jungle Book.” Next to Sethi during our interview was his director, Jon Favreau, who several times has taken material that might have been targeted only at young-ish viewers (“Elf,” “Iron Man”) and made it beloved among countless ex-kids.
So maybe it’s also not that surprising that “The Jungle Book”—opening Friday and inspired by both the 1967 animated Disney classic and the book by Rudyard Kipling—is more than just your average kiddie fare. The movie is such a stunningly believable exploration of the Indian jungle that it’s hard to believe it filmed entirely in a warehouse and was then illustrated with CGI.
“It’s appropriate in theme and content for kids, but it’s something that’s interesting, and even if you’re not a kid, you’re going to want to go see it because it’s such a spectacle,” said Favreau, 49, an actor probably still best known for his 1996 breakout hit, “Swingers.”
Spectacle is the right word. Think of the sweeping visuals of “The Revenant” or the immersive world of “Avatar”—those effects have been harnessed to bring new, different life to a beloved story. But when you turn a cartoon tiger into a “real” beast (terrifyingly voiced by Idris Elba, no less), the story loses its cute factor and becomes suspenseful pretty quickly.
“I believe in the thing that actually Walt [Disney] did as well, which is tell the old stories with new technology,” Favreau said. “And then you get a really interesting combo.”
Favreau’s experience as an action filmmaker shows itself throughout “The Jungle Book” with tons of movement, chase scenes and physical daring. Sethi underwent parkour training in preparation for his role, and it makes sense when you see him scale walls and trees and dart through the jungle as fluidly as his animal friends and family. To add to this effect, Favreau and his team of artists employed tricks (like mud “splashing” the camera as Mowgli runs by) to make the audience forget they’re watching computer animation.
“I feel very fortunate in getting to use the tools that are normally only reserved for films with high-tech characters, explosions, robots, superheroes,” Favreau said. “And to have this available to me to use it for humor and music and emotion, I felt confident that within the tone of this film, we could still make it exciting and bump it up.”
But to Favreau, the real key to bringing the story to life was finding the right actors to voice his menagerie of characters. Every choice, from Murray as Baloo the bear to Christopher Walken as King Louie the ape, fits so perfectly that they feel obvious in hindsight. Part of the allure of “The Jungle Book” is to hear these very famous actors bring their animals to life, another trick Favreau said he stole from Disney. The 1967 version also was voiced by some of the biggest stars of its day, including actor George Sanders and big band leader Louis Prima.
“I work very tenaciously in the beginning to get the right players on the field,” Favreau said. “Think about what ‘Iron Man’ would have been without Robert [Downey Jr.]”
To Sethi, the best fit is Ben Kinsgley’s portrayal of Bagheera the panther.
“He knows everything,” Sethi said. “He’s been around. He knows what’s happening. And what not to do.”
When asked what he thinks Mowgli would be up to in a “Jungle Book 2,” Sethi said that while he hasn’t seen the old “Jungle Book 2” cartoon (it was made in 2003 and starred John Goodman and Haley Joel Osment—look it up), he thinks a sequel could explore what happens once Mowgli becomes more of a man.
“I got a book from the book fair and it was ‘The Jungle Book,’ and by the end of the story he was like a full grown man,” Sethi said. “And that was pretty cool, but I just thought that didn’t feel right. A grown man in the jungle?”
“That’s ‘Tarzan,’ ” Favreau said, laughing. “That’s another movie.”
Sequel or no, “The Jungle Book” functions as more than a PG-rated kidfest because of the risks Favreau dares to take and the universal nature at the heart of the film.
“It’s really about coming of age,” Favreau said. “That’s why it’s such an evergreen story. It’s not just about a boy in the jungle—it’s about a boy on the cusp. A man-cub becoming a man, and what that does.”
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