Last night my family and I went to the new Disney movie Jungle Book directed by John Favreau. It was the movie version I have been waiting for all my life.
The amazing thing about this movie is the way it took the book and layered its themes and central idea on top of the classic 60’s Disney cartoon. The music is still there and intact, though mostly moved to the end credits. The kid is still cute and mostly vulnerable, at least until the conclusion. And they have still given the Disneyesque comedic touch to the character of Baloo the bear, voiced by comedian Bill Murray in the this incarnation. But this is a live action movie and the kid-friendly Bowdlerization of the original story is a thing no longer.
A classic book illustration by E.J. Detmold
Fortunately for the young actor, Neel Sethi, they don’t require him to play the entire movie naked as would be required by a strictly by-the-book approach. They allow him the Disney-dignity of the cartoon red loin cover. But the sense of a human child facing the violence of the jungle naked, armed only with his creature-appropriate natural defenses, has been put back into the story. This version literally has teeth and claws. We see the boy’s body wounded and scarred during the course of his life in the jungle. And at a time of crucial confrontation, Mowgli takes the defense stolen from man village, a torch of the feared red flower, and throws it away into the water, facing the terrible tiger with only his wits and the abilities of his fangless, clawless human body. Thus, an essential theme I loved about the book when I was twelve is restored. Man has a place in the natural world even without the protections of civilization.
The story-telling is rich and nuanced, with multiple minor characters added. Gray Brother has been restored to Mowgli’s family. The fierce power of Mowgli’s wolf mother has been written back into the screenplay. And the character of Akela is given far more importance in the story than the cartoon could even contemplate. Although his role in aiding Mowgli to kill the tiger Shere Khan has been taken away from him, Akels’s death becomes the central motivation bringing Mowgli and Shere Khan together for the final inevitable confrontation. And this movie does not shy away from the reality of death as the cartoon did, resurrecting Baloo at the end and Kaa’s attempts to eat Mowgli being turned into a joke (though I would like to note if you have never read the book, Kaa is not supposed to be a villain. He was Mowgli’s wise and powerful friend in the book). Even the tiger survives in the cartoon version. This is no longer a cute cartoon story with a Disney sugared-up ending.
I will always treasure the 1960’s cartoon version. I saw it at the Cecil Theater in Mason City, Iowa when I was ten. I saw it with my mother and father and sisters and little brother. It was my favorite Disney movie of all time at that point in my life. I read and loved the book two years after that, a paperback copy that I bought with my own money from Scholastic book club back in 1968, in Mrs. Reitz’s sixth grade classroom. That copy is dog-eared, but still in my library. But this movie is the best thing that could possibly happen to bring all of that love of the story together and package it in a stunning visual experience.
 There’s probably little hope left for me to make the massive adaptations facing the people of the near future. I try to get rewired and ready. I bought a new mouse today make the writing of this post possible. But I have little doubt that my children will be up to the task.
On the Fritz
On this Star Wars Day (May the 4th be with you) I am a little perturbed that practically everything, including Star Wars, is on the fritz. My computer is on the fritz. It starts all sorts of programs and actions within programs without being prompted by a keystroke or click command. The picture I posted at the start of this essay had to be downloaded from Google twice because it downloaded the wrong selection for no reason. And then it had to be pasted into the block editor twice also because the first attempt failed to finish the transition.
Of course, for something “to be on the fritz” and be well understood, it would help if we knew the origin of the phrase. Unhelpfully, no one really knows how it was initially used. Was it a reference to something about Germans? “Fritz” was a common nickname for German soldiers in two world wars. But probably not. Germans are not always haywire.
I think it far more likely that the word is an onomatopoeia for the sound a radio makes when there is a short, it sparks, and then malfunctions, if not catches fire. That seems to me to be a much more fitting image to use for the way my computer works today with its faulty keyboard, and/or mouse pad. It also is a fitting definition for the condition our economy is in due to the pandemic.
But on this Star Wars Day, it is the most apt phrase to describe what has been done to the Star Wars Saga. Don’t get me wrong. I am an uncritical critic. I loved the Rise of Skywalker in the movie theater. The images and the action were great. But the writer in me did not appreciate how wires were crossed in the making of the latest trilogy. The resulting dumpster fire, while colorful and visually entertaining, caused the power of the story to be definitely “on the fritz”.
Character arcs were ruined. Kylo Ren went from evil secondary antagonist to big bad to heroic turn-around to… what? His character dies and disappears at the end. Why? How did he complete his arc?
Rey went from child of nobody to Jedi to possible Sith Lord to…? Where does she end up? Palpatine tells her if she kills him, his spirit will infuse her with Super Dark Side Power. She kills him anyway? Will she now try to destroy the universe in the next trilogy?
And what did Finn do besides ride a horse-thing in space?
But I’m not complaining. Even if the pandemic is going to kill me shortly, I have had a good life. I have seen all the Marvel movies so far. I taught English to well over 2,000 kids in a thirty-year teaching career. I wrote fifteen novels that I published. And no amount of sparks, fire, or fritzing is capable of changing all of that.
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