The Jungle Book – 2016 (WINNER)
At first, I thought that this movie’s visual effects were good, but not as good as all the attention they were given. But the more I think about it, the more my opinion has changed. Not only were the visuals incredible, I believe they deserved their Oscar win. When thinking of the visual effects for this movie, I’d wager that most people immediately go to the completely CGI animals, and to be sure, most of them were just about perfect. But it was the CGI jungle environments that were, for me, just as impressive.
Every bit of jungle, every blade of grass, every leaf and vine, were all manufactured in a computer, and when you think about the fullness of the scenery, it really is pretty spectacular. At times, I was not aware of the backgrounds, but I am confident I would have noticed if it didn’t look right. In other words, the composited jungle environment became invisible, which is usually one of the most successful kinds of effects. When effects become invisible, they allow viewers to focus on the story, and the animator has accomplished his or her objective.
But the more visible effects are what people remember, and here we have all the talking animals. The first big movie that gave us a realistic live-action version of talking animals was Babe in 1995. There, they captured video of live animals and computer animated the mouths. Here, there were no live animals that made it to the screen. They made sure to make the mouths move realistically. For example, an animal’s jaw didn’t bend to make him look like he was forming words with a mouth that isn’t designed for speech, which was all for the better.
The animators had to choreograph every frame of movement for every animal, of which there were around 70 different species featured. And they got it all right. Different animals move in different ways. For example, a bear doesn’t walk the same as a panther, and neither walk the same as a wolf. An orangutan moves differently than a baboon or a gibbon. And since every creature that appeared in the film had to have its every move fabricated by an animator, all these animals had to be studied in great detail.
But there was one animal that took me out of the story and made me notice him. It was the baby elephant. In a film in which the realism of the CGI animals was so important, this one was a disappointment. The facial expression looked too human. They made the eyes too wide, and the mouth curved into too much of a human smile. It looked photo-realistic, but the child-like emotion expressed on its face made it stand out as a bit silly, especially when compared to the realism of the other animals in the movie. They tried too hard to make him cute, and it showed.
Finally, there was the jungle fire, and Mowgli’s conflict with Shere Khan. The shot where the tiger falls into the fire was good. I also liked the look of how the fires were doused by a re-routed waterfall, the steam hissing as the fires went out. All in all, very well done. Yes, even the ridiculous prehistorically giant orangutan.