The Jungle Book

I have not seen the abomination that is Disney’s “The Jungle Book 2” but I can tell from the preview that none of the writers for it ever actually read Rudyard Kipling’s “Jungle Books.” Although the original film covers very little of the material from the book, comprising about 2.5 of the 8 stories in the first volume alone, the writers don’t seem to have thought to use any more of Kipling’s material for the sequel. I understand that certain things were not possible due to the way the first movie treated the material. For example, it would be difficult for Mowgli to have further adventures with Kaa the rock python since they were friends in the book and enemies in the movie. Even so, a writer should have been able to work something out.
The fact that Mowgli followed a little girl back to man-kind wouldn’t have even interfered with following Kipling’s stories. In the book, he goes back as a boy but is later turned away from the village because he falls at odds with the tall-tale telling local hunter who tries to take credit and the reward when Mowgli kills Shere Khan. Mowgli saves the lives of the people who had been good to him, for they had been branded as sorcerers for taking care of a devil child, and then turns the full force of the jungle on the remaining people and drives them away, destroying the village completely. That would have made a pretty good first half of a movie. A good second half would have been Mowgli re-earning the trust of the wolves by helping them defeat a pack of 200 red dogs that attack the pack of 40 wolves. Throw in a few songs about trust, acceptance of diversity and about the vice of telling lies and you’ve got a good Disney movie. Since that movie wouldn’t have sucked, one could even have made a third movie and still followed Kipling’s actual work.Not to be nit-picky here, but what was up with the T.V. show “Tail Spin.” I understand that the characters were only loosely based on those in the Jungle Book; after all, Baloo the bear was the pilot of an airplane and Louie (not actually mentioned by Kipling) was the owner of a bar. They even managed to work in Shere Khan as a businessman. But what the heck happened to Bagheera? Not even a cameo?