‘Mowgli: Legend Of The Jungle’ – Andy Serkis & His Mo-Cap Revolution

Actor-turned-Director Andy Serkis may have more in common with the hero of his incoming Jungle Book adaption than he might assume.

Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle finally draws near after a sight release date bungle (it originally sat too closely on the heels of it’s indomitable 2016 Disney rival).

Serkis seems ready, with the Jon Favreau / Disney version two years apart, to unleash a more melancholic, overtly faithful, ‘grown-up’ adaption of the classic novel. It will appear in homes at Netflix and in select theatres by the 7th.

But before that, a look at Serkis’ career in front of the camera reveals what might have drawn him to his latest directorial venture.

Mowgli’s title says it all; Serkis seems more interested with the lead character than with the sing-along trappings of the Jungle. And why not? Mowgli has lasted the test of time not just because he is a heroic and endearing bundle of fun, but because he stands out.

He stands out as the definitive representation of standing out: born to man but raised in the wildlife, he fits in, but also stands apart, and he cannot escape this fact of himself in the human village or the animal world.

Although Serkis, a Brit raised by two parents in Middlesex, doesn’t have to deal with the same complexity or treatment in regards to culture, within his profession he is regarded as an ambiguity in a similar sort of way.

As the face of Motion-Capture performance (or – performance capture), Serkis himself is an outlier – championing the craft (which sees actors perform roles, mostly of an inhuman nature, in full motion detection gear) when little others would.

But the extreme method acting means that the fantasy genre has only improved – instead of just adding voice-overs to CGI, special effects are being completely humanised, and the depth of CGI characters bettered because they have a live-action performance at the centre.

Serkis has not just pursued it but made it the prevalent part of his work.

The performance-capture artist swings both ways. At first heavily in the direction of the most theatrical style of acting (they must over-express to give the effects artists enough to pick up on and translate to a digital character) and then the other way, facilitating a computer-generated image.

Over the years, the Mowgli director has become the verifiable king of the swingers – as it were.

In 2001, Serkis, under the watchful kiwi eye of Peter Jackson, revolutionised the use of Motion Capture in The Fellowship of the Ring. Although it had been used before in increments, and George Lucas and Ahmed Best technically got their first by using Mo-Cap for Best’s performance as alien Jar Jar Binks, no one had excelled in Performance capture like Serkis did as Gollum.

Gollum is the first time motion-capture was used to facilitate a serious powerhouse screen performance. The effects may have allowed Jackson to make Gollum look like a deformed, thousand-year-old Hobbit, but beneath it, Serkis was really emoting on a level that connected with audiences. He is also the first person to become a star through a role that was half computerised, bridging something very human and very not. A man and a monster.

In 2004, when his work as Gollum in Return of the King meant he was included in the casts ensemble award by the Screen Actors Guild, there finally seemed like a bridge has been formed between two worlds.

As King Kong and Caesar (the super-evolved chimpanzee in the rebooted Planet of the Apes franchise) respectively, Serkis pushed the boundaries of the caliber of Mo-Cap performance even further. He moved through forest sets with perfect Chimp physicality, interspersed his lines of dialogue with primate grunts, and imbued Caesar with a tell-all gaze. Those poignant micro-expressions of grief and horror as his awareness grows was a landmark in both acting and effects.

It was Serkis’ experience and understanding of the (constantly) developing Motion detection technology and its ability pick up detail that meant he was willing to make subtle acting choices as a talking Ape, of all things. Because of him, instead of a caricature, audiences were treated to the mind-blowing sight of a photorealistic Ape face displaying as much emotional turmoil as Meryl Streep on her best days.

As Gollum and Caesar, Serkis is perhaps the only person to have serious Oscar buzz for a Motion Capture role, complete with For Your Consideration campaigns launched by studios and wins of alternate gongs such as the Empire movie award.  

But Mo-Cap is still by and large considered a beast of ill intentions by industry traditionalists. Some flat out refuse to acknowledge it as real ‘acting’. Even the best examples of face recognition tech are looked at as little more than a feral intruder at the door to a civilised art form. The Oscars still, at least at the moment, snub.

But, like Mowgli, Serkis can crave the total acceptance of that community without necessarily needing it to survive. With his co-producer and partner Jonathan Cavendish, Serkis went on to create The Imaginarium nearly a decade ago. The production company is founded in the wilderness outside of Hollywood, based in a performance capture studio in London and devoted to an exploration of what Mo-cap can do in film.

Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle is one of the first films The Imaginarium has produced. Every animal audiences will see on screen has been created half by man – with human actors even wearing stilt walkers over the Mo-Cap suits to emulate the height and stance of the animal they are playing – and half by VFX, with a Jungle portraiture, added over the top of a room full of players. Serkis is Baloo, Benedict Cumberbatch is Shere Khan, Naomi Harris is Raksha. Not just the voices but the whole creatures too.

This is perhaps how a Jungle Book adaption was always supposed to be manifested: a world of pure, mad fantasy where characters can have the bodies of a human but the untamed spirit of a creature. There is something wonderfully right about the story of a Man-Cub – a boy who travels on his haunches like a wolf – being made by men and women making themselves animals, down to the floor on elbows on knees before VFX takes over.

Mowgli is part of two words and will be confined to neither – somewhere between myth and reality. With a vision of cinema somewhere between man-made and computer-made, Andy Serkis continues to prove himself in pursuit of something just as courageous.  

Mowgli: Legend Of The Jungle is released on Netflix everywhere from 7th December.