Oh, and speaking of today's movies...

[camwyn]

Two things sprang to mind as I was watching The Jungle Book with my dad.

1. This version of The Jungle Book ended up calling Mowgli 'Lord of the Jungle'. How would he stack up against Tarzan? I mean, we saw Mowgli handle mass combat pretty well in the climactic fight with the dholes in Kipling's book, but he hasn't had nearly the amount of development that Lord Greystoke did - comes of his author only getting off the two Jungle Books about him, I suppose. We can't really rate them on the same scale as they've got different ecologies within their respective jungles. How about we drop the two of them off in a nice deep patch of the Amazon rainforest and see how they handle themselves? Precious few wolves - I'm not sure they even have wolves there any more - and no great apes. No big cats, either, nor pachyderms. Give 'em a year and see what each one comes up with. The judge will be whatsisname, Ka-Zar of the Savage Land in Marvel Comics.

2. What's the point of civilization if every time a kid gets led off by monkeys or wolves or something, they wind up making it to adulthood, developing m4d 4n1m47 sk177z, and being taught to speak Human within three months of their discovery by their own species? Jeesh. I gotta add that to the Pulp Survival Rules somehow.

3. How come neither Tarzan nor Mowgli grew any kind of facial hair? Seriously, they ought to have had major beardage going on by the time humanity found 'em. Do wolves have magical shaving powers in their tongues or something?

Comments

[khaosworks.livejournal.com]

I could be wrong on this, but I think Tarzan, at least, learned to shave from using his father's knife and the books he found in his dead parents' treehouse, which he discovered around puberty. One of the neatest bits in the first book was the fact that he knew how to read and write English - but not speak it, since he had never heard the sounds.

[camwyn]

If that's the case, I can deal with it. Yes, it's bloody peculiar to have figured out reading without a primer or an illustrated dictionary, but Tarzan falls under the same genre rules as Dr. Frankenstein's creation and can therefore be excused.

Still waiting to hear from the Mowgli camp, though.