The Live Action Jungle Book Won An Oscar! Here's Why...

Disney's live-action version of the Jungle Book was surprisingly good, even by Disney standards. There were plenty of things to love about the reimagining of the classic tale. These are a few of our favorites:

The Academy Award it won last night, though, was not for its characters, acting or story, but for its visual effects. Essentially, the entire film, with the exception of the young actor playing Mowgli and a few small set pieces and props, was created using CGI, which is hard to believe, but the process is laid out here:

The film beat out both Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which had the first fully-CGI-animated human characters alongside actors, and Doctor Strange, which had mind-bending action sequences. According to Adam Valdez, MPC's VFX supervisor, the process certainly felt challenging enough to merit the Oscar win.

And according to VFX supervisor Rob Legato, who has previously won Academy Awards in visual effects for Hugo and Titanic, the trick was in viewing the process a little differently.

The best news about this win for Disney fans, however, is not in this success alone but in what it means for the future of live-action Disney films. The same production team that did visual effects for The Jungle Book will also be responsible for the upcoming live-action Lion King. But now, what we'd like to know is...