In 1994, Disney released “The Lion King,” an animated film widely considered to be one of the crown jewels of the so-called Disney Renaissance period from the late 1980s to late 1990s.
Exactly 25 years later, Disney releases “The Lion King,” a remake of its landmark film, featuring draw-dropping computer animation and a new cast in retelling the tale of a young lion rediscovering his role in the Circle of Life. The 1994 is superior to the soulless remake that will likely earn Disney even more money on top of the mind-boggling amount “Avengers: Endgame” pulled in earlier this year. As of this writing, the film has earned $185 million in its opening weekend.
If nothing else, “The Lion King” is visually impressive. It’s probably the first animated movie I’ve seen where everything looks so realistic, I wouldn’t blame someone being mistaken in thinking the locations or animals seen in the film are real. With this impressive attention to detail comes the film’s biggest failing however.
With such an attention to detail in making the film, much of the original film’s emotion is lost in the remake. While hand-drawn animation allows for artistic license to convey human emotion in animals, a hyper realistic take on the animal kingdom seen in “The Lion King” limits how the characters can convey the emotional beats found in the hand drawn animation of the original. Zazu, the hornbill bird that assists Mufasa, is a great example of this. While the original film’s animation allows Zazu to express emotion fitting to the lines being said, the realistic look only allows him to flap his beak as he speaks. Other characters suffer from a similar issue because animal faces don’t have the emotive range humans have. In many cases, the animals’ mouths simply flap along to the spoken lines.
This commitment to realism also impacts one of the film’s locations. In the animated original, the elephant graveyard is depicted as a genuinely spooky place with bones and elephant skulls prominently displayed. It is a foreboding place which serves as an introduction to the hyenas working for Scar.
In the new film, much of that artistic license used to create such a gloomy place was stripped away. The graveyard, while still displaying bones, is more of a wasteland with boiling mud and loses much of the creepiness seen in animation.
The other major issue with the film is that it only strives to retell “The Lion King” story. Other films in Disney’s ever expanding universe of films re-imagining its animated film library have taken liberties to tell new stories within those classic tales. “Dumbo” expanded on the original by telling the story of a family trying to reconnect. While that film also had its problems, it brought something new to a story many are already familiar with. With the exception of a few scenes fleshing out Nala’s motivations for venturing away from the Pride Lands midway through the film, it only strives to retell the familiar story, sometimes in an almost shot for shot manner.
However, that might be the point why the movie was remade in the first place. “The Lion King” is such a beloved Disney tale that a remake doesn’t have to strive for anything more. Parents will take their children to the theater and everyone will be wowed by how amazing the film looks. That fact alone means the movie will be a commercial and technical success. Despite that, I think something was lost in the retelling.
While people will feel sadness in the aftermath of that scene at the gorge, the technical marvel loses much of what made the original film an emotional journey for audiences for the past 25 years.
Reader Comments(0)