1994’s The Lion King is one of Disney’s finest cinematic achievements, so it’s understandably a little nerve-racking that Disney is retelling it for a new medium. Disney’s wave of live-action remakes and retellings have been, for the most part, hit or miss. In most cases they’re either beautifully realized expansions of their animated counterparts as in 2016’s The Jungle Book or hollow retellings that offered nothing new as in 2017’s Beauty and the Beast. With The Lion King, director Jon Favreau reaches for new heights in visual effects following The Jungle Book and more than lives up to its visual prowess. With the “Circle of Life” sequence in particular, the visual effects, along with the always incredible music, works beautifully to recapture the magic of the original 1994 animated film.
But moments like that are few and far between because as the story ticks by, the photorealistic visuals soon become both a blessing and a curse. It’s made even more unfortunate that, despite brilliant voice work from a stellar cast, The Lion King is nothing more than a beat-for-beat carbon copy of its predecessor, but without the heart and magic that made it, arguably, the king of Disney animation.
If you haven’t seen the original Lion King, where the hell have you been living in the past 25 years? Joking aside, let’s do a quick recap: Lion cub Simba (JD McRary) is next in line to the throne over the Pride Lands, a lush, expansive region of savannah and grassland teeming with life. His father, the current king Mufasa (James Earl Jones) rules with honor, dignity, and compassion, unlike his nefarious brother Scar (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who plans on taking the throne for himself out of jealousy and a blinded notion of superiority over his brother. His plan comes to fruition with the help of a group of outcast Hyenas, resulting in Simba running away from the pride lands and Scar ascending to the throne. Distraught, Simba takes refuge with a couple of laid-back outcasts, a warthog named Pumbaa (Seth Rogen) and a meerkat named Timon (Billy Eichner). Having grown up into an adult (Donald Glover), Simba’s past comes back to remind him of who he is and that he must retake the throne from Scar and take his rightful place as king of the Pride Lands.
There’s a good reason why I brought up the opening “Circle of Life” sequence in particular as a highlight. It’s because it emphasizes when the visual effects are at their pinnacle of utilization and storytelling. It’s a beautifully rendered technical modernization of one of Disney’s most memorable scenes. The always brilliant music, the lush environment, and the realism add a lot to this grounded interpretation. But most importantly, no one speaks a single line. Believe it or not, most of the time the film is at its strongest when the animals aren’t singing or dancing.
The visual effects are so perfectly detailed and intricate that you often forget that, when they’re not rehearsing lines from the original, the animals themselves are never real. Every frame you see is done completely on a computer screen. It’s for certain a marvelous achievement in CGI, but it would been a better idea if it were applied to a completely different property, original or not. It’s just questionable that, of all the ideas and all the IP out there in the world, The Lion King was chosen as the guinea pig for this visual experiment.
While the visual effects provide plenty of wonder and awe to gaze at, they are also what greatly hinder the story at hand from reaching the heights of the original. Because it’s grounded in our reality, all the animals must abide by the rules of their own anatomy. Therefore, the lions, hyenas, and every other animals emotes the exact same facial expression regardless of what emotion they’re meant to express. Simba’s face when he’s singing “Just Can’t Wait to be King” is the exact same face as when he is forced into exile. Much of the emotion is resorted to a blend of the musical score as well as the tone of voice the actors convey. While that can sometimes work, it mostly depletes much of the humanity that resided in the characters we know and love. It removes a lot of the magic that made the original so powerful, especially given the context and emotional reverence the story itself possesses. Even if you were to completely judge the movie on its own merits and not those of the original, it would still feel lifeless and dissonant. The fact that the animals are so lifelike and so grounded in reality makes the movie all the more jarring and awkward.
That photorealism further hinders the operatic potential of the story. The Lion King is a story based on Hamlet, a notable work of William Shakespeare himself. Given its structure, The Lion Kingis a very theatrical, extravagant experience and the photorealism dials down the extravagance ten-fold. When that ostentatiousness is replaced with the real world, much of the heavy drama and emotional weight is discarded in place of awkward exchanges of dialogue and little to no substance in the characters. It’s especially disheartening given that the film is so dependent on the original. It’s not an exaggeration to say that this is note-for-note, line-for-line (at least 90% of it) a carbon copy of the original 1994 animated film. It’s the exact same beautifully written story with the exact same wonderfully colorful characters, except all of the style, humanity, and nuance that made the original so special.
It can be really telling how much is missing when the musical numbers themselves, or most of them at least, diverge from their animated counterparts. As mentioned before, “The Circle of Life” is the film’s most successful retelling given its blend of the visuals, the score, and the fact that it doesn’t feature any animals singing. But that’s obviously not the case with the other musical numbers. Where you once had the colorful, whimsical, and abstract “Just Can’t Wait to be King” as well as the authoritative, imposing, and operatic “Be Prepared,” you now have animals awkwardly running, jumping, and singing in their respective environments.
Whatever emotion and humanity we do receive comes from the score as well as the vocal performances of the cast, all of whom for the most part provide exceptional work. While all the actors perform adamantly and give it their all, there are a few standout performances that do add to the film as a whole. Chiwetel Ejiofor brings the menace and disdain through Scar and veers from the vocally conniving persona of his animated opposite, instead acting as more of a secretive and sinister shadow. Strangely enough, unlike the rest of the characters, the photorealism can work to his advantage is depicting him as an imposing and frightful figure.
But it’s Billy Eichner and Seth Rogen as Timon and Pumbaa respectively who breathe new life into the story. While everyone else is limited by the same structure and dialogue as the original, Rogen and Eichner get a chance to flex their comedic muscles and, while sticking somewhat to the original lines, are able to provide their own spin on the characters, providing them with some new jokes, new bits of dialogue, as well as some clever jabs and meta-humor towards other Disney projects.
Overall, it would be a little pessimistic to call The Lion King a “bad” movie. It still has the story and characters we all remember, and for the most part it’s still fun to watch these characters grow and make you laugh, cry, and cheer in excitement. But it doesn’t help that the film offers nothing more than great visuals and some A+ voice acting. It all just depends on how you interpret it for yourself. It is a literal copy-and-paste of the 1994 animated film, and it’s up to you if that is a positive or a negative. For me, I’m always up for modern retellings of classic tales and adventures, but The Lion King fails to do anything new with the material other than make it look more grounded and realistic. Regardless, it should be emphasized that the visuals are nonetheless extraordinary, and the film is definitely worth seeing for the visuals alone, especially in IMAX or Dolby. I’m excited to see how this technology is further explored in future project. I just wish they chose a different IP to test it out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TavVZMewpY&t=1s&w=585