The Lion King Review

It's been an excellent year for Disney thus far, at least when it comes to the box office. Thanks to "The Lion King" opening to a massive $191.7 million at the box office this past weekend, they now have five of the top six highest grossing opening weekends at the domestic box office, with the other one being "Spider-Man: Far from Home," which they do benefit from in other ways even though Spider-Man still belongs to Sony. In terms of quality, though, that's a bit of a different story. Yeah, sure, I've liked both Marvel films this year that they put out. And Toy Story 4 from the Pixar realm was a very pleasant surprise. But when it comes to these live-action remakes, they've not had the best track record. "The Lion King" is the third one from this year, but even if we look back to where the trend started from with "Alice in Wonderland" in 2010, I've been about split down the middle. This year specifically has given us "Dumbo" and "Aladdin." I hated "Dumbo" and enjoyed "Aladdin." In regards to "The Lion King," even though the animated film is one of my personal favorites and is arguably Disney's most popular film, I've always been a bit nervous about how a live-action adaptation was going to end up. Turns out I was right to be skeptic because this is a very rough ride.

I don't want to simply regurgitate everything that everyone else has been saying, so I'm going to try to make this as personal as possible, but the reason I was skeptic about this is that it seems like this was a lose/lose for Disney. Given how perfect the animated movie is, if they change anything then I'll be wondering why they felt the need to do so. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. But if they simply make the same exact movie, then what was the point of that? You see the problem? Now I can currently think of 191 million reasons why it was a good choice to remake this, but money aside, what's the purpose of redoing "The Lion King"? What does it add? All it really teaches Disney is that if they just throw some lazy nostalgia at the screen, millions of people will flock to Disney and give them all their money. No need for creativity. People might demand more original movies, but Disney won't give them that because that's all lip service. When original movies do come out, the same people that were demanding them will ignore their existence because it's not a property they're familiar with. But since everyone loves "The Lion King," they'll gladly give Disney their $10 to go see it again, even though it is the exact same movie, because yeah, that's the exact route Disney took here. It's shameless.

I suppose, in theory, you could get away with doing a carbon copy of another film as long as you provide the same amount of energy and passion as said original. I was one of the people that got conned into liking "Beauty and the Beast" because I thought the execution of the film was done well, even though it was mostly the same thing as the classic animated original, but with a few added details to get it to the length of a modern film. It was a similar thing with "Aladdin" this year. Even though "Aladdin" actually did plenty of things differently to set it apart, the general structure is the same. But there was a lot of passion and energy to the film. All the actors seemed like they genuinely cared about the project and they did a dang good job of singing and dancing in order to make it a fun spectacle. But with "The Lion King," the biggest surprise for me is that this new movie has no soul. The original movie might have simply been an adaptation of "Hamlet," but with animals. And Disney may have even borrowed a lot from "Kimba the White Lion," despite refusing to admit to it, but none of that negatively impacts the film because there's so much emotion and so much care put into every aspect of the movie. There's a reason why it's Disney's most popular film.

This new one, though, is so baffling because it seems like they're going though the motions. And I don't even know where to point the finger. Jon Favreau, who did an excellent job with "The Jungle Book," is here directing. And we have a great cast that includes Donald Glover, Seth Rogen, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Alfre Woodard, Billy Eichner, John Kani, John Oliver, Beyoncé and James Earl Jones. Yet no one really sounds like they care. I mean, bringing James Earl Jones back to revoice Mufasa seems like an excellent choice, but not even he puts much energy into his performance. It almost feels like Jon Favreau told everyone to sound as dull and monotonous as possible for some sort of cinematic effect. I don't know why he would say something like that to everyone, but that's the only thing that makes sense in my brain as to why the entire cast sounds so uninterested. The only two characters that even sounded like they were having fun voicing their characters were Seth Rogen as Pumba and John Oliver as Zazu. That's out of the main characters, anyways. Florence Kasumba made Shenzi the hyena sound as vicious as possible, but she was barely in the movie. On top of that, most of the line delivery was off. They were saying iconic lines, but in rushed and flat tones that gave it no weight.

Another big problem I had is that this is a movie that didn't translate well into live action. And yes, we can have that argument if you really want to. I know a lot of people that are so passionately adamant that this is NOT live action and they'll go to their graves defending that point. I don't disagree and I'm very well aware of the fact that the whole thing was done on a computer, but I really don't care. It was made with the intention of looking photorealistic, so that's why I call it live action. Because it looks live action. And they did such a good job that the final result is a bit jarring. It looks like we are watching a nature documentary when suddenly the animals start talking. Instead of the voices sounding like they are coming from the animals, the voice over is painfully obvious. It sounded like a serious-toned RiffTrax version of a nature documentary. It was unnatural. But yet only some of the animals seemed to have the ability of being able to talk. The rest were just normal animals who were animated so realistically that they didn't seem like they had any idea of what was going on around them, which made it really confusing as to why they were all gathering to celebrate Simba's birth when all the lions really cared about was eating them for dinner.

When it comes to this, I'm having a hard time pinpointing the difference between "The Jungle Book" and "The Lion King" in this regard. Both movies were made by Jon Favreau. Yet when I watched "The Jungle Book," I totally believed that the animals were talking. It felt normal. But in "The Lion King" it didn't. It was strange. It got even stranger when they started singing. Their singing voices were definitely not coming from them. Given that animals don't naturally participate in dance numbers, it was a bit odd seeing them doing so. But they didn't fully commit to the absurdity of it all, so it felt more like a half-hearted dance number just because they had to. In reality, with this super realistic tone they were going for, it would've probably been better if they had not had any music, but yet that would've been total blasphemy. The other part that made the live action animals in this a bit weird is that animals don't naturally emote, especially not lions. It seems like they were trying to be realistic to that, which is a problem because this is a story that requires a lot of emotion. These animals need to have the facial expressions to make both the serious tones of the movie as well as the comedy fully work, but they handcuffed themselves by not allowing that.

As I think about it, maybe this is why the cast was told to be less interested. If animals don't give much emotion, maybe they thought it would fit best if they didn't provide much emotion themselves. But even that doesn't excuse the line delivery. A lot of the characters didn't spend much time pausing and thinking about what they were going to say or how they were going to react. They just spouted off pre-rehearsed lines with no time for reaction. One example is when Timon and Pumba were trying to figure out what to do with baby Simba. Pumba suggests that maybe they should keep him because if he grows up, then he would be on their side. Instead of Timon pausing for a bit and then suggesting the same thing as if it were his idea, thus showing that he processed what Pumba said, but didn't want to give him the credit, he gave the line immediately after Pumba finished, almost to the point of overlapping or interrupting him. Stuff like this happened the entire movie. But not just with individual lines. It happened with a lot of scenes. Scenes that we knew were supposed to happen, so they just jumped right into them without giving proper time to set things up. Like when Simba and Nala reunited. Even just a few extra moments to set up their love song would've helped.

All of these core issues came together to make it so I wasn't emotionally invested in this film. I was supposed to care about Simba, but I didn't. I was supposed to be traumatized when Mufasa died. But I wasn't. I was supposed to be terrified of Scar, but I found him dull. I was supposed to be entertained by Timon and Pumba, but I didn't laugh. I was supposed to be blown away or touched by the spectacle of the musical and dance numbers, but I didn't even feel like singing along. The movie never really grabbed me from the start and as we progressed through the plot, I became increasingly frustrated at what was happening. I think it boils down to the fact that this is a movie that simply doesn't translate well into live action, nor is it a movie that really needed a remake. There's certainly things you can get away with in an animated film that don't work in live action. When you combine that with the fact that it really seemed like there wasn't a lot of passion put into this project, I ended up getting a bad taste in my mouth because I don't know the last time I've walked out of theater that screamed "CASH GRAB" this loudly. And the fact that it worked so well with this destined to be Disney's latest $1 billion film is troubling because it teaches Disney that they don't need to be creative.

Thus when I rank this movie with all of the other live action remakes from Disney, this unfortunately will end up towards the bottom of the list. A big part of that reason is the fact that I think this could be very damaging to the movie industry and for Disney going forward. Given that Hollywood is a business, they're always trying to replicate success. And when they find something that works this well in terms of how much money it made, they're going to copy that formula. With Disney specifically, I can see them taking serious notes from this performance and apply it to the likes of "The Little Mermaid" or "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," two movies that I think could use a modern update, but now probably won't get one because Disney knows they can make a crapton of money by simply creating a carbon copy of their classic films. There are positives of this movie that I could talk about, but I left with such a frustrated feeling that I'm not in the mood. There's also more negatives, like them butchering "Be Prepared" or removing Rafiki's speech to Simba, but I think I've made my point clear without needing to completely dissect every scene. So my frustrations with the film itself as well as the potential implications has led me to give "The Lion King" a 5/10.