The Lion King (2019)

So... I get it. Its 2016, Jon Favreau just made Disney a bunch of money with a live action Jungle Book that utilized CGI to create photo realistic animals in a really well done way. The obvious question is, how can we capitalize on this and the obvious answer is The Lion King. But I have to believe someone in that meeting had to be like, it's not a live action remake because there are no humans in Lion King and as realistic as they are, the animals are still computer generated... so wouldn't it mean we're just doing another animated Lion King?

And I think I could forgive that if the movie was bringing anything new to the table... but if you're going to watch any animated version of the Lion King, there is a masterpiece that was made in 1994 and this one in 2019 ain't it.

By the way, this has the chance to be a really short review or a long one depending on how long I wanna rant on this film.

You know the story of The Lion King, this movie is banking on the fact that you do.

The king of pride rock Mufasa (voiced by James Earl Jones) has a new son named Simba (voiced by JD McRary as young Simba and Donald Glover when he's older). His brother Scar (voiced by Chiwetel Ejiofor) wants to be king so he plots to take the throne. The plot of Hamlet. Simba goes into exile and meets some jokers Timone and Pumba (voiced by Billy Eichner and Seth Rogen) who teach him the philosophy of Hakuna Matata. Eventually he comes back when his girlfriend Nala (voiced by Shahadi Wright Joseph as a kid, Beyonce Knowles as an adult) comes to find him. Plot of Hamlet.

So I'm going to talk about the good things first...

The CGI is pretty good. I think it probably got a little underplayed when this movie came out because we had already seen it in The Jungle Book, but it shouldn't be discounted that the CGI team should have been top billed.

Also, the soundtrack is still really good. Hans Zimmer and Elton John sure nailed it back in 94 and this movie does not forget that.

Um... the cast sure is a lot of names I recognize...

Now the confusing thing about this movie is that it is almost a beat for beat, scene by scene remake of the 94 cartoon. The 94 cartoon is amazing so wouldn't you think that this movie would be amazing too? Wouldn't it be the same as when a video game is remastered?

Well, because the movie is a shot for shot remake, it is automatically compared to the 94 version and the 94 version was just able to do more because it wasn't trying to animate these lions how lions actually act, they animated the lions to be characters.

Sure they may look great, but the biggest problem is that the animated animals are so realistic that its hard to convey any kind of emotion, especially no where near the emotion that they were able to do with the 94 version.

Furthermore, the lack of emotion from the animation puts a lot of the owness on the voice actor and it does not matter how big of a name you get, there is a difference between voice acting and live action acting and not everyone in this movie is good at it. James Earl Jones is a phenomenal voice actor. So it didn't matter how much he was phoning it in for a paycheck, he still arguably had the best scenes because he just knows how to do it well.

On top of that, because the movie insisted on being a shot for shot remake, you're subconsciously comparing this film, and the voice acting to the 94 film. And I'm sorry, the person who got screwed the most was Chiwetel Ejiofor as Scar.

Scar is a great villain due to a combination of the way he's animated in the 94 version and the unique way Jeremy Irons voiced him in that film.

Yes, Ejiofor has a great voice, but its commanding, its not conniving. Scar's whole thing is that he's the brain and Mufasa is the brawn, so its not as stark of a contrast when you've got the commanding voice of James Earl Jones compared with Chiwetel Ejiofor's commanding voice. Furthermore, he's probably the worst animated out of them all with just a weird washed out grey color. I'm sorry Ejiofor just got screwed.

But while we're on Scar, something that these live action films have been doing is unnecessarily going back and redoing some of the "plot holes" people pointed out in the animated films. But this film, since its a shot for shot remake, doesn't even do that. In fact it further pulls open those plot holes and makes us wonder why there weren't more questions to Scar when he comes back claiming Mufasa AND Simba are dead. I'm not asking the movie to fix these plot holes that didn't even take away from the original that much, but it goes to the point that this movie was too lazy to make anything remotely new out of it.

And honestly, not even the soundtrack saves the film at times because despite being 118 minutes instead of the succinct 88 minutes the 94 version was, this movie still feels rushed at times. When it comes to the soundtrack, in the 94 version the soundtrack was succinct with the action going on in the film. A perfect example is when Simba tries bugs for a second and the upbeat music of Hakuna Matata does this thing where the music reflects the feeling of someone eating bugs for the first time. Its succinct with Simba's face as he cringes but then realizes its slimey yet satisfying and the upbeat music starts again. In this film, that moment is rushed through, giving us no facial expressions because real animals don't have those, and yet that gross out music moment is still in there because the soundtrack is basically on auto pilot. If you're going to just recreate the exact same movie, you have to understand why the first movie was so good and worth remaking. Otherwise, you're not hiding the fact that you're just doing this make money very well.

Overall, this movie is pretty bad. And whats worse is that it's bad and its a clear cash grab. And what's worse than that is that nothing will be learned because this movie made over a billion dollars last year.

Not only does it bring nothing new to this classic story, it doesn't totally understand the ingredients that were originally used to make the classic story in the first place. You would get a similar result by playing the soundtrack of Lion King in the background of an animal documentary like Planet Earth. Sure its pretty to look at and the soundtrack is great, but at the end of the day you're just looking at super realistic animals with no emotions or expressions behind any of the dialogue or action on screen.

The good news is, Favreau won any lost credibility with The Mandalorian so I guess that's okay for him.

And the truth is, this is not a live action film. It is just really good animation. So if you have to choose between an animated story of The Lion King, choose the superior one, the '94 version.

But those are my (probably not that original) thoughts on The Lion King (2019). What did you think? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog!

Thanks for Reading!