Cinema Trips 'The Lion King' 2019

This piece is about the 2019 remake of the 1994 classic Disney animation, made by Disney. The film is directed by Jon Favreau (Ironman, The Jungle Book), and is animated to be a hyper realistic version of the original film. The film boasts an all star voice cast, and stars Donald Glover (Community, The Martian), Beyonce (Dreamgirls, The Pink Panther), James Earl Jones (Star Wars Episode IV A New Hope, The Hunt for Red October), Chiwetel Ejiofor (Children of Men, 12 Years a Slave), John Oliver (Community, Robot Chicken), Eric Andre (Level Up!, Robot Chicken), Seth Rogen (Superbad, The Disaster Artist), Billy Eichner (Parks and Recreation, American Horror Story), John Kani (Sarafina!, Black Panther), and Keegan-Michael Key (Storks, Toy Story 4). The screenplay is written by Jeff Nathanson (Catch Me if You Can, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales). In addition Hans Zimmer (Gladiator, The Dark Knight) returns to do the music in the remake as well.

The narrative for this remake is the exact same as the narrative for the original, with minor additions at various points in the film to make the film fit the two hour mark. It is The Lion King, plot point by plot point with little to no deviations, and adding minor details that make this seem as if this was the extended version of the original The Lion King. This is something that feels more and more prevalent in the direct remakes as opposed to the ones that take liberties with the original narrative. Beauty and the Beast being another that feels as if it is a remake of an extended cut than anything else.

Visually the film is breathtaking to look at. It truly is an achievement in visual effects that you can have such a photorealistic animation hit cinemas. The landscapes were beautiful, and the animals moved realistically to the point that at times you forget that they were in fact animated. While this photorealistic aspect of the film is, in fact, breathtaking, this is also a place where the film was quite hit and miss for me.

As the animals were photorealistic, mimicking actual animals, the song numbers in this film lack the visual energy of the original. The original has the lack of restraint in the medium to make the energy of the songs compatible with the energy of what we are seeing on screen, however the much slower realistic movements of the remake makes the combined energy of the song numbers drop significantly. This is something that affected my enjoyment of the song numbers throughout the film, as it constantly reminded me that I could be watching a superior iteration of the songs and the animation in a twenty five year old film, this is the same thing that has happened to the hyena’s as well. Their energetic movements from the original has been greatly reduced, and so are far less memorable.

Conversely, as a result of the animation being as realistic as it was, it made the connection between myself and the animals that much greater, and as such segments in the film where it was characters talking and behaving as animals do, I was riveted by what was happening on the screen.

The characters are a repetition of the ones that we saw in the original for the most part. The character that took the greatest change in terms of personality is Scar, and this performance in particular held me back from liking the film more than I could have. This time around, Scar is far more menacing all the time as opposed to the original where he had a far more charismatic and flamboyant side that made him riveting to watch. The reason why this Scar falls far short for me is because there is a slavish devotion to keep the dialogue of the original the same, and there is nothing wrong with keeping the script the same.

However, now, we have a far more grim and menacing Scar reciting the lines that were written for a far more flamboyant Scar. This creates a disconnect between what is shown and what is said. It is almost as if you have Heath Ledger’s Joker say the lines written by Jack Nicholson’s Joker, this dissonance is not enough to break the film, it does hamper the character quite a bit though.

The music is the same, and it is still great. That is the music from the original film. They change the compositions slightly this time around to less than stellar results, and I could have done without the originals altogether.

Personally, I have my emotional high in the film when I was watching the stampede scene, and from that moment onwards in the film, I found myself bored, and not caring all that much about what was happening on screen. Not even the cloud Mufasa saved the second half of the film for me. While the performances were good all around, Timon, and Pumba were detractors for me this time around, when they were my favourite characters from the original. Timon in particular got on my nerves more times than he did not. Beyonce was fine, Childish Gambino was fine, though I preferred the characters far more when they were cubs.

This is a film that I am in two minds about. I loved the first half of the film, and thought the second half was perfectly fine. If you are looking for a nostalgia kick, then this film definitely does it. That being said, while the technology that this film uses is absolutely stunning, much of what they tried to recreate was done so much better in the original. Ultimately, I would say watch this film at some point, maybe during a matinee, or when the price drops in the cinema. Would I watch this version again? Personally, no, at least not in its entirety, a clip here and there on Youtube at best. The novelty of the remake wore off after Mufasa died, and that was that.