directed by Jon Favreau
written by Jeff Nathanson, Brenda Chapman
When I watched the original animated film The Lion King, way back in 1994, I quite enjoyed it. While it was basically a Disney-fied Hamlet set on the African plains, I was struck by its visual splendor and enjoyed its catchy tunes, even though some of them stuck more than others. One other thing, even then, struck me, though: this was a story set firmly in Africa, and yet the heroic lion of the story was voiced by Matthew Broderick, possibly the whitest guy imaginable at the time, the guy who played Ferris Bueller. His leading lady, then "it" girl Moira Kelly, was also white, as were the performers who sang the characters' songs. Representation in film wasn't a big thing then; one could actually count on one hand back then the number of Disney animated films to prominently feature black actors, including this one, and the fact that they were all in supporting roles rather than in lead ones struck me as being distinctly off, and I'm not even black.
When I watched the 2019 version of this film with my six-year-old daughter, who loved every minute of it, I was absolutely struck how closely it hewed to the original, unlike previous remakes of animated films like The Jungle Book, Beauty and the Beast, and even Aladdin, all of which seized on opportunities to flesh out characters, remove stereotypes, address plot holes and other small touches aimed at updating those films for modern audiences. This movie is nothing like any of those.
Essentially, The Lion King is the story of Simba (JD McRary) a lion who is the son King Mufasa (James Earl Jones) and Queen Sarabi (Alfre Woodard) and destined to be king of Pride Rock, much to the irritation of Mufasa's brother Scar (Chiwetel Ejiofor) who schemes together with a pack of Hyenas led by Shenzi (Florence Kasumba) to unseat Mufasa and take the throne for himself. When Scar makes his move, disaster follows, and Simba flees far from Pride Rock as his father's kingdom falls into ruin. Simba's childhood friend Nala (Beyonce Knowles-Carter) goes off to find him, or anyone willing to help, but finds adult Simba (Donald Glover) now living a carefree life with his friends, the meerkat Timon (Billy Eichner) and the warthog Pumbaa (Seth Rogen), and going back to save his father's kingdom is the last thing on his mind. Will he embrace his destiny?
While it's a given that the only reason films like this are even made is to cash in on nostalgia and make bundles of money, I found it interesting for a moment that this movie, save for very, very minor tweaks, was remade virtually shot-for-shot, unlike Favreau's previous venture into this remake business, Jungle Book. I mean, it's not like the original was without any flaw, and yet, unlike the people who remade Beauty and the Beast and even Aladdin, who tried to update their scripts a little bit, these folks pretty much trot out the original script, in many cases word-for-word. I'm at a loss as to what they brought to the table.
Visually, though, the movie is really an astonishing look into what computers can bring to the big screen. It calls to mind how I felt about the bland but visually-arresting 2000 film Dinosaur. There's no point to calling it a "live-action remake" because the entire film was basically birthed inside a computer, and did not, unlike any of the other remakes up until this point, feature any actual, live-action elements.
The songs, it should be said, are nothing more than covers of the Oscar-nominated (or winning) originals, with no real innovation, and as much as I'd like to say they are all improvements over the originals (and to be fair, a few of them are), the filmmakers having Seth Rogen try to sing basically prevents me from praising any of their other musical choices. Hans Zimmer, who won his only Oscar so far for this score back in 1994, basically just dusted it off, though he did add some flourishes, and one of the wordless chants from the first film actually has lyrics now. Again, though, musically, there's almost nothing new about this film, Beyonce's tacked-on single "Spirit" notwithstanding.
As strange as this may sound, this movie really does feel like some form of reparations to the African-Americans who were deprived of hearing black actors play Simba and Nala the first time around, because creatively it really just doesn't serve any other purpose.
It does make me wonder, though, what kind of truly astonishing worlds Disney could create with the tech that was on glorious display in this film.
6/10
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