The Lion King Movie Review

The Lion King (2019)

Watch the trailer
Written by: Jeff Nathanson (screenplay by), Brenda Chapman (story), Irene Mecchi, Jonathan Roberts, Linda Woolverton (characters)
Directed by: Jon Favreau
Starring: Donald Glover, Beyoncé, Seth Rogen, Chiwetal Ejiofor, John Oliver, James Earl Jones, Alfre Woodard, Keegan-Michael Key, Eric André, Billy Eichner, Amy Sedaris, Chance the Rapper
Rated: PG

Plot
After the murder of his father, a young lion prince flees his kingdom only to learn the true meaning of responsibility and bravery.

Verdict
This is a very enjoyable movie, though part of that is due to nostalgia and this being a scene for scene remake. This certainly has it's moments but this movie is a pure business decision, not a creative endeavor which makes it difficult to give this movie any credence. Anything that is good about this movie is directly from the 1994 original. While the realistic CGI is very impressive, it also robs the characters of any expression. If this movie existed in a vacuum it would be great, but this remake attempts to do nothing new.
Watch it.

Review
Another Disney effort to republish their animated movies as live action looking CGI remakes. It's the same 1994 movie with a new look. This follows remakes of Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, The Jungle Book, Dumbo, and Aladdin. Disney is also planning to recreate The Little Mermaid and Mulan.
Disney is banking hard on nostalgia and it works. I've had very little interest in the previous remakes, and while I wasn't initially interested in this movie, the trailer hooked me.

The Lion King (1994) was the first Disney animated feature to be an original story, rather than based on an already existing work. The filmmakers said that the story of The Lion King was inspired by the lives of Joseph and Moses, from the Bible, and William Shakespeare's Hamlet.

Simba and Mufasa.

This relies on nostalgia. So many of the big moments I knew were coming which helps anticipation but robs all of the surprise. With such realistic looking animals, there is no emotion conveyed through facial expressions like in the animated movie. With this moving looking so realistic, I wanted some more character development.

 

This has very effective montages, though like most achievements in this movie I have to give credit to the 1994 movie, but these montage are also a quick summary to get to the next section. It's more telling us about the characters than developing them. Part of that is that it's easier to forgive a cartoon while the other part is that film making has evolved.
I was curious about Simba's mother. She lost a husband and son, and we don't see much about her. If this movie were written today I think she'd have a bigger part.
The pride lands fell into disrepair and we see none of that. I wanted a little bit more development on these parts and Simba growing up in a very unique situation as a predator living alongside prey.

Scar

I appreciate Scar had a receding hairline which helped to distinguish him, but I wonder why he didn't have a darker mane. The lionesses are hard to distinguish as they all look the same.
The draw for this movie is the CGI. It's amazing. This is almost just a tech demo. It was just ten years ago that Avatar was possible to have a movie that was predominantly CGI. Now this movie exists and it's a huge leap forward in CGI. This is the 1994 Lion King with just a different animation style. Seeing the Cats trailer before the movie makes me glad this movie doesn't have human actors dressed up, or CGI'd up with fur. That's just odd.As many doors as CGI opens, some ventures should be avoided.

Timon and Pumba.

This movie makes me want to watch the original. Are both movies as similar as they seem?
Timon and Pumba were a lot of fun. It felt like a lot of improvised riffing and I appreciate the movie did allow one thing to change. It just feels a bit too safe to make this a shot for shot remake. Then again if you don't, people complain things were changed and they don't like it.

Simba

This movie is a great business decision, but not a creative movie. That's my issue with this. It's a business move, not an artistic endeavor. The original is a triumph, and this is an attempt to profit.  I kind of wonder how Nathanson gets a screenplay credit. It seems more he co-wrote this using the original or just reformatted the original. I wonder what Favreau directed. These are only voice actors.

While I don't know composers that well, I guessed this was Zimmer. That was without knowing he scored the original. Many portions of the score felt like something I had heard in a movie before. Effective music heightens an emotion, and the techniques work, but I felt like the score had been used in other movies. I don't know if that's because I still vaguely remember the original movie, but it feels like segments of the score I had heard from recent movies Zimmer has scored.