The Lion King is Wonderfully Bad

An Editorial on the 2019 The Lion King

Another month, another Disney remake of a classic. There are two reasons that this film exists, the first is to show off amazing technological marvels that give us photo-real animals. The second is to showcase the ability of Disney following 2016’s reimagining of The Jungle Book, to assemble a world-class voice cast. Yet it’s still not enough to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the great 1994 original.

Musical numbers in the remake weren’t as great as the previous Lion King. In fact, Zazu the hornbill bird had a noticeable problem when his mouth moved in "I Just Can’t Wait to be King".

“Forget the original’s Busby Berkeley-like choreography of ‘I Just Can’t Wait to be King’ or the unbridled expressionism of Hakuna Matata.” -CNBC said.

Although I don’t like the music many people do, including Jenni Minns who said, “I loved the music I think it was sung beautifully.”

The main problem with photoreal movies is the emotion can’t be portrayed like cartoons. When watching the original Lion King, I cried and fell in love with the characters, but while watching the 2019 movie I did not feel that same emotion.

Left, the 2019 remak is compared to the 1994 original on the right.

In the figure to the left, you can see the emotion in the cartoon (right side) characters faces but in the photoreal (left side) faces it’s not as easily seen. . In my opinion, the best part of the movie was the opening. It was just like the 1994 original and it did make me squeal with joy.

I did really like the way the movie went along so perfectly with the original and I do recommend watching it just because I am a hardcore Disney fan. If you are looking for a nostalgic feel then you won’t get much, but if you are going because you love The Lion King, then i'm sure you will love what they did.