‘Lion King 2019’ – Too cynical to believe
View(s):Like with all the Disney animated meatballs that come around, it’s very upsetting to think that some kids will see this and grow up with this before seeing the original.
The animated was surreal when it needed to be, for dramatic, musical and comedic effect, which this film abandons in favour of photo realism.
Now that would be fine if they changed those elements to fit the tone of this film visually, but they don’t. They ‘Just can’t wait to be king’ section is the exact same lyrically and sonically, but visually looks boring as shit. There’s a point where simba sings ‘everybody look left, everybody look right’ and they don’t do anything with that. It’s a lyric from the movie and they don’t bother trying to make sense of it within the film, as nobody actually looks left or right, completely defeating the purpose of that song. More so than that, it just makes no sense for this to be a musical. The original felt like the musical, this feels like a Nat Geo Documentary that added some songs randomly in the middle.
Another thing is the faces that are dead. They emote as much as an animal is able to emote. There is no smiling from the lions, making both happy and sad moments all the less poignant when both a joke and a (debatably) heartbreaking moment are performed (by the CGI animals) with exactly the same conviction.
The voice performances could be great, if they coincided with the facial animations. It’s like they achieved what George Miller did with ‘Babe’, and recreated the stuff that he couldn’t with the animals, as they couldn’t emote, it was just animals talking, he still managed to get emotive responses through body language, which this film just shuns away by replicating shots from the animated film which heavily rely on facial expression. The only moment it works is when the lions show some level of aggression and anger in the performance, as lions in the real world, get this, are very good at displaying aggression, and that translated well to the big fight at the end. I would say scar translated well, but he was so monotone angry through the film, barely showing any depth beyond that to be compelling.
This film was also, too cynical for me to believe there was love and care put into the storytelling.
Just re-release the original with Beyoncé and the rest dubbed over, and you’ve achieved what you achieve here without disrespecting the love and care put into the original.
Akshan Cader
University of British Colombia, Kelowna
Canada