The Lion King Remake

[James]

It's so frustrating and odd in not being its own thing. The smallest throwaway moments from the original got stretched out to overlong sequences, while the big emotional moments were all truncated.

That was one of my biggest complaints. How long was the stupid segment with the fur blowing in the wind! Yet...

Can You Feel The Love This Afternoon should have taken place at magic hour. I get that they may not have wanted to go full midnight blue because of Rafiki's upcoming scene, but it should have had a golden twilight glow. It just looked like daylight.

Simba and Nala were feeling the love within 30 seconds of meeting each other again!

[Ben]

Exactly.

And don’t get me going on fur-poo. What the frickity-frick was THAT doing in there!?

It was so bizarre, we were actually giggling about them going there...and they did! Like, how long did that process take? It was another of those films where stupid decisions like that pulled you out and you started to think about how stupid some things were.

[Bill1978]

I haven't seen it yet but I have watched most of the musical numbers on YouTube and I really think the thing that sums up the approach to this movie is that they thought it was now perfectly fine (and hilarious) for Pumbaa to now say 'farted' in Hakuna Matata.

[ShyViolet]

.......

[Ben]

Still not a patch on fur-poo...

[Randall]

I haven't seen it yet but I have watched most of the musical numbers on YouTube and I really think the thing that sums up the approach to this movie is that they thought it was now perfectly fine (and hilarious) for Pumbaa to now say 'farted' in Hakuna Matata.

Yes, we've come quite far as a society!

[Randall]

So, we watched it last night.

Well, the 3D was actually pretty good.

And now on to my negative comments....

Half-kidding.

Actually, without the original to compare to, this might have been an effective, modern True Life Adventure. But of course, one cannot ignore that this is a remake--- a very expensive, amazing technological achievement of a remake. And it's a baffling one in many ways. But it achieved its main objective, which was to make money. So, mission accomplished.

I did actually enjoy watching it, mostly from the standpoint of admiring the technical achievement, which is really what I was there for. Having a nearly shot-for-shot remake was a pointless artistic exercise, but the technical aspect was amazing. And I did get a kick out of seeing the story realized "realistically," I have to admit.

But all the criticisms are valid. I didn't need to hear the word "fart," though it was a little amusing that Pumbaa was waiting for Timon to interject. Endless hair puff sequence. Poo Hair was icky. Can You Feel the Love This Afternoon was shockingly ill-conceived (why not just at least change the lyric if you're going to go that way?). "Realistic" animals can't emote too effectively. The enhanced, now unnecessarily spoken-out-loud sibling rivalry for Simba's mother moved the story even closer to being based on Hamlet, as if we couldn't "get" it before. Having Dad portrayed by the same actor made the whole effort seem a little more pointless, iconic though James Earl Jones is.

I didn't really mind the new song. But I may change my mind on a second viewing.

Much like Aladdin, I found myself enjoying the film despite my better judgment. It's flawed, but it's still a good story.

[EricJ]

The enhanced, now unnecessarily spoken-out-loud sibling rivalry for Simba's mother moved the story even closer to being based on Hamlet, as if we couldn't "get" it before

(Unless, you mean, the movie was now deliberately trying to imitate Hamlet, to keep up the legendary alibi.)

[ShyViolet]

That’s very interesting about the filmmakers actually including the whole sibling rivalry/Simba’s mom subtext in the film, Randall. As unnecessary as this whole film is, in my opinion, I have to admit that having that element does intrigue me.

(Believe it or not, the Scar/Serabi subplot was originally very much part of the ‘94 film, but wound up being being scrapped because JK thought it might have been too upsetting for kids.)

[Daniel]

Queen B's song "Spirits" lost the Golden Globe. Oh well.

[Bill1978]

Such a shame, I have my fingers crossed that her name isn't enough to get it an Oscar nom

[Daniel]

The VFX team explain and defend why the animals don't emote. Yep, animals can show realistic emotion, they just opted not to. Here's a pic of a real lion cub:



Does that not scream Simba? If only...

[Daniel]

Quote from this article:

I think Favreau's a brilliant filmmaker, but the shot-for-shot fealty to the hand-drawn Lion King, as well as the inexpressive animation in his film, left me uninvolved.

Yes, indeedy!

[Daniel]

Tim Rice on the remake:

The pair were invited back to contribute to the 2019 computer animated remake, but in the end, just one new song made the cut, despite Sir Tim writing two especially for the movie. "To be honest, I should have, in a way, got more involved in that film," the 75-year-old told Metro.co.uk. "I assumed rather stupidly that they would be keen to make the most of the material they already had. But they had so many commitments, they had other artists wanting to get their songs in. I think they should have probably got me and Elton to write some stuff first. I rather liked the reflective ballad Light of the World. It’s one of those songs that really grows on you. I can see why they thought 'oh, this is too serious and too heavy'."

So Light of the World didn’t see the light of day, while their other offering Never Too Late made it into the film – albeit barely. "It should have been just laid down in the film somewhere, only maybe a minute of it, and then the whole thing would have been heard at the end of the film. But as it was, Never Too Late – which I think is a great song – is not in the film. At the end of the film you think, well, here’s a nice song by Elton – so what? Those lyrics are strongly related to the story, but you wouldn’t know it. I think we were very low on the food chain in that one. Whereas on the first film, we were involved right from day one, and it was very fun creating the songs, which really did well and they were very much part of the film being a success."

"I hope it comes over that I wasn’t 100% happy with the music in the film, but on the other hand, I don’t want it to come over as ungrateful or pissed off. Elton, I don’t think was too happy, to put it mildly, but luckily he had a really good song in another film at the same time that he won the Oscar for and I was delighted for him. It would have been nice to be nominated again, because I thought the song was quite a nice song, but it was only in the end credits and looked like it was just something stuck in."

"With The Lion King, I think I should have come in and said, 'hey, look, think about the music, mate!' The music was the last thing that people thought about in a way, and I think it suffered slightly."

Not too surprising. Shame about "Light of the World", hopefully one day we can hear it.

[Ben]

And TLK remake has THE worst singing in a Disney picture, ever!