The Lion King (2019)

“You must take your place in the circle of life.”

Mufasa

The second the credits began to roll for The Jungle Book remake in 2016, I’ve been desperately wanting to see a photo-realistic adaptation of this movie. The Lion King (1994) is my favorite animated film of all time, so I knew I was going to be nit-picky going in to it, but figured I’d still love it just like I did for the Broadway version. I can’t complain too much because I got exactly what I asked for, but unfortunately unlike The Jungle Book and Aladdin, I feel like this remake failed to capture the magic of its predecessor. It’ll be really hard to fully avoid spoilers while talking about this one since it’s a shot for shot remake of a story that’s so well known. So if you’ve never seen The Lion King (1994) and were hoping to go into this movie totally blind, I would stop reading at this point. I’m not going to get extremely specific, but more specific than most of my reviews. Spoiler Alert for The Lion King 1994 original and 2019 remake.

This movie looks absolutely gorgeous, when “The Circle of Life” began, I felt my goosebumps rising with the sun as the iconic music began to play. This scene was so extremely well done, frame for frame off the original, and BOOM title card! I was 100% on board with this film at this point, and couldn’t wait to see how the rest was. Unfortunately I only remained this way until “I Just Can’t Wait to be King” began. The songs in the cartoon are very over the top and a whole lot of fun, and this iteration was fun as well, but it lacked the vibrant colors and crazy animation I’ve always associated with this particular song, the same can be said about “Be Prepared.” I did my best to try to view this movie on its own while not comparing it to the original like I did Aladdin, but since it’s so shot for shot it’s very difficult not to. “Be Prepared” was cut down very short, and it starts and exists very awkwardly in this film. No green smoke or marching hyenas, but it featured Scar kind of half singing/half giving a speech to a crowd of hyenas, and its only a couple of lines, not the entire song (I could compare this to “I Want to be Like You” from The Jungle Book (2016)). Beyoncé (voices Nala) was given a very short new song as well that takes place later on in the film, but it didn’t feel like it fit well and I wish it hadn’t been included. Not all the songs were bad though, “Hakuna Matata” I thought was done really well and I also loved that entire portion of the movie. Even though there would’ve been an uproar if this happened, I think they should’ve left out the songs almost entirely and referenced them like in The Jungle Book (2016) since they were going as realistic as they could. If you end up loving these versions of the songs I think you’ll like this movie significantly more than I did, they were one of the biggest takeaways this film had in my opinion.

Emotion I’ve come to realize is a very difficult thing to portray with these style of movies if there’s no human characters involved. The Lion King is a very emotionally heavy story, and having the animals being as photo-realistic as they are, I didn’t feel the impact of almost any of the scenes due to the lack of facial expressions of the characters. In the animated version (spoiler alert), right after Mufasa’s death, Simba is literally wiping tears away from his eyes and trembling as he calls for help and begins to realize what’s happened, that scene has so much emotion in it it’s hard to watch. Another particularly emotional scene is later in the film when Mufasa first appears in the storm to Simba, telling him to “Remember who you are, you are my son and the one true king.” Simba’s face alone in that moment gives me goosebumps, the amount of awe and revelation that’s being shown is insane. In the remake, aside from hearing it in his voice and it being something any normal person would be sad over, you can’t really tell that Simba is sad when he realizes his dad has died and its potentially his own fault. And I felt even less emotion during the storm scene because of the lack of facial expressions this movie gives. Again I can’t complain too much about these aspects, because it’s exactly what I had asked for, I just didn’t realize how much it would take away.

Now I for sure didn’t hate this movie, there’s a lot that I liked as well. The hyenas I liked even more in this one than I did the original, they were goofy and easily manipulated. I think Timon and Pumbaa were the best characters in this film, I laughed every time they were on screen together, and I think Billy Eichner and Seth Rogen were cast very well for the roles. “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” portion of the film was also a highlight, and goes on a little longer than the original but it was great! The animation in this film is absolutely breathtaking, there were several moments in this movie where I forgot it was animated and kept almost asking questions like, “how’d they get that cheetah to walk up and stand exactly like the original?” It was a sight to behold, and some of the best CGI work I’ve seen in a film, each character looked amazing and was instantly recognizable. Hearing Mufasa’s booming voice again thanks to the return of James Earl Jones was incredible, it would’ve been cool to get Jeremy Irons back as Scar but I’m grateful for what we got. Hans Zimmer’s soundtrack fully immerses you into the African savanna as well, same soundtrack as the original pretty much but with a lot more depth added to it, I’ve been listening to it almost non-stop since the soundtrack released.

Unfortunately I didn’t love The Lion King nearly as much as I thought I would, I think if I didn’t hold the animated version so highly I might’ve liked this one more, but like I said earlier I almost wish the songs were left out entirely because I liked it less and less with almost each and every song. It’s the exact same as the original, just without any of the emotion that goes along with this emotionally charged story. The Lion King (1994) I’ve always held high with a solid 9/10, but unfortunately the remake I’m only going to give a 5/10. Visually it was breathtaking, and select parts were good, but that’s it, I didn’t get nearly the impact I was hoping to get. What did you think of the remake, and how does it compare to the original for you? Let me know in the comments below!