This film has technically been over 400 years in the making, starting with Shakespeare in 1599. The story of a jealous uncle, and a young prince who loses his father before he's ready is one that has been told in many iterations, but one of the most famous is The Lion King.
One warm Wednesday evening I headed on down to my local Vue with my boyfriend B to watch The Lion King, and I decided it would be the perfect chance to try my hands at this blog's first film review.
Now let me start by saying that I love a good Disney film but I didn't grow up with them in the same way as many of my generation. Maybe that's why I have a more favourable outlook to these films - I grew up with films like The Sound of Music, Bedknobs and Broomsticks and Spirit, Stallion of the Cimarron.
Firstly, the things I liked:
Visually it was absolutely stunning. That seems to be a running theme with other reviews I have read - the setting and landscape was beautiful. It obviously didn't have the beautiful colours and visual appeal of the recent Aladdin, which captivated me with it's colour and dance routines, but the Lion King creative team maintained a pretty strong mise-en-scene throughout.
The relationship between Simba and Mufasa was really nicely established, and made the later canyon scene so much more poignant. I found myself actually hoping that this time Mufasa would make it out alive.
The development of Shenzi's character was nice. Hyena's are naturally matriarchal, and making Shenzi their actual leader made them seem a much more serious threat as a pack.
There's a little clip of The Lion Sleeps Tonight which was amazing! Slightly gimmicky but so entertaining, and definitely made you really relaxed in time for Nala's entrance.
Timon and Pumba were a lot more fleshed out, and their relationship was really enjoyable. They had a really nice dynamic.
The small reference to Be Our Guest was superb. I absolutely loved it.
Now onto the things I didn't love so much.
I really did not enjoy a lot of what they did we the singing. Beyonce's voice is incredible but she isn't a musical theatre singer, she's a pop singer. It's probably a very unpopular opinion but I felt she was riffing and playing around with it way too much.
A lot of people have had opinions on Be Prepared, and so do I. Chiwetel Ejiofor clearly has an incredible voice. They build up to this stunning note belted out that gave me slight chills... then go right back to talking. It turns out that there were originally plans to drop this song completely, and you can really tell. It's lost all of its power and weight and really hampers what would otherwise be one of the better performances of the film.
Rafiki presenting Simba was disappointing, it was a sort of slight wave, rather than the dramatic thrust into the sky which is the bane of cats everywhere. In fact Rafiki as a whole was a little disappointing. The character just did not feel as exciting and eccentric as in the original. Overall a lot of the characters seemed underwhelming. Mufasa, Nala, Sarabi and Scar all suffered from a lack of weight behind their portrayal. I think the cast had the potential to be brilliant, but they just didn't quite hit the mark. Even the legendary James Earl Jones fell short. As B puts it - "He felt more Darth Vader than Mufasa".
Disney have been widely criticised for this string of live-action remakes, and my thoughts on this have been divided. One the one hand, they are clearly money-spinning tactics - instead of coming up with new ideas, they're trying to remake the films that made them such a massive company. On the other hand, I like going to the cinema, I like beautiful films, and I like that in some instances, these live action films are adding things to the originals.
So the question is, does The Lion King remake actually add anything? Honestly, I don't think it does. The only real step forward is the visuals, and that's sort of a given.
But looking at two of the other remakes:
The live action Aladdin added two new elements, with the brilliant and visual captivating dance routines and by fleshing out the character of Jasmine, giving her a stunning song that still gives me chills. And the live action Beauty and the Beast attempted to address the plot holes from the original that had been widely criticised - whether they succeeded or not is a matter for another post.
There are many other examples - Cinderella attempted to bring back the original elements from the Grimm tales, and Maleficent was less of a remake and more of a retelling from a different perspective. But the Lion King? There were no real issues with the original and there was nothing really to add. They couldn't really make it more like the source material because the basis of the story was very different. So the film ended up being almost a scene for scene remake, and it feels a little unnecessary.
The Disney remakes are a highly contentious issue, and I generally fall into the camp of someone who can enjoy them as a film. That is the case for The Lion King in a way, but would I be in a rush to go and watch it again? No, not really.
What about you, what did you think of the Lion King? And what're your thoughts on the Disney remakes as a whole?
Hwyl am nawr,
J x
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