Skip to main content

My Thoughts on “The Lion King” Remake



With Disney remaking all its classic animated movies into live-action, come critics and praises from the fans of the original movies, and I am one of those people. I breathe Disney classic. Okay, that’s a bit exaggerating, but I grew up watching the originals and my 25 year old self still watch them before I go to sleep, sing the songs and pretty much still possess the same passion and love as when I was a little girl.

So obviously when in 2019 Disney released the remake of the 1994 The Lion King, I was more than excited to see it. I have seen some disappointed Disney remakes before, but I did have a high hope for this one because the original Lion King was and still is one of the best animated movies ever created on planet earth and I was curious how will the filmmaker translate it into a live-action movie.


So I went to the cinema to see the remake of the 1994 The Lion King. While enjoying my popcorn, I sat and watched the whole movie. I enjoyed it. It was okay. It was nice. Then the realisation hit me. This wasn’t the feeling my 5-year-old self experienced seeing the original. I remembered crying when Mufasa died, falling in love with the lions and dancing along when characters sang. In order to prepare myself before seeing the remake, I even watched the original just few months before the 2019 The Lion King released, and I still felt the same exact emotion I had when I was little. Obviously, I didn’t dance in my living room, but I was overjoyed when Pumba and Timon sang, I was devastated when Scar killed Mufasa and I felt butterflies in my stomach when Simba and Nala sang the iconic “Can You Feel the Love Tonight”.

This 2019 remake felt…. empty. Don’t get me wrong. Visually, it was amazing. The detail of every animal looked ridiculously real to the point where it would trick you into thinking that it was shot in real savanna in Africa. But I guess that is exactly the point why it wasn’t as powerful as the original. I felt like I was watching National Geographic with singing animals in it.

All the characters are rendered with such realism and it robbed off the human emotion in it. The original movie is able to convey the emotions through the characters’ weird movements, silly facial expression and even the background scenery brought the movie to life. The remake on the other hand, has to stay as accurate as possible with real life. When the characters sing and dance, it looks emotionless. As a fan of Disney animated movies, it is such a disappointment that I was not able to connect emotionally with the characters.

Not to mention how they butchered the songs in the movie. “Be Prepared” is arguably the best villain song in animated movies history, yet the new rendition was performed only half the time in the movie with very little excitement in it. To say it was a disappointment is an understatement. And of course, with all the money, Disney had to hire Beyonce to sing the classic “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” and no matter how amazing Beyonce is, this song isn’t for her. This song is supposed to make you feel like you were in the clouds hugging with a fluffy teddy bear, ready to fall asleep with angels surrounding you. It was supposed to be calm and solemn. With Beyonce’s strong, powerful and complex voice characteristics, it totally takes away all the peaceful aspects from the song.

 Overall, the remake of the movie The Lion King is good. And if the purpose is to reach new audience which are the kids of this generation, then it is totally okay. But as someone who grew up with the original Lion King, this movie doesn’t even come close to the awesomeness of the classic one, and I am sure, the parents who bring their kids to the cinema to see the new The Lion King will agree with me.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How Frozen Redefines True Love

It is undeniable that Disney has contributed in how I perceived true love when I was a kid. It was always about a charming guy or in most cases, a prince, came, married the girl and they lived happily ever after. For decades that was how Disney portrayed true love to children. Even in the movie The Lion King , Simba who is technically a prince finds Nala, his childhood sweetheart as his true love, and they are lions! The “romantic true love” is pretty much inseparable from most of the Disney’s classics.   It has always been like that until Frozen was released in 2013. The story tricks us into thinking that Anna has to find a guy as her true love. And that’s pretty much what happens to Anna. She is so desperate for love from a guy which leads her to fall prey on prince Hans, the bad guy in the movie pretending to be a rich prince. But that’s not the point of the story. I was personally shocked when the movie revealed that Anna’s true love is her sister, Elsa. The idea of romantic...
Post a Comment
Read more

Dark Original Stories Behind Classic Disney Movies

We are all familiar with Disney version of The Little Mermaid, Rapunzel, and Snow White . They are all have been “Disneyfied” to meet the standards of family movies, so you and your children can watch it in your living room. But what you may not know is that these movies are the adaptation of old fairy tales, written hundreds of years ago. And the original stories might be a little bit different than what we know today. The Little Mermaid   We all know about Disney version of this story: Ariel, a beautiful young mermaid who falls in love with human and trades her voice with legs so she can walk. She finally meets the prince and they live happily ever after. The original story doesn’t end quite happily. The little mermaid which has no name falls in love with a human. She goes to a sea witch to ask for a pair of legs. But the deal that’s given by sea witch is that she has to give up her voice, and whenever she takes a step, it will feel like she’s walking on a dagger. But of cour...
Post a Comment
Read more

Why Did Disney Stop Making 2D Animated Movies? (And Why I’ll Always be the Fan of 2D Animations)

After 70 years of building its empire through hand-drawn 2D animations, Disney has finally fully dived into 3D animation. 2019 marked the end of decade since the release of Princess and the Frogs , which was Disney’s last full-length hand-drawn animated movie. As the technology evolves, so does the market. The late 80s to early-mid-90s is called Disney Renaissance for a reason. It was the period where Disney produced quality and beautifully made 2D animated movies and formed unforgettable memories to the generation at that time, including myself, through some of their masterpiece including The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, Aladdin and Pocahontas . However, the success was sustained mostly in the late 90s and early 2000s before 3D animations started taking over the market.   The shift to 3D animations was even earlier than we thought. Even during the Renaissance period of their hand drawn animated movies, Disney collaborated with Pixar Animation Studio and released Toy Story in 1...
Post a Comment
Read more