The Lion King (2019)
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Interslicery
.....
I only really had 2 thoughts. I liked Jones' delivery of those lines better in the original, and I still dont know why they're making this outside of money. It doesn't count as live action if all the characters are cg :/
The Twilight Mexican
Ex-SeeD-ingly good
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- TresDias
Yeah, unfortunately underwhelmed here. Sure it's pretty, but they're just swapping one form of animation for another.
Disclaimer: I just saw the stage production version in August, so that's doubtless informing my assessment. Right now, I'm just thinking if they can't do it to that level of different, why bother?
Disclaimer: I just saw the stage production version in August, so that's doubtless informing my assessment. Right now, I'm just thinking if they can't do it to that level of different, why bother?
looneymoon
they/them
- AKA
- Rishi
Yeah, TLK has a really special place in my heart (as it does for most people my age) but this really didn't even make me feel anything. No drumming up nostalgia, no real rage or upset, just nothing.
It just feels soulless and lacking personality without the original animation. I don't expect this to be any better than any of these other remakes, which have all been painfully mediocre at best.
It just feels soulless and lacking personality without the original animation. I don't expect this to be any better than any of these other remakes, which have all been painfully mediocre at best.
Lex
Administrator
Hello negative nancies.
I AM EXCITED FOR THIS
Thank you for listening.
In all seriousness, there are two choices when it comes to these remakes: 1. Complain (which is fine and valid, I'm not saying don't) or 2. HOP ON BOARD.
Next year there's this, live action Aladdin, Toy Story 4 and somehow, Dumbo. This avalanche of classic remakes is coming and there's nothing we can do to stop it. So I'm going to choose the middle road of disparaging the shit I don't care about (i.e. Jungle Book) and giving my cautious optimism to the ones I do want to see.
The Lion King was like my all time childhood movie. I got up every single morning and watched the VHS. Every morning.
I AM EXCITED FOR THIS
Thank you for listening.
In all seriousness, there are two choices when it comes to these remakes: 1. Complain (which is fine and valid, I'm not saying don't) or 2. HOP ON BOARD.
Next year there's this, live action Aladdin, Toy Story 4 and somehow, Dumbo. This avalanche of classic remakes is coming and there's nothing we can do to stop it. So I'm going to choose the middle road of disparaging the shit I don't care about (i.e. Jungle Book) and giving my cautious optimism to the ones I do want to see.
The Lion King was like my all time childhood movie. I got up every single morning and watched the VHS. Every morning.
The Twilight Mexican
Ex-SeeD-ingly good
- AKA
- TresDias
I probably love "The Lion King" more than most (those tickets for the stage production weren't cheap), and I'm one of those Disney fans who has no objection to the recent swath of live-action remakes ("Beauty and the Beast" was great) -- but this didn't make me feel anything.
I also might be one of the few who understood "live-action remake" to be implying something very different when I heard it. Thus, I was quite fucking confused and disappointed to see CG animals when I clicked on this trailer.
Doubly so after having just seen the amazing stage production.
Again, I can't help but ask what's new this is bringing to the table, unlike the other live-action remakes, which brought live actors into the mix. This is literally just an animated version of a movie that was already an animated movie. I don't get it.
Oh well. I guess we have "Black Panther" for our live-action "The Lion King" with Black people.
I also might be one of the few who understood "live-action remake" to be implying something very different when I heard it. Thus, I was quite fucking confused and disappointed to see CG animals when I clicked on this trailer.
Doubly so after having just seen the amazing stage production.
Again, I can't help but ask what's new this is bringing to the table, unlike the other live-action remakes, which brought live actors into the mix. This is literally just an animated version of a movie that was already an animated movie. I don't get it.
Oh well. I guess we have "Black Panther" for our live-action "The Lion King" with Black people.
looneymoon
they/them
- AKA
- Rishi
honestly I'd be way more interested if they did a film adaptation of the stage production. Especially if they got Julie Taymor to direct. One can dream I guess 
Tetsujin
he/they
- AKA
- Tets
To be fair, media seems to be to blame for this because as far as I know Disney never once said this was live action. Everyone else just assumed.
Cthulhu
Administrator
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- Yop
I think a Disney cartoon with actual humans would work better as real life action - as has been mentioned, this is err, like a HD remake of the cartoon, and besides backgrounds - which have probably been heavily edited - there's not much camerawork involved. Something like Aladdin or Mulan (which I don't think I've actually seen o_O) would work better. Actually, how did people like Beauty and the Beast? I saw it available on Netflix, haven't seen it yet.
The reason they're making this is literally screamed in the trailer: The Jungle Book was a big success. All of the Disney Remakes have technically been successes, but given the source material, The Jungle Book did far better than I think they expected.
But there's a big problem I have here, and this is me as the 31 year old with hindsight of growing up with the pre-ren films: The original Jungle Book is among one of Disney's most lackluster adaptations to date. Tonally and content wise, it barely resembles it's original source material. This was just one of Walt's mandated "I grew up with it, ergo, I want to do it" films that didn't get done till shortly after he died. But much like Song of the South, this is one of those cases where Disney also wanted to sanitize some iffy material. The result is a story that barely remembers the book, which is a race allegory, and a very dark story besides. The 1960s movie by contrast is little more than a lot of walking from song piece to song piece and an excuse to take well known actors at the time and dress them up as animated characters. The pre-ren films were actually pretty famous for doing that, which is ironic given how much people complain about it now.
But the upshot of all this is that the remake had an opportunity to tell it's take on the source material in a different way because there was so much left to work with. Did it succeede? Kinda. Shere Khan is much more like the wonton sociopathic predator he's depicted as in the book, and the Laws of the Jungle are more directly focused on. It's bogged down by Disneyisms still, but it does enough to stand on it's own.
The Lion King on the otherhand, is based on nothing except very loosely using Hamlet as a framework, and (Possibly) borrowing from Kimba the Lion as an aesthetic inspiration. But that aside, it tells its own story and minus a ridiculously hamfisted third act (A drought, really?) it tells its story really, really well. Aside from a cleaned up third act, there really isn't anything you can do with that movie except rehash it in CGI, which is exactly what they're doing.
So what you end up with is the same problem we had with Beauty and the Beast: It's very pretty, and its a hit of nostalgia, but there's so much sacrificed in the process of making it a live action film that the spirit usually ends up getting lost in the spectacle. We're already aware that Be Prepared is being axed, as are the Hyenas as a whole. This is already an omen of removing more than you're adding while trying to keep everything else looking EXACTLY the same.
Maybe it'll prove itself, but I kinda feel like it's going to give me the same hollow feeling that B&B did.
But there's a big problem I have here, and this is me as the 31 year old with hindsight of growing up with the pre-ren films: The original Jungle Book is among one of Disney's most lackluster adaptations to date. Tonally and content wise, it barely resembles it's original source material. This was just one of Walt's mandated "I grew up with it, ergo, I want to do it" films that didn't get done till shortly after he died. But much like Song of the South, this is one of those cases where Disney also wanted to sanitize some iffy material. The result is a story that barely remembers the book, which is a race allegory, and a very dark story besides. The 1960s movie by contrast is little more than a lot of walking from song piece to song piece and an excuse to take well known actors at the time and dress them up as animated characters. The pre-ren films were actually pretty famous for doing that, which is ironic given how much people complain about it now.
But the upshot of all this is that the remake had an opportunity to tell it's take on the source material in a different way because there was so much left to work with. Did it succeede? Kinda. Shere Khan is much more like the wonton sociopathic predator he's depicted as in the book, and the Laws of the Jungle are more directly focused on. It's bogged down by Disneyisms still, but it does enough to stand on it's own.
The Lion King on the otherhand, is based on nothing except very loosely using Hamlet as a framework, and (Possibly) borrowing from Kimba the Lion as an aesthetic inspiration. But that aside, it tells its own story and minus a ridiculously hamfisted third act (A drought, really?) it tells its story really, really well. Aside from a cleaned up third act, there really isn't anything you can do with that movie except rehash it in CGI, which is exactly what they're doing.
So what you end up with is the same problem we had with Beauty and the Beast: It's very pretty, and its a hit of nostalgia, but there's so much sacrificed in the process of making it a live action film that the spirit usually ends up getting lost in the spectacle. We're already aware that Be Prepared is being axed, as are the Hyenas as a whole. This is already an omen of removing more than you're adding while trying to keep everything else looking EXACTLY the same.
Maybe it'll prove itself, but I kinda feel like it's going to give me the same hollow feeling that B&B did.
This is pretty much exactly how I feel about this. Tbh, I'd just prefer if Disney re-released the original in theaters (again). Has there been a movie musical with realistic CG animals before this one? I'm really wondering what the songs are gonna be like with the realistic CG... I feel like they could end up being really stiff (musical theater + realistic CG animals definitely does not seem like a surefire hit to me). I kind of think 2D just inherently works better for something like The Lion King since because it's so obviously not "real", it's just it's own sort of thing, whereas with the realistic CG animals there's (at least for me) a sort of tension between the realistic look and the fact that you know in the back of your mind that it isn't actually real. Like, it sort of (subconsciously?) breaks the suspension of disbelief a bit (but isn't uncanny valley since it's not creepy, and it's not not-quite-realistic humans). I know there are tons of live-action movies with CG animals, and I'm not really bothered by those (except for that Detective Pikachu trailer lol
) - I think perhaps having real actors interacting with CG helps to mitigate this issue.Also, the teaser being pretty much a shot-for-shot remake makes it hard to ignore how much more interesting the colors were in the original.
If they must remake their 2D titles, I wish Disney would remake some of their not-as-iconic movies, like Treasure Planet or The Black Cauldron, where there's more room for some improvement. I doubt they will, though, since those remakes wouldn't be guaranteed to succeed off of nostalgia alone.
The Twilight Mexican
Ex-SeeD-ingly good
- AKA
- TresDias
Is it any more hamfisted than when Shakespeare did it, though? "Macbeth" has it that, with the titular character having subverted the natural order of Scotland's monarchy, so many are despairing and dying under the deteriorating conditions that people across the country have stopped inquiring about who has died when they hear death knells from the churches.
I was reading about the hyenas earlier. It sounds like they're just modifying and renaming a couple of them, but they're still going to be there?Chip said:
Obsidian Fire
Ahk Morn!
- AKA
- The Engineer
For better or worse, there's a level of caricature that 2-D animation and non-realistic CGI (think Pixar) can utilize well to tell a story and give it it's own feel/tone/etc. The effects of that caricature are absent when doing a live action movie or realistic CGI. At a minimum, the caricature smooths over how the stories aren't "realistic" in some ways. At maximum, it informs what we think of the characters and tells us things about their personalities quickly. When everything about the character is realistic, those "shortcuts" aren't there and the movie loses something.
It's a shame that level of artistic style is viewed as being "out" in favor of "realisim" in stories that were never supposed to be "realistic" in the first place.
It's a shame that level of artistic style is viewed as being "out" in favor of "realisim" in stories that were never supposed to be "realistic" in the first place.
Lex
Administrator
Florence Kazumba is already credited as playing Shenzi (previously Whoopi, iconic), so at least one hyena will be making an appearance. They've apparently confirmed the return of most of the songs but NOT Be Prepared, which is where the idea that it's not coming back seems to be coming from.
I actually agree that the third act of the original Lion King is the weakest - at least in the original animated movie. This is really due in part to the movie being a musical but then kind of weirdly having no songs in the last 20 - 30 minutes other than the excellent score and the circle of life reprise that closes the movie. Then again, this was kinda the format of 90's Disney movies. The songs just tend to stop for the last third of the films and give way to plot resolution.
I'd like to see He Lives in You (musical, Simba's Pride opening, linked earlier by me in the thread) worked in around the time Simba has his exchange with sky!Mufasa, but I don't know if there's a good way to do it. I always felt like that song was meant for that specific segment of the movie but they cut it for whatever reason (if this is actual fact then I read it somewhere and forgot).
EDIT: Just looked it up and the four confirmed songs are "Circle of Life" "Can't Wait to be King" "Hakuna Matata" and "Can You Feel the Love Tonight".
I also read a comment about "Morning Report" and for some reason feel compelled to say I hope it doesn't return. But maybe that's the bias of me as a child watching the movie a thousand times without that song in it then watching it on DVD some years ago and getting a nasty shock that there was this new song with an obviously different voice actor.
looneymoon
they/them
- AKA
- Rishi
I found it to be the worst of all the remakes so far. The Nostalgia Chick rips apart pretty much everything wrong with it. It was just... not a very good movie, honestly.
Anyways, who wants to bet they're gonna get Seth Rogan to drop a veiled stoner joke during Hakuna Matata? Do it Disney let Timon pass Pumba the bowl
Dashell
SMILE!
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- Sonique, Quexinos, Pinkie Pie, Derpy Hooves
As it stands now, I'm not really looking forward to this, but I guess I have to see more of it to decide for sure. I'm kinda sick of the live action or CGI remakes. Maybe if this had come out before all of them I'd feel differently but for now I'm just "meh"
Also, Tres you saw the musical? Years ago I got tickets to that for my birthday and wasn't really looking forward to it. I'm not big on musicals BUT HOLY SHIT was I EVER BLOWN AWAY! I make a point to get tickets every time it's in Minneapolis. It literally opened my mind to other musicals and changed the way I saw theater forever.
Also, Tres you saw the musical? Years ago I got tickets to that for my birthday and wasn't really looking forward to it. I'm not big on musicals BUT HOLY SHIT was I EVER BLOWN AWAY! I make a point to get tickets every time it's in Minneapolis. It literally opened my mind to other musicals and changed the way I saw theater forever.
Cthulhu
Administrator
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- Yop
The Twilight Mexican
Ex-SeeD-ingly good
- AKA
- TresDias
I'm glad you enjoyed it so much. It really was amazing.
I love musicals and theatre anyway (I've been to a lot), but this was still mind blowing. Probably the best I've ever seen.
I haven't seen this, but I thought it wasn't a musical? It's not so much the animals talking as it is the animals singing that worries me. I admit, I do have a definite preference towards 2D animation, but from a technical standpoint, the CG is impressive and the team is undoubtedly very, very skilled - it's more the concept itself that I'm hesitant about. I know it's unfair to judge having only seen the teaser, but on paper, realistic CG animals singing Broadway-style songs sounds like a really bad idea. At least, I'm assuming that's how the songs will be since some of the original songs are confirmed to be in it. Maybe not? Has Disney said much about the musical aspect of it?