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Article by Nathan Hurlbut
So Disney is now three for three. The Lion King marks the third time this year that an animated Disney movie has been turned into a live-action remake.
First there was Dumbo, courtesy of director Tim Burton, that proved to be so devoid of Burton’s usual gothic charm that the movie should be arrested and put in jail for fraud. Then there was Aladdin, that faced the daunting task of replacing the great Robin Williams in the role of Genie, and only succeeded in making us all miss the comic genius all the more.
Now we have The Lion King with a star-studded cast that, quite frankly, can’t hold a candle to the original animated version from 1994.
Considering how slavishly the movie recreates the story from the original movie, it seems redundant to summarize the plot here once again. Suffice it to say Simba (Donald Glover) is a young lion destined for a future leading his pack before he is tricked by his conniving Uncle Scar (Chiwetel Ejiofor) into thinking he is responsible for his father Mufasa’s (James Earl Jones) death. Cowed by a sense of shame, he leaves the Savannah for a new life with new friends Pumbaa (Seth Rogen) and Timon (Billy Eichner) until childhood friend Nala (Beyonce Knowles) comes looking for him to remind him of his regal responsibilities.
There is no denying the initial jaw-dropping quality of the computer-generated animation here. The vast visual vistas are majestically rendered with every single blade of grass being distinctly visible, every hair on Simba’s head is breathtakingly and beautifully in place. You may find yourself frequently wondering, “How did they manage to film that?”
Of course they didn’t actually film it, much of it was created in the strict confines of a movie studio’s four-walled world. It’s an ironic situation that completely artificial means were used in an effort to create the most true-to-life images possible.
However, the movie proves to be such an inferior carbon copy of the original film in every other aspect that it’s like experiencing a particularly uninspired case of déjà vu for two hours.
It’s doubly disappointing considering director Jon Favreau managed the feat of creating an engaging state-of-the-art CGI movie with The Jungle Book back in 2016. That movie’s amazing visuals, as beautifully rendered as they were, never overwhelmed the story, and the result was a promising foray into live action fantasy filmmaking.
The problem with this trend of turning animated movies into live-action remakes is that it suggests Disney is merely utilizing its vast library to put more product into theaters. While these movies were truly inspired in their original animated incarnations, merely recycling this material in a new form suggests a desire for box-office success rather than quality.
The Lion King proves to be no exception. While this new live-action version is certainly beautiful to look at, at the same time, anyone who seen the original animated version is bound to be disappointed by this new remake in comparison.
To paraphrase a well-known saying, you can put lipstick on a warthog, but it’s still a warthog. Which is ironic, because Seth Rogen’s warthog Pumbaa is actually one of the best things here. His (assumedly) improvised wisecracking banter with meerkat companion Timon (Billy Eichorn) momentarily brings the film to life, possessing a degree of humanity and humor mostly absent from this computer recreation of an actual movie. Compare this to the dialogue between two hyenas about personal space that is tediously revived more than once when it wasn’t funny the first time and you get to the core of the problem with this version of The Lion King. All the elements are firmly in their rightful place like artifacts in a museum display, after all the life has been drained from it long ago.
It’s as if the difference between the animated version of the movie from 1994 and this new live-action remake perfectly embody the art versus commerce dichotomy. The original version shows off what animation is capable of as an art form, bringing to life characters and a story that is both engaging and ultimately moving. Meanwhile this new remake reveals how far computer generated graphics have come, showing off an expensive technology that is devoid of one crucial ingredient: a soul.
Animation gives the artist the ability to make any character remarkably expressive, exaggerating true-to-life aspects for visual and emotional effect. The characters in this new The Lion King are so realistically rendered, so perfectly true to real life, that their expressiveness is blunted, tied down to the physical limitations these animals actually have. The result creates a curious, unspannable distance between a character’s emotional state and an audience’s potential reaction. The creatures here are so beautifully and accurately rendered that they become emotionally inert in the process. There’s plenty of lipstick here, but too little heart.
Rated PG.