If only it could move us inside...
Let's be honest, Disney has never been a non profit-making organization and Uncle Walt was a man of vision AND economical flair. Still, before turning into a voracious corporate blob, Disney was still the quintessential dream factory and nostalgia builder for many, many, many generations. And even for these direct-to-video sequels that spread all over the 2000s like a bad cold, some brain cells of imaginations were mobilized.
But now Disney's not even trying to pretend, investing all the efforts on a pure technical level and the kind of marketing-that-speaks-for-itself. It is one thing to adapt fairy tales into live-actions, before "Cinderella", there was "Enchanted", "Maleficent" or even Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland". And yet Disney executives found the trick: it's not about adapting the fairy tale but the Disney version of it. Thorns are still invisible over the head with the two round ears but right now in 2022, it seems that "awakening your inner child" isn't a motto anymore but a formula.
The formula could have interesting results: the 2016 "Jungle Book" film could center on little Mowgli and diverged from the 1967 film. Same with "Dumbo" or "Aladdin". But exclusively animal-centered movies like "The Lion King", "Bambi" or "The Lady and the Tramp" are a different challenge. You've got to humanize the way animals could act, react or display emotions. Take the kiss between Lady and the Tramp, the magic is not within the moment their mouths meet but the cute and genuine embarrassment that follows. You can't "animate" these emotions with live-action animals with all the technology of the world.
Indeed if your purpose is that your lion looks real, you can't expand the range of facial expressions: remember in "One Hundred and One Dalmatians" the way Pongo and Perdita looked at each other at the end of the garden scene: reproducing that with real-looking animals is inconceivable, couldn't work, wouldn't work. And that's the ultimate wager of photorealistic remakes: achieve documentary-like realism with storylines that were designed for hand-drawn or at the very least CGI animation, "Toy Story" CGI I mean.
And that leads to even more perplexing results when it comes to 'surreal' sequences like "I Just Can't Wait to Be The King" where two normal-looking cubs are casually running across pink flamingoes, or the moment that precedes Simba's epiphany where the figure of Mufasa is barely visible in the sky (not to mention that some lines were cut from the original). Now, maybe Disney takes for granted our passion for the "Lion King" and considers that we're there to "fill the gaps". It's true I did enjoy the film to the degree that it reminded of "The Lion King", which is a high point of my childhood, but at the end of the day, my mind was full of afterthoughts. To put it simple, I realized it was an enjoyment by proxy.
The problem of "The Lion King" isn't that it's good or bad. It is certainly a remarkable achievement on the field of animation. The problem is that it is problematic. Yes I'm talking in circles but that's a circle Disney has just taken us into and that makes it rather impossible to figure what is wrong with these photorealistic films, we know there's something that doesn't look right, maybe on a pure reason-to-be way.
"The Lion King" is one of the classics of animation, a masterpiece that speaks highhy of the dedication of old-school Disney team of animators. 1995 would change the games with the first CGI and so in a way, "The Lion King" was the culmination of that traditional hand-drawn art. Not only that but its story, very simple and straightforward carried the gravitas and dramas or movie classics. Characters like Scar, Mufasa, Simba are all printed in our memories, the songs became pop culture monuments, scenes have been parodied countless times. "The Lion King" became a household name for Disney excellence. And certainly one of the greatest opening sequences of history, the shivers down your spine sent by the sight of Rafiki carrying little Simba is one of these moments you can't just 'duplicate'.
As viewers pointed out, many things are missing: where is the friendly nod Mufasa gives Zazu? Or that hug between Rafiki and Mufasa? Mufasa comes across as a stone-faced patriarch posing like a library statue... and waiting for our nostalgic pheromones to instill some life in him .... Maybe we were just curious to see how they'd pull this out. I guess if I was told about an animated version of "The Godfather" no matter how ludricrous it sounds I would have given a shot. "The Lion King" was such a big deal, viewers did came to see and made it one of the highest grossing films of the year.
Fair enough, but what's that does say exactly? That half the job was done and make a copy of something great to make something of equally promising greatness? The purpose of a remake is to bring something new. But "The Lion King 2019" doesn't bring anything new except for the realistic animation that doesn't look like an improvement anyway.. Scar looks like a washed out lion who shampooed his mane with paint thinner, without one tenth the suave charisma of the original. James Earl Jones' voice looks like he was only testing the microphone or was bored to death, which actually matched the look of the used-to-be majestic lion.
And I swear the savannah and jungle never looked so dismal with tones of beige and yellowish green that reminded me of that Water Truce sequence in "The Jungle Book". So much for the bright colors and the escapism.... And the only thing visible right now are the thorns on the head, and the round ears have turned pointy... no it's not the devil, but a cow, a cash-cow.
