The Lion King franchise

The Lion King II is one of the better regarded DTV Disney sequels, and characters from the sequels have appeared in The Lion Guard, so it's not like Disney has gone out of its way to brush those films away.

I'm kind of curious about The Lion King 1 1/2. Like, when it comes to detailing Timon and Pumbaa's backstories, they are always all over the place with their backstories. Like, their backstories in The Lion King 1 1/2 is so different from how their backstories were presented in their own TV series. Maybe it's because the Lion King 1 1/2 came out after the Timon and Pumbaa TV series.

Edited by Rabbitearsblog on May 4th 2024 at 10:32:29 AM

Not to mention there's no conceivable way to fit the tv series into the Lion King film canon anyway.

The show was basically "What if The Lion King was set in an alternate Looney Tunes-ish world?"

Edited by Brandon on May 4th 2024 at 11:05:28 AM

You are right. In fact, I watched The Lion King 1 1/2 before watching Timon And Pumba, so I was confused when I first watched episode where Timon and Pumba met. Like: where's Timon's mom and uncle Max? Why Timon is a guard serving some meerkat princess, while meerkats in the midquel were normal animals? I was like: what the heck is going on here?

(Btw, I am new troper here and this my first post on this discussion).

The Timon and Pumbaa series and The Lion King 1 1/2 are both Denser and Wackier takes on The Lion King, but in a different manner: the former is a Looney Tunes-style Zany Cartoon, the latter is a fourth-wall-breaking meta-comedy. Neither of them really work as canon to the original movie.

I guess because Timon and Pumbaa are the comic reliefs to the franchise, whatever stories focused on them tend to be wackier than the original movie.

Although 1 1/2 can still work in canon, even some are questionable.

I just chalk up the disparities in 1 1/2 to Timon in particular being an Unreliable Narrator.

Did they ever explain where Shenzi and co. went off to post LK 1? They were not in 2 and apparently not in Guard too.

they migrated

I recall in Simba's Pride, there's a moment where Nuka mentions that the hyenas left the Pride Lands after Scar's defeat.

Yeah, but then in Lion Guard they handwaved with the hyenas "hiding" since they're still a prominent group.

makes sense,they were'nt going to stick around for the lions to chase them out again

They went to exile. Even though they killed Scar, they were not pardoned for their crimes, so they went back to the Outlands or even beyond.

Still, it would have been nice if The Lion Guard acknowledged Shenzi, Banzai & Ed's existence. Also, that show seems to claim that Scar perished in the fire, rather than eaten by his own minions - which, to be completely fair, might just be misinformation in-universe.

Or a strange use of Development Gag since Scar was originally going to burn to death, instead of be eaten by the hyenas.

Talking about hyenas, one of the reasons I don't like 2's flagrant Ass Pull is there already was a perfectly good concept for a sequel — Simba's kid befriends a hyena, and they help work out the animosity between the two species.

But then they couldn't rehash Romeo and Juliet without an interspecies romance, so instead they make up a bunch of Scar loyalists and Scar's son — wait, no, ew — successor who was fathered from some other lion who's not important, and don't think too hard about what little sense that makes.

And the hyenas? Eh, they just went somewhere, we don't care about them anymore.

Edited by Dracoblade on May 6th 2024 at 12:38:54 PM

Lion Guard at least deals with Simba's kid's prejudice and introduces a heroic hyena Jasiri.

And by the end of the show the hyenas have made peace with the lions.

Yeah, even the "bad" hyenas who were villains for the bulk of the show had a Heel–Face Turn, right?

Yeah I only saw the last ep of TLG and everyone was pretty much friends.

Yeah, there’s the bad clan of hyenas and the good clan of hyenas and their leaders eventually manage to talk things out and combine their clans.

Good, Always Chaotic Evil never sits well to me as a trope.

Zira and her lions also make multiple appearances over the course of the show, and the bad hyena leader even gets a song about “Wait is this really the best option when other hyenas seem to be doing alright?”

Edited by theLibrarian on May 7th 2024 at 10:44:36 AM

A Heel Realization song of sorts?

So with the announcement of Mufasa, there's a good clip from Second Wind about why Disney keeps releasing "live action" films of their classic IPs, and why they don't really work nearly as well as the classics;

One big reason why they've been so successful; Animation Age Ghetto. Western pop culture still largely insists that live action is "better" then animation, so older Disney fans turn out to see the not-really-live-action movies because it's more socially acceptable then watching "old baby cartoons."

Edited by Dracoblade on May 7th 2024 at 11:07:57 AM