Live Action Lion King Movie

Oh my god, those toys look so generic. Then again, the movie kinda does too.

I just flashbacked to the toys Burger King had in 1994.

Like the Timon and Pumbaa toy could zip along surfaces, or Ed the Hyena that "laughed" when you pulled down his feet.

Even the toys are soulless.

And I'm talking soulless by the standards of cheap fast-food chain kids' meals toys.

(x7) They are, but there's an obvious mismatch between the designs. So does the remake stick with the original male cub design or use Kiara? Simba's Pride isn't canon and the remakes don't use stuff from the sequels, but Kiara is so engrained into TLK multimedia by now.

I think this live action remake does a very good job demonstrating the importance of anthropomorphism in creating relatable characters.

Looks at the top of his bookshelf where his huge plush Pumbaa sits, with his red fur and big, goofy face.

Looks at live action Pumbaa, with his dull grey fur, jutting cheekbones, tiny black eyes, and dirty tusks.

Shudders.

Yeah, I'll take Old Pumbaa, thanks...

There's nothing wrong with realistic designs. Pumbaa having realistic colors is just fine on its own.

You know, I'm going to go bat for something I never thought I would.

I... don't hate the remake's version of Be Prepared. Because it sounds like a different stylistic take on the same scene, rather than a complete copy of what the animated film did.

It's not really a song here, it's a speech with a beat behind it.

You're not alone here on that front.

Saw this with my brother. It's pretty, but it's 100% true that their faces are borderline emotionless and never match the dialogue. I know the new rendition of Be Prepared has been hated by a good chunk of the OG Lion King fandom, but what did it for me was that they made Can You Feel the Love Tonight boring and lack the romantic charm of the original. It's set during the day, the scenery lacks the softness and the blue and green hues that made it so pretty in the animated film, and I have to agree that Beyonce takes over the song so much that it feels less like a romantic duet and more like "BEYONCE ft simba."

It's rather weak praise when you say one song wasn't so bad because another one was worse.

Damned by Faint Praise.

You had one job, Disney, one job! It was make "Be Prepared" amazing, and you utterly blew it!

In all seriousness, I can appreciate the original much more now. The vibrant colors gave us a great way to set the mood and tone of scenes. This was just lifeless.

Edited by Dr.XXX on Jul 20th 2019 at 3:11:06 PM

And yet it has an A Cinemascore, because of course.

Eh, Cinemascore is always overly generous to films. It's actually a sign of trouble if a film scores lower than an A.

For comparison's sake, Catwoman has a B-rating on the site.

Edited by chasemaddigan on Jul 20th 2019 at 4:18:12 AM

What'd they rate Super Mario Bros?

A freaking B+

X-Men Origins also got a B+

The Darkest Minds got a B

50 Shades Series gets ranges from C to B+

Twilight Series got at least one A

Edited by Dr.XXX on Jul 20th 2019 at 4:23:44 AM

I wonder what their lowest-rated movie is. XD

There are 19 movies that have an F.

CinemaScore is based on polling opening night audiences and audiences generally like most things that they see.

Edited by LordVatek on Jul 20th 2019 at 4:46:28 AM

For most journalists and box-office analysts, getting below a B+ is considered bad and gives a idea that a movie is not gonna fare well with most audiences.

Edited by Akirakan on Jul 20th 2019 at 2:28:01 AM

I find it hilarious that The Wicker Man's the only recognizable movie that got an F.

So, I watched with my dad. It's ok, I guess.

The movie is certainly gorgeous to look at, the SFX teams knocked it out of the park. The climatic fight is pretty great, with amazing physicallity to the Simba/Skar fight and great use of lightning.

The faces nerver stop being blank, but they manage to squeeze enough emotion of body language. But as a result nothing hits quite as hard as the original.

I'm not really a fan of the scene with Mufasa on the clouds. The lightning projecting his likeness on the storm cloud is a clever way to try and pull the scene in a realistic fashion, but I would've much more preferred to see them go full fantasy there.

The songs are fine, Be Prepared works with the scene it was build for, but to be honest I like all the old songs better.

I've seen many go bonkers over Beyonce's Nala on social media, and I can't understand why. Her performance doesn't stand out in particular. She's about on par with Glover in the "just fine" department.

The best performances I feel are Timon, Pumba and Skar.

And goddamn was Rafiki toned the fuck down.

Before the movie we were talking about showing the movie to my nieces and nephew but walking out of the theater my dad felt the movie would probably bore them, except maybe the my eldest niece.

Edited by MrSeyker on Jul 20th 2019 at 3:12:00 AM

Yeah, watched it with my family, and all of us walked out afterwards with a resounding “meh.” It’s gorgeous, sure, but the realism causes the film to lose virtually all of the life and vibrancy the animated version had.

It’s fine, but I’ll definitely stick with the animated version.

Eh, that's not really true. mother! is pretty recognizable as a recent extreme example of a love it or hate it movie, and it doesn't take much knowledge of recent film to recognize Disaster Movie as one of the chain of terrible Friedberg and Seltzer parody movies and slightly more knowledge to recognize Alone in the Dark as one of the chain of terrible Uwe Boll video game movies.

I just cannot watch this. The voice acting seems fine, but jesus, none of the animals show ANY kind of emotion whatsoever!

This remake is surreal because it is literally the same movie. They changed some lines here and there, added more shots of the landscape to show off the CGI, but...it’s the same movie. While it is a technical marvel and stunning to look at something about it seems off. It’s like someone’s playing the audio of The Lion King under a nature documentary and it doesn’t quite fit.

Simba is adorable, yes. Though I can’t see this hyper-realistic animal singing “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King” or crying over his dead father. It just doesn’t work.

One problem is that because they were going for photolike animation is that they cut large portions of the movie and only one of those changes was actually fun (instead of dressing in drag and doing the hula, Timon starts singing “Be Our Guest”) They couldn’t include the tower of animals from "I Just Can't Wait to be King," they couldn't do the more ominous features of “Be Prepared,” they couldn’t include Rafiki hitting Simba with his staff, they couldn’t have Mufasa coming back in the clouds, or the “Mr. Pig” joke...they couldn’t show any human emotions because they weren’t human and had no human attributes.

This movie was passable because it’s The Lion King. But passable isn’t good enough BECAUSE it's The Lion King. The closest they got to the grand epic scale of the original was the opening scene where everyone applauded because: it’s The Lion King.

It’s the same movie without the soul of the original. I don’t actually understand why anyone thought it was a good idea to do The Lion King with REAL looking lions, it’s….bizarre. And it has me wondering how they ever plan to pull off The Little Mermaid if this is the type of animation they plan to use.

If you’re going to make an adaption it should feel like The Jungle Book or Aladdin or even that 90′s 101 Dalmations remake that had Glenn Close as Cruella. It shouldn’t feel like a carbon copy (The Lion King) or like an attempt to fix plot holes (Beauty and the Beast), it should be able to stand alone and apart from the original.

And sure, there were people from the original Lion King working on this remake, so it came partially from a place of love (creative not corporate) but yeah…it’s mostly the nature documentary version of The Lion King that just happens to have Beyonce in it.