Live Action Lion King Movie

There are good artists and bad artists, ya know.

Shadao brings up a lot of good artistic storytelling potential that would probably never be explored by the "official" artists themselves, in their current state.

Edited by BrightLight on Jul 24th 2019 at 6:08:01 AM

So I'm going to watch this movie this weekend with my family, and I've heard nothing but bad things about it. Hopefully things go well.

This is a pretty good summary of the Kimba/Simba controversy.

The short version is that there are some visual similarities that seem to be homages (or ripoffs if you prefer), but the characters and story aren't that similar. The story/character similarities that do exist are the The Bard on Board.

@Shado

Except the film is oozing with corporate pessimism. It's a lazy product made purely for easy nostalgia money.

Edited by Karxrida on Jul 24th 2019 at 10:33:41 AM

I'm not sure where you're getting that from my statement (unless there's a @Shado user here ), but I do know that this entire movie apparently pitched by Jon Favreau to Disney shortly after he made The Jungle Book, apparently inspired by the achievement of making a film that was 98% CGI with only 2% being actual live-action (namely Mowgli and his father). And I do see where he's coming from (though I think his execution in the later half of the film needs a lot of improvement).

I remember the days of my childhood when I watched Walking with Dinosaurs and I wish we'll see these kinds of documentaries back with more photorealistic CGI and updated creatures. After seeing the Lion King, I think we're in the grasp of that reality.

As I've stated before, I tend to be an optimist (possibly too much of an optimist). But that doesn't mean I'll defend everything about this film. I think it plays too safe with the original story and should really expand more on the differences. Honestly, I see a lot more potential in this film if it was more like Maleficent, focusing on Mufasa and Scar's relationship as well as the lions' wars with hyenas rather than just basing it around the first film. The Lion King stories always seem to be more interesting when we veer away from the first film's story (Pride Land lions vs Outland lions, hyena hierarchies, how Timon and Pumbaa met without the whole let's reference the original film).

Edited by Shadao on Jul 24th 2019 at 10:53:55 AM

Actually, raptors and tyrannosaurs lived millions of years apart, so there could not be any "realistic" documentary featuring them living amongst each other. It's easy to forget just how ridiculously long the dinosaur age lasted, and just how FAR apart a lot of these well known species were living in time.

Who said they have to live together? I'm just rambling about my favorite dinosaur documentaries and how I wish to see new takes with this kind of technology. Of course, this wouldn't be much of a problem if we have enough dinosaur species in one location and time to feel full.

They actually lived around the same time and place. You’re thinking of stegosaurs.

Dinosaur documentaries are apparently hard to sell these days. I remember hearing a paleontologist complain about it online. IIRC, it was mentioned that adults don't just care about dinosaurs much and the documentaries don't get enough views.

Documentaries as a whole suffer from this. It's noticeable that the BBC, Nat Geo, and Animal Planet only seem to do documentaries on dogs, gray wolves, lions, tigers, leopards, elephants, great white sharks, crocodiles, and a few select other animals. I'm so bored of big cat documentaries that I stopped watching documentaries for over a decade.

They just kinda switched to uh, "reality" shows lately I feel.

Disappointing. They were the best things a kid could have when growing up in the late 90s/2000s. Though I do admit the recent dinosaur documentaries never really grabbed that magic that Walking with Dinosaurs had, which if the feeling of real dinosaurs roaming across the land.

I think CGI technology used for The Lion King here would be the key to recapture that feeling for a new generation.

Edited by Shadao on Jul 25th 2019 at 12:54:28 PM

Photorealistic "The Rite of Spring" remake when?

Documentary channels aren't what they used to be, generally. It's all reality tv crap now.

The BBC documentaries (Planet Earth I and II, The Blue Planet I and II, Life, and Africa) are all excellent and feature a huge variety of animals (though rather too many dolphins).

The ‘Birds’ episode of Life is possibly my favourite.

Edited by Galadriel on Jul 25th 2019 at 11:41:28 AM

Our Planet on Netflix too.

The BBC is not a documentary channel, though, but public television. Dutch public television airs excellent documentaries too. It's the dedicated (or used to be dedicated) documentary channels, like Discovery Channel and the History Channel, that have steadily declined in quality, with more and more reality shows and conspiracy docus.

That being said, Investigation Discovery's still devoted to documentaries about murder mysteries and other crimes.

Nat Geo Wild is a good channel. It has a lot of vet shows, though. Vet stuff isn't my style, but at least it's animal-related and I see how it can inspire future vets. I'd probably watch the shows more if they had an avian vet show.

When it comes to paleontology documentaries, dinosaur ones are my least favorite. Everyone in the paleontology community seems to like dinosaurs, but I've always preferred mammals. I could use some more feathered dinosaur docs though.

So I've watched the Lion King. Here's the good, the bad, and the ugly that I got from this.

• The good
  • Circle of Life is just as good as the original.
  • I think Pumbaa was absolutely great in this, as was Timon.
  • Shenzi as the leader of all of the hyenas instead of just the trio was a good departure from how things normally go.
  • I liked Zazu in this, but that's probably because it's a guy doing a news show as the morning reporter.
  • The CGI truly was beautiful.
  • As I said before, I like the concept of Scar giving Be Prepared as a speech.
  • I'm not sure how I feel about Scar and Mufasa competing for Sarabi, but I'm leaning more towards liking it.
  • Speaking of which, James Earl Jones still sounds good as Mufasa.
• The bad
  • You know that scene in Get Out (2017) where a character gives a phone call and speaks with a bunch of emotion but has a completely blank expression? That's what it reminded me of whenever the animals emoted.
  • Good god, that scene where Simba's hair traveled to Rafiki took an eternity.
  • Simba and Nala falling in love was absurdly abrupt. "I'll kill you—wait, my friend? I suddenly want to have the babies!"
  • "Can You Feel the Love Tonight?" happens during the day. It's the name of the song! How can you fuck that up?!
  • I know Scar's a Disney villain, but shit, even in the cartoon he had some sort of subtlety.
  • I could not take Mufasa's death seriously at all.
  • I hate that Ed was replaced with another Banzai.
  • I'm not a big fan of the fellow outcasts. It made sense why they were there, but still, they were superfluous at best.
• The ugly
  • Pumbaa and the hyenas.
  • But seriously, things were surprisingly dark. I mean, we see Scar eat an antelope onscreen with bloody jaws and everything.

Edited by Weirdguy149 on Jul 27th 2019 at 11:50:54 AM

I think Ed was removed as a character because the rather human slapstick did not fit with the realistic animation. You'll also notice that the hyenas are a lot smarter this time around, which effectively takes the wind out of the sails of "be prepared", which is mostly about explaining the plan to three dumbass hyenas who need everything spelled out.

Why is this in the Live Action Movie section if it's completely animated using CGI?

Because it's marketed as a live-action remake despite the CGI like The Jungle Book was. Dunno why that is.

Is it explicitly marketed that way?

Well they keep including it in the live-action remake lineup at least.

While it's technically Western Animation, the main selling point is that it looks like a Live-Action Film. Thus more people are going to be searching for the Lion King (2019) here than in the Western Animation forum, which would likely be confused with the original Lion King.

And yet people want "Be Prepared" to be sung exactly the way it was in the original Lion King (if Scar sang that version to Shenzi in the 2019 remake, he would have been torn to shreds after the first line). Honestly, I'm more disappointed that fans wanting to extend the song to full length didn't make new lyrics to fit the new dynamic between Scar and the Hyenas, instead opting to remix the original. Imagine getting a history lesson from Scar about the war between the Lions and Hyenas, and how he's going to "fix" everything. Or, if possible, have Scar mutter under his breath (out of earshot of the Hyenas) of how Hyenas are "disgusting scavengers," showing his true colors and foreshadowing him willingly to throw them under the bus.

Edited by Shadao on Jul 27th 2019 at 11:59:27 AM