Live Action Lion King Movie

Official trailer

Hey, Timon and Pumba.

It's very... realistic I guess? Those look like real animals I suppose. Not sure if that's an improvement.

Honestly I think it looks pretty good.

Yeah... not gonna lie, this realistic looking animal not working for me. Realistic looking animal just can't emote like the animated one. Making the animal realistic also lower the emotional investment in the more emotional heavy sceen.

It worked for Jungle Book but then again I think that the remake was better than the original for that one.

I wish they showed off everyone's vocal performances, not just a smattering of them.

Don't really like Scar's design in this because his namesake trait isn't very clear but everyone seems fine for this kind of movie.

Scar's voice is just not menacing or distinctive enough for me. Curiously, it's the same problem with Jafar in the Aladdin remake.

I think the reason it work for the Jungle Book was that it create a contrast between the human and the animal, the separation between 2 worlds. Not so much for Hamlet play by animals. Realistic animals would work better for in something like a Tarzan remake.

And they have to sing show tunes, mind you.

Ah well, it'll be fine I suppose.

As someone who loves The Jungle Book remake, it worked some of the time but not all of the time. Realistic King Louie singing was... weird.

Yeah, that was may main criticism regarding the movie. It was great when it was off doing its own thing, offering a completely new take on the story, with a nice mix of elements from the book and some interesting new ideas. But every single time it evoked the animated movie, it really threw me off. Or, to put it differently: Baloo humming "Bear necessities" is fun, having him sing the whole number just reminded me how energetic the animation was and how stale this is. Same with King Louis, he was great until he started to sing.

And music is more central to The Lion King too. You're going to lose some of that expressiveness without question.

Honestly, there is little left once you take away the music and the colours. The movie is mostly visuals and beats.

I hope they keep the fart jokes in

Man Scar looks fucked up.

I’m on a Discord server for animation fans and they are not liking the lack of expressions.

....yeah, I'm gonna pass. This is a movie that’s entirely about talking animals. which means that there’s no fucking way this is going to be a "live action" film. It’s not a Cinderella, a Beauty and the Beast, a Mulan, or even a Jungle Book. Those movies all had fantastical elements that had to be animated, but they still starred live actors on actual sets that could actually do a live-action performance. The Lion King, on the other hand, will have to be entirely animated. So it will just be the exact same animated movie except the animation will make the lions and hyenas look hyper-realistic, I guess. How very necessary. Hooray.

I know people are freaking out over the new cast list, but come on. Since they’ve been announced, there’s always been something that unsettled me about the live action remakes, and I think a few people have already said it by now: there’s no point to them. And I'm not saying that Disney shouldn’t remake some of their animated movies. I'm saying that there's a problem when they’re remaking the wrong ones.

People love The Lion King, and Aladdin, and Beauty and the Beast, and Cinderella, and The Jungle Book. Of those, I can almost guarantee at least one of them is on everyone’s top ten Disney movie list. There is something so incredible and charming about each one of these movies that keep people coming back to them years later. They are classics. But remaking them is a risky endeavor, and one that doesn’t always play out well. While some of these stories might benefit a little from the longer runtime and the ability to introduce slightly more adult themes, overall none of those changes really add anything to the story, and in the end for each of these movies that have had a live action movie made of them (and released, because some of them aren’t yet), I’ll always choose the animated version over the live action remake.

But for The Lion King, you can’t even call it a live action remake, not when every single character is going to be CGI! It’s just another kind of animation at this point. Case in point: I saw a Facebook post once where someone photoshopped the faces of the CGI animals to have big eyes and expressive faces, and it basically looked exactly like the animated movie, just 3D. And people were commenting like “oh wow it looks even better like that.” Like no shit Sherlock that’s why it was animated in the first place! We already have that movie.

And what’s even more frustrating is that they’re taking what is arguably the most popular Disney animated movie ever made (and universally liked, unlike Frozen) and redoing it for no reason, other than the vain hope that having “realistic” animals and star power attached to the film will somehow make them money. And it’s insulting to the original movie, and to everyone who loves that movie. All that’s going to happen is they’re going to take such a lighthearted yet poignant and thought-provoking movie that is perfect for kids and they’re going to make it darker, more “grown up” (translation: scarier and more boring at the same time), and somehow more awkward looking because while CGI is good, trying to make something both realistic and mimicking animation never works.

If Disney is so desperate for money, and really wants to try and resell its animated movies as live action, then they need to go with the animated movies that didn’t do so well, or the ones people don’t remember as much. People have been saying for a while now that they really want to see a remake of Atlantis, and honestly? Fuck yeah. That is the kind of movie they should remake. Not just because it’s the perfect movie to fill with all kinds of big name stars, but because it’s also great for showcasing how great your CGI department is. It’s already a pretty dark animated movie, in comparison to the others, so not much story-wise would have to change if they want to make it more for teens/adults. Also, visually, it would be a different change of pace from the overuse of modern day/futuristic outer space settings that most live action movies have these days. I can see something like that being made into something like Pirates of the Caribbean, and it might even open the doors for original sequels. Other movies that might benefit could be Treasure Planet or the Black Cauldron, and maybe even The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Disney animated movies are held in such a high regard because they’re timeless. They tell stories that we can relate to, have characters that we fall in love with, are beautiful to look at, and contain songs that to this day most people would know at least the chorus of. They have stood the test of time, some for eighty years. People love them because the creators filled them with care and love and effort. These remakes don’t have that same charm. They’re cash grabs, very obviously in some cases, and the same amount of effort that was put into the animated originals isn’t there. But if they really tried, they could probably make some decent remakes of the lesser known animated movies, and also might inspire people who haven’t seen or heard of them to check out the originals. I know they don’t want to do that because they’re afraid of the risk, but sooner or later people are going to stop giving them money to have their childhood favorite movies ruined by mediocre acting/singing and uncanny CGI.

Honestly, if the shitty live action remakes get trounced by Frozen II this year at the box office, I’ll consider it a victory.

To be fair, I don't think Disney themselves have ever actually referred to it as "live action". I'm not sure why people keep calling it that tbh.

I agree that an Atlantis remake would be awesome.

Yeah, I don't know why this thread has this title. IIRC literally no one involved with it has used the term 'live action.'

I think the movie is a bit unnecessary, especially after seeing the new trailer, but they can do what they want. I can just choose to not watch the remakes, which is mostly what I've been doing. It doesn't really affect me in any way.

I really, really, dislike the new trend of Disney remaking their animated movies. Paying homage to the original in a new twist is one thing, unsuccessfully recreating animated magic is another. Yes, I said unsuccessfully, because most if not all of Disney’s animated movies are much more beautiful and cinematic as they are, and get more bland and generic when they are translated into live action or, in The Lion King’s case, photorealistic CGI.

Edited by dmcreif on Apr 10th 2019 at 7:52:12 AM

I recall the Narnia films had pretty good and expressive animation for Aslan, though this recent trailer’s footage doesn’t seem to approach that.

The facial animation was also pretty good in the live-action Pete’s Dragon that nobody saw but me.

Uh hey,person writing walls of text,I'm not reading all that,you might wanna cut on the paragraphs of text as other people are bound to move over your posts

Edit: Yo, why is TV Tropes saying I can't post external links because I'm a 'New Account'? WTF?

Edited by edvedd on Apr 10th 2019 at 7:33:08 AM

I actually really enjoyed Favreau's Jungle Book remake (albeit with the disclaimer I haven't seen the original animated film) and highly cherish the original Lion King (probably the first Disney film I saw alongside Pocahontas and it's still one of my favorite animated films period), so I've been pretty excited for this remake...

...but with that said, I'm pretty worried about how the teaser and especially this official trailer are making the 2019 film look like a near shot-for-shot remake of the 1994 original. Plenty of people have been able to make direct comparisons and pillor the remake for its more subdued art direction and animation because the filmmakers and marketing department are pretty much begging them to with the scenes they're filming and including in the trailer.

I'm personally not bothered with the more reserved presentation as long as the film proves itself to have any substance behind it to support those changes. The production crew needs to show that this movie does actually have some meaningfully new substance behind it that you can't get from the original movie. That's one area I felt Favreau's Jungle Book succeeded at—again, haven't seen the original Jungle Book animated film but I from what I know and understand, Favreau's remake had the distinction of having its story, characters, and tone taking more inspiration from the original books by Kipling instead of the animated film.

I'm more willing to give the movie a chance compared to other comments I've seen. But with how there's been very little material that's actually new to this remake that has been shown for people to work with, I don't exactly blame some of the "hot takes" I've read people make about the movie online. (The most popular ones being that TLK 2019 is a remake made for people who hate or are embarrassed of animation as a genre medium.)

Edited by Yeow95 on Apr 10th 2019 at 12:29:15 PM