The Lion King (2019) review

I can see what's happening, and they don't have a clue..

Movie remakes, where do we start?

The Lion King is over 25 years old now and after seeing a surge in films getting remade, including many by Disney, it was inevitable that we would eventually see a remake of this classic. In hindsight it sounded fantastic, our childhood favourite film getting a 4K remake similar to what Beauty and The Beast did a few years before. Given the popularity of The Lion King it's hard not to get excited at the prospect, but little did we realise how that would turn out.

 In 2019 Jon Favreau (Iron Man) directed this live action remake of our favourite childhood movie. Everything looks fantastic but the colours of the animals hardly pop out like they did in the animated original. In this remake most of our favourite characters appear much more dull, which I get, they've had to make them 'real'. The problem is reading the expressions and understanding what these creatures are trying to convey, and you can't help but hate how this all comes together. So to put simply, you can't recreate that fun, charming Disney appeal through the emotions of 'real' animals. I say real as it is in fact referred to as 'live action'. The statement intended for the motion picture to look like real life animals, and not necessarily be real life animals. What you end up with is a very plain looking wildlife documentary with singalong elements, but without any of the Disney magic we are used to seeing. Sure, you can sing along to the songs, you'll recognise most of them. This is where the film raises questions, such as why they decided to change the classic song 'be prepared' to a small speech from Scar, such a shame. Not that the song would have made much difference it just would have been nice to actually have the song in the film. It is a remake after all.

We had a great cast in the original Lion King with Matthew Broderick voicing Simba, James Earl Jones as Mufasa and Jeremy Irons as Scar. As much as I hate this remake I'm glad they went with a mixture of new and original voice actors. You couldn't imagine anyone else voicing Mufasa other than the iconic James Earl Jones. Whereas Seth Rogan brings a fresh modern take on Pumba, arguably the film's comedy duo alongside Timon.

I can't speak highly enough about the original casting, and I haven't even mentioned the some of the other voice actors, such as Rowan Atkinson and Whoopi Goldberg. Atkinson was brilliant as Zazu, who was Mufasa's close friend.