The Lion King franchise

There doesn’t seem to be a forum thread for Disney’s The Lion King series so I’m gonna open one up.

I’ll start by posting the trailer and poster for the prequel to the 2019 remake, Mufasa: The Lion King, directed by Barry Jenkins.

What do we think?

(If there already was a thread, please let me know.)

Edited by BigBadShadow25 on Apr 29th 2024 at 10:34:25 AM

Live action lion king goes in the live action forum!

…But it’s animated.

For a given value of "animated". It's still intended to come across as photorealistic.

The franchise is mostly animated, at least. And this is for the franchise.

Photorealistic animation is still animation. The marketing execs can lie all they want.

On a different note; why is it that every time The Lion King gets another spin-off, something gets retconned? Like, I can't be the only one who's noticed this, right?

Two had a bunch of Scar loyalists that weren't in the original, plus Scar's son- I mean successor, 1 1/2 established that the goofy sidekick characters were five feet away from every major event in young Simba's life, Lion Guard introduces Simba's son, who was totally there the whole time and was just doing other stuff during 2 (and also, he's magic), and now we get this prequel, that claims Mufasa was a Rags to Riches story, that of course has never been hinted at before.

Granted, this newest retcon isn't quite as egregious as pulling new factions and characters straight out of their ass, but still.

So we've had lion Hamlet (ok, I know that it's an original story just influenced by Hamlet, but still), lion Romeo and Juliet and lion Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead. So do you think this will be based on/influenced by another Shakespeare/Shakespeare-adjacent work, or wholly original?

I vote lion Titus Andronicus.

It's in the Western Animation subsection, it's 99.9% CGI, and it was signed up for Best Animated Feature, so it counts.

NO. …Lion Othello.

That poster screams "made by AI".

At least they're doing an original story, I guess.

I think the photorealistic style is doing this a disservice, because we really have to rely on the narration to understand "this a prequel to The Lion King about a young Mufasa". Kiara is apparently in this, but I honestly can't tell where she is because she looks exactly like a young Mufasa. What parts take place in the present and which ones the past? If the characters looked more distinct, I'd might be able to figure that out.

As it is, my main reaction to the trailer is pretty much "Yup, those sure are CGI animals running around CGI environments". I don't have a lot of confidence this will improve the issues from the remake.

Community notes. One of Musk’s better ideas:

Okay that gave me a good laugh.

Can I share that image?

Knock yourself out.

I don't understand why everyone online hates these movies. I don't care whether it counts as live action or not, I think it looks adorable.

The problem was people felt the last one was just a cut and paste version of the original.

Edited by BigBadShadow25 on Apr 30th 2024 at 1:46:19 PM

To quote YMS:

"A photorealistic painting of a fish doesn't suddenly become a photograph of a fish"

I admit, I'm just not sure I get the point of a Mufasa prequel?

Making money, duh.

It's just empty nostalgia bait without having the substance of the original. And man, the presentation of the characters in the original is way better. Like even though I'm 100% Kovu guy I will take Uncle Scar over CGI Scar.

Yeah, most people are really sick of the live-action Disney remakes because very often they're copy-pastes of the original films with little actually done to make them more distinct barring the additions of songs of varying quality (see: Scuttle's random rap in The Little Mermaid). It was a novelty when they did it with The Jungle Book and Beauty and the Beast (helps that they kind of added things from the book in the instance of TJB), but now, with Disney continually doing it, it's gotten annoying.

The Lion King remake did make a few interesting changes in dialogue (for instance it was implied Scar had challenged Mufasa before and gotten his ass beaten) and a few character changes but most of it was the exact same and a lot of it didn't really work due to shoddy voice acting (Beyonce as Nala or Timon and Pumbaa voiced by Seth Rogen and someone else) or, again, the exact same cut and paste stuff, to say nothing of how unexpressive the medium made all of the characters look.

To best illustrate this, compare Simba's expression from both movies when he sees the wildebeest herd. The animated one is awestruck horror. The remake he just looks...mildly perturbed. Even worse is that concept art actually had the lions making more obvious facial expressions but they dialed it back on that for realism points.

The middling reaction to Mufasa is definitely built both out of a dislike that it's using the same style as the TLK remake and also a "Why do we need this?" sort of feeling.

Edited by theLibrarian on Apr 30th 2024 at 1:40:57 PM

…Starting to worry this thread is getting too complainy.

Well I'll spin it.

Anyone find it really ironic that Kovu is gonna be king in the future (and even confirmed in Lion Guard), yet went about it in the most diplomatic way? It's what Zira wanted and in a way she got it. And if we assume the vagueness of "hand picked by Scar" is taken literally, Scar sorta got his wish too.

A weaker cut-and-paste too. Everything about the 1994 version was grand, the lighting, the cinematography, the bombastic musical numbers, the exaggerated character animation. The 2019 remake sacrificed all of that in favor of realism, while still telling an unrealistic story.

That's true, and it's very ironic. Isn't Kiara going to be the queen regent though and Kovu her consort?

Edited by Snicka on Apr 30th 2024 at 9:03:08 PM

That line always bothered be just a bit. Like, shouldn't you mean paw-picked by Scar? You're a lion, you don't have any hands.

I'm looking forward to the prequel but I am a bit confused: if Mufasa didn't have a drop of nobility in him why does he speak so highly of all the great kings of the past up in the stars if they aren't his ancestors? I guess maybe he still looks to them for guidance because the respected the circle of life even though they weren't directly linked to him.