The Lion King

The essence of sterility. Beautiful yet pointless. I wonder what Favreau's role as director was. It couldn't have been more than sending out two mass emails: one to the actors "put on The Lion King and say the same thing", and the other to the thousands of hopefuls behind the rendering computers "put on The Lion King, forget the emotions in the faces and otherwise do the same thing using CGI and share the result with me in a few years". There is not a single ounce of invention, no interpretation, let alone an original idea. On the other hand, the glitz is so intoxicating and the original material and music so catchy that if you have to take your kids to see it, at least it won’t a complete waste of time. (08/02/2019)

If anyone is going to remake Disney classics, it should be Jon Favreau! The Jungle Book may have had more swing and adventure, but The Lion King is also breathtaking in its visuals, music, emotion and nostalgia. Tears on the edge of my eyes more or less the whole film. The scene with the hyenas is wonderfully creepy and the lion fight a clear highlight. The fairy tale of my childhood got a solid tribute. 85%. (07/27/2019)

A verbatim remake that, while visually stunning, is an identical copy of the famous original without any additional ideas, improvements or moments of surprise (except for the dung beetle). Favreau thus remains just a hitmaker who can deliver a film that will hit the hundred-million mark at the box office, but the soul of the original is nowhere to be seen. Commercially, it’s fine, perhaps, but otherwise it’s a pointless update of something that was already almost perfect. (07/21/2019)

The animators have done an excellent job in terms of authentic portrayals of living creatures and nature, ensuring that the animation is absolutely breath-taking, and many shots look as if they came from natural history documentaries. The problem is that The Lion King is not a documentary from the African savannah, but rather a musical from Disney, in which the animals talk and sing, and this truly does not work well together with photo-realistic animation. In order to achieve the greatest possible credibility, the animal heroes were deprived of all "human" facial expressions, and therefore the only emotions in their dialogues are the voices of their voice actors, which leave something to be desired. The story (basically Hamlet) is no different from the animated version (except that it’s half an hour longer) and it's still understandably great, but it just doesn't have much to surprise you with if you've seen the original The Lion King. The new The Lion King is a technologically perfect, but otherwise somewhat soulless copy of its much better predecessor. (10/03/2020)

The animation is so amazing that after a while I didn't even see it as animation anymore, indeed I almost caught myself at times thinking the animals were talking – it's simply pure movie magic, nothing less. It was like how I was impressed by the monkeys in the new Planet of the Apes films, for example; the only difference is that the story wasn't just about them. In The Lion King, it's now exclusively about digital animals and supposedly digital landscapes and everything we see (I almost don't want to believe it). Really amazing. But what would it be without a good story, right? They didn't experiment too much in that regard, and relied on the tried and tested certainties, augmented with nice little touches here and there (more space for Timon and Pumba was definitely a good move), which actually applies to Zimmer's tried and tested music and Elton John's songs. Aside from a few added "jokes for a more advanced audience", John Favreau's direction is what makes The Lion King a more mature spectacle. Like Steven Spielberg in The Adventures Of Tintin, he could do anything with a digital camera, but he tends to keep a low profile and doesn't make any flourishes. Everything looks like it's filmed in the real countryside with real animals (the desert shots put Lawrence of Arabia to shame), and when Favreau lets go of the reins we getan amazing scene with a tuft of fur that makes winking referenceto Forrest Gump, or a few horror segments (within the bounds of accessibility). In short, it's well done; and while I haven't had the urge to see the new Jungle Book again since I saw it in the theater, I suspect quite strongly that it will be different in the case of The Lion King. (07/17/2019)