Directed by Jon Favreau

Starring Donald Glover, James Earl Jones, Chiwetel Ejiofor, John Oliver, Seth Rogen

The Lion King remake. Where do I even begin. This was one of the fucking weirdest experiences I’ve had watching a movie. Because I was constantly reminded of how great the original is, and how pointless and lifeless this current one is. Oh yes, there are changes here and there, mostly the bad kinds. But overall, it is mostly a shot for shot remake. If only that were a good thing. I expected the absolute worst from this, so I guess it goes without saying that I did not hate it as much as I thought I would. But still I cringed, oh how I cringed, at the CGI photorealistic animals unable to express emotions banking on nostalgia to emote. Fasten your fucking seatbelts.

The movie began. I wanted to leave. I made it to Simba’s I Can’t Wait to be King song. Somewhere in my mind, my cells exploded. I almost got up. I watched Mufasa’s death scene pathetically displayed in passive copy and paste storytelling. I laughed uncontrollably at Simba and Nala looking “lovingly” (as much as the dimly lit CGI would allow them) into each other’s eyes. I listened to line after line get changed, just to be changed, for the so very worst. How much is ruined now that Rafiki turns Simba’s head back to the water, and now says, “Look closer” instead of “look harderrrrrr”. And Rafiki? A butchered representation of what that character was. He’s barely in this at all. His memorable scenes from the original have been cut to shreds, and shoved in just to have a talking baboon. Consider that once Simba has taken off after Mufasa’s death, so much time has passed as he is now an adult, one of his lion’s fur hairs gets pushed along all of Pride Rock. It journeys all the way through the lands, to be swallowed by a Giraffe, and then shitted out, so that a dung beetle pushes the shit which then breaks open with the fur, which is taken by an ant, which passes by Rafiki. The mystical baboon picks it up, and with no buildup immediately calls that it is Simba’s. This blew my mind as much as anything the film does poorly. There was magic behind Rafiki, there was magic behind all of the original. Man, they BUILT to this shit. It wasn’t just THERE. How you gonna tell me Rafiki just LOOKS at the fur from an ant and knows it’s SIMBA?!? NO MIXING CONCOCTION OR HUMMING OR CHANTING. YO SIMBA IS ALIVE *wipes tree with paint* *fades out*

Speaking of the magic being gone. Is this movie souless? Oh yeah, for sure. There are a few highlights here and there, and while the visuals are masterfully made, they are ultimately useless to the story. This betrays the audience, it hopes so desperately that we remember all the best moments and lines of the original, so that we may fill in the many gaps this movie is missing. Now the voice acting. Oh my fucking god.

If I typed lines from the Lion King, no doubt everyone reading this would hear them the way they were said, not the way I write them on the page. Because that’s how movies are supposed to work. Leave you with lasting impressions and changes, allow you to dream and imagine things and ways of expression you didn’t know were possible. What do we have in 2019? I’ll fucking tell you. When Scar and Simba have their final confrontation, Scar’s great line of “…your majESSSSTTYYYYY” before he flicks the ash in his eyes has been reduced to , “your majesty!”

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY

Oh my fucking god. Mufasa’s death scene. When Scar is about to kill him, “long live the king!” may be the worst retelling. And then he smacks him. Oh man. I definitely started crying in pain. Gone are the mannerisms and nuances that so many talented people brought together for an epic story. It’s a copy and paste screenplay. Do you remember how it was in the old days? How they used to cast voice actors separate from the leads for singing, especially if they thought it would add to the story? Well you can forget that shit. Why is Donald Glover Simba? WHY is BEYONCE Nala??? Both can sing, neither can really voice act. Usually you cast people who can speak these roles, then you get someone else for the damn singing. Glover and Beyonce have been cast solely for the latter, and banked on saving money by keeping them for the main roles. It makes NO SENSE

I ain’t no Beyonce hater, but she isn’t Nala. Glover, who’ve I’ve been a fan of for a while, doesn’t quite work as Simba. And he’s barely in the fucking project. Why even cast him, WHY. James Earl Jones at least is perfect as he always was as Mufasa, and doesn’t sound as old and dying as he did in Rogue One. For that I was glad. Seth Rogen as Pumba was also a nice surprise, he was at least a breath of fresh air in this disposable flick. And John Oliver was usually funny as Zazu. And this whole time I thought Scar’s Chiwetel Ejiofor was Idris Elba.

I couldn’t tell the difference between any of the female lions. Look at Sarabi and Nala talk, good luck figuring out who is who. All the rest look identical. Man they saved money on those models. Scar at least looks manged and rabid, starved and weak with a fucked up face which was cool I guess. Mufasa was a lion. Simba was a cub. The hyenas were a joke. Keegan’s voice, another distraction. Then there’s some matriarch hyena named Shenzi? Was she added? She sucked

The music has been downgraded. Your ears will hear many of the same classic songs, but your mind will tune in to the discrepancies. Something is wrong. The singing is much louder than the instruments, and it aint that good. It’s the voice actors raising their voices. Why don’t movies cast separate people for this anymore ? The original Aladdin and Lion King had different people SINGING. Nightmare before christmas had Danny FUCKING ELFMAN take the reins for the songs for Jack. But now the same people are talking and singing, WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING

Can You Feel the Love Tonight plays in broad daylight now. It’s a duo between Glover and Beyonce. Doesn’t work. Maybe they changed this scene to daytime cause it’s hard to see through all of the night sequences. Gone are the vibrant shifting color grades of animation from the original. Now we have pure CGI, and at night their lighting is total shit. Simba and Rafiki’s convo at night is tricky to observe. And notice how the chase doesn’t end with Rafiki’s “STOP!” with his hand out, but now it’s just his face. Just his face. Slowly coming down from the top right of the frame to the center. No words said. It’s bad.

As I said the visuals are mostly amazing. But in a movie about a talking and singing group of animals, what good is photorealism? Remember what Roger Ebert said on Brad Pitt’s doomed portrayal of Achilles in the awful Troy, “Pitt is modern, nuanced, introspective; he brings complexity to a role where it is not required. By treating Achilles and the other characters as if they were human, instead of the larger-than-life creations of Greek myth, director Wolfgang Petersen miscalculates. What happens in Greek myth cannot happen between psychologically plausible characters. That’s the whole point of myth.”

And really, that just perfectly sums up why this remake fails. The whole point of the original Lion King was that it couldn’t happen, now this version is too busy trying to show you that it could. The magic is sucked out in the process. I don’t care how real lions look when they are fucking SINGING. They are now expressionless, plain faced and looking like regular animals. And even the best voice actors here cannot bring more than what is on the screen alive. And the screen? Filled with bland and open shots of backdrops, boring landscapes and repetitive grasslands. Shit was so spooky and inventive with the animation of the original. Now it’s just….Africa. Okay. Didn’t realize I was paying for a documentary. Your eyes are not drawn anywhere. The stampede makes no sense with the physics of reality now being a focal point. I just want to leave the theater

The final “battle” at the end. They failed. Pumba is somehow able to run through hyenas like Aragon and Theoden over the Uruk’hai in Two Towers. Rafiki’s entrance is so bad and underwhelming I had to pretend he wasn’t there. Where are the sound effects? Did they fire the whole sound department the week before the premiere? I don’t understand. Nala pins down Simba but you feel nothing. There’s no sound. Rafiki smacks hyenas and you cant hear a damn thing. And your mind wanders and you start to wonder how two slow little cubs moving realistically were able to outrun hyenas. And how Simba survives the stampede. Do you see how your constantly taken out of the events of the story?

But as I said I expected the worst. So shame on me for even going. And I did like parts of it. Like Timon and Pumba, who also get the funniest moment at the end. The one change the filmmakers got so right, that laugh carried me through the letdown ending. And I liked that some of the movie actually had some good humor. Some.

But then I cringed. And I cringed, and I cringed, and I cringed. I cringed at the shot for shot remade opening. I cringed at Simba’s song. I cringed when Scar killed Mufasa. I cringed at everything involving Nala. I cringed that Beyonce added lyrics to the song that plays when Simba returns home. I cringed that this movie boiled down to a checklist of beats to hit from the original, and as each legendary scene played distorted I cringed some more. The best thing I can say about this movie is that it made me realize how epic and special and great the original is. And how after about two decades of not seeing it, I realize I must go back and watch it some more.

This remake was directed by Jon Favreau, who also served as a producer. He also did the Jungle Book remake 3 years ago that no one remembers. I forgot that movie the moment I left the theater. The actor turned director is better than this. He helped start the MCU robustly with the first Iron Man. And showed his greatness with Chef. Now, after two poor remakes, I ask him to stop remaking Disney films. No more, please. Your talents lie elsewhere Mr. Favreau. I beg you to stop

In a later review in his life of The Wizard of Oz, Roger Ebert also remarked, “Maybe it helped that none of them knew they were making a great movie.” I think back on all the people involved in the 1994 Lion King, and I know there’s no way they knew they were going to set fire to the world. The impact that the movie would have. That it would change everything. They didn’t know it would be great. Now, in 2019, I think these people think it is. And maybe that’s all the difference