When Black Panther is a Better Remake of The Lion King

Rating: 3/10 (7 November 2019)

The Lion King from 1994 is a great piece of animated cinema and it will always have a place in my heart as being THE Disney movie of my childhood. So, yeah, I love that movie. So, one can only imagine my skepticism and worries when I heard that Disney would remake it in a more photo-realistic style and would come out in a July 2019 release. However, I still wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt since I felt Jon Favreau did a great job with The Jungle Book 2016 and hoped that maybe he would at least do The Lion King justice as well. But, alas, The Lion King 2019 didn't do its 1994 counterpart justice, I feel. So now, let's get into why.
There are things that I admire and find to be good in this remake. First of all, the visuals are remarkable; yeah, everybody's pretty much said it already, but I do agree that the film looks incredible. The animals naturally fit in with the environments for the most part and there's an insane amount of attention to detail to make the animals look and interact with various things as realistically as possible, although it is to a fault but we'll get to it shortly. Also, Timon and Pumbaa did get some chuckles out of me every now and then and that Billy Eichner and Seth Rogen did a good job at portraying those characters. Even some of the songs were done well enough here (not as good as in original but still not badly-done), like the opening rendition of 'The Circle of Life', 'Hakuna Matata', and 'Can You Feel the Love Tonight?', although the scene where the 3rd aforementioned song plays takes place during what looks to be afternoon so that one's a lil' jarring.
Now, despite the things that are good, The Lion King 2019 still has more wrong than right. First of all, while Eichner & Rogen do a good job with their roles, I can't say the same for the actors/actresses who plays the lion characters. Donald Glover as Simba wasn't awful, but I feel he was wasted as his performance was still kinda flat. Beyonce, who plays Nala, was even more flat; while she's a great singer, her acting in this was very dry and it felt like she was reading through the script with not much interest in the material. Even James Earl Jones, who reprises his role from the original as Simba's father Mufasa, feels flat in his delivery; now, it has nothing to do with his age at this point, but it feels like he should've been able to put more emotion and authority into his character especially since he played Mufasa before. And, then there's Chiwetel Ejiofor as Scar, Simba's uncle, who is the worst of all; his delivery was the flattest of all the actors in the film and he emulated no menace in his role whatsoever. Jeremy Irons was so perfect as Scar that, if the makers of this film were just gonna do a near-exact redux of The Lion King right down to the dialogue, why couldn't they bring Irons back when they got James Earl Jones back? For example, Ejiofor's delivery for when Scar loses his lunch (a mouse) when Zazu steps in simply does not mesh with the dialogue in that moment, which was taken right out of the original, and it's as jarring as can be when that dialogue was meant to be delivered through the sliminess that Irons pulled off wonderfully in the past.
The issues regarding the acting also stems from how it was directed in order to match with the realistic looks, which it's invalidated when one were to take into account that The Jungle Book also had photo-realistic animals yet the cast members who played said animals still brought some charisma and emotion to their roles. So, there's no excuse for why the cast for The Lion King 2019 needed to give as flat of performances as they did.
The realistic look certainly makes certain scenes that are meant to hit emotional crescendos appear awkward and even unintentionally silly; Mufasa's death at the hands of Scar, for instance, simply doesn't work as well as the original film was able to bring some emotion just from the visuals of the characters' facial expressions, so making that scene look more realistic just takes so much of that visually-driven emotion away.
By making the film look more realistic with more suppressed emotion from the cast, it takes so much away from the story and its heart. If the movie was more like the scene where Timon and Pumbaa do a number for 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight' and other animals join in a sort of a capella where the movie for once decidedly to be lively in its animation in a similar vein as the original, then the movie overall would've been better for it. But as it is, The Lion King 2019 fails to translate the story of its 1994 predecessor well.
The Lion King remake is longer than the 1994 original by about 30 minutes, and most of it is due to extended shots or extra visuals that seem to pad the movie out. For example, we see how Simba's piece of hair gets to Rafiki; it takes WAY too long just to get to that simple point. But, the real kicker is that, while the film is longer due to extra moments to pad the run-time, the film, for some reason, not only rushes through Simba and Nala seeing each other again and in surprise, but also, and even worse, leaves out the part where Rafiki teaches Simba that he can learn from the past which is the moment where Simba decides to go back to the Pride Lands and take back his place as king from Scar. Here, when Simba decides to return home, it feels like he missed a significant character beat like he went from A to C while skipping B; why leave out such a crucial part of Simba's development as a character, especially when the movie up to this point went out of its way to follow the 1994 film's plot beat for beat?
While some of the musical numbers weren't badly-done, they still don't have the same amount of energy and charm here as they did in the original. The one case where a musical number was done in such embarrassing fashion was Scar's musical number, 'Be Prepared', which happens to be my favorite song from The Lion King, aside from 'Can You Feel the Love Tonight?', by the way. Not only is Chiwetel Ejiofor's delivery in it just flat and terrible, but the song feels like it was tacked on in the last minute and only half-finished, like it wasn't gonna be in the movie initially only to be put in just to keep audiences happy; honestly, they should've either fully-committed to it or just not even have it in the movie at all if they were just gonna be lazy about it. Also, Beyonce's single for the film, 'Spirit', comes up in a jarring place which is where Simba and Nala head back to the Pride Lands; they should've just kept the music Hans Zimmer did for that same scene in the original. Speaking of Zimmer, who is probably my favorite composer of all time, while his music here is good, it's still a carbon copy of his work in the 1994 original film and isn't incorporated throughout the remake as well as in the original.
So, overall, while The Lion King 2019 does get some things right from the original, it still got more wrong than right and even the things it got right wasn't done as well as in the 1994 original. I'll let the word be known: Black Panther from the MCU was a better remake of The Lion King; at least I could tell people cared about their material and actually tried in that film. The Lion King 2019 just feels like the most bloated and most expensive tech demo ever made, and I can't believe not enough people didn't see enough of just how obvious of a cash-grab this movie is to keep this movie from becoming one of the highest-grossing films ever. It's sad that Disney got rewarded so handsomely for essentially just redoing The Lion King down to a T and now they're just given all the justification in the world to do the same for other films down the road. But, what do I know, I guess?