Rather than a Lion King, this is a Copy-Cat King

Rating: 1/10 (12 July 2019)

With most of the live action remake films, Disney has justified them by saying that they "need" to be updated for modern audiences. Now none of these remakes needed to be made, BUT so far there has been nothing wrong in and of itself with the idea of remaking them (although Disney has most definitely exaggerated how many updates have been made, the importance of them, or how they've "enhanced" these stories). But now we're REALLY getting into the cream of the crop of Disney classics. To this point, the closest to classics that Disney has remade were Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella, both of which, while certainly beloved, were both old, old films and also drawn from fairy tales themselves, hence there is plenty of room for retelling. Today, however, Disney's walking on thinner ice with some of these, namely in the proposition to remake their landmark titles from the Disney Renaissance which are barely over 20 years old.
These movies, upon release, were hailed as instant classics: "The Little Mermaid" "Aladdin" and "The Lion King." They're Disney at its finest doing what it does best, and people young and old hold them dearly today. But if they're so great (which Disney has no trouble proclaiming), then one has to ask, why remake them in the first place? If a movie's timeless, it's presumably perfectly fine as it is, with no need to change it. Thus, Disney can't simultaneously proclaim a movie a timeless classic while also going forward with remaking it; either the movie's not a timeless classic and thus in need of a remake, OR Disney is just lying to us in order to poorly justify remaking a movie that doesn't need a remake. The phrase "nothing is sacred" gets thrown around a bit too liberally sometime, but here it actually seems apt to use it; Disney is sacrificing the creative integrity of its studios (which are doing plenty fine as is with no need of these remakes) for the sake of making a few more dollars. Hardly surprising, but from a creative standpoint, deeply disappointing.
Another element that has been key in Disney justifying these remakes is the idea of having live action, human characters thrown into these classic settings from animated movies. Even "The Jungle Book" was able to do this with Mowgli, even if the rest of that movie was all CGI. Again, this is a weak justification, but it at least somewhat justifies the new medium, to a certain extent. In the case of "The Lion King," however, the justification completely falls apart and we see how weak it really is for any of these remakes. Simply put, there are no human characters in "The Lion King." It's a very human story (heck, it's based off of Hamlet), BUT the setting is inhabited entirely by animals. Why did such a story work so well as an animated film in the first place? For very much the same reason "Bambi" works as a film as well; in both instances, the filmmakers utilized the strengths of their medium to their advantage. Animation allowed them to make the animal characters look very realistic while also giving them just enough human features to come across as characters with human mannerisms and emotions recognizable to human audiences. The animals make facial expressions that their real life counterparts cannot, and display an emotional spectrum that only humans possess. In animation, this is acceptable because it's a part of how one tells a story in that medium; people don't expect animation to perfectly reflect real life, but rather depict it's own set of characters in its own particular setting in its own particular way. This is also why in animation, you can have such a wide range of characters in film or television and still tell a story that audiences can latch onto; whether it's something as outrageous off the walls as Ren and Stimpy, as cheap looking as South Park, as massive as anime like Gurren Lagann, as small-scale as a show like Rugrats, or, yes, as seemingly naturalistic looking as Bambi or The Lion King, in all of these humans are able to accept the characters presented to them as characters somewhat like them because they understand that they inhabit an animated medium, where liberties can be taken with appearances and the laws of physics.
The animated medium also allows for musical numbers to be seamlessly blended into the storytelling in a way that even the best live musicals/musical films can't do. One minute Simba and Nala can be talking to each other about ditching Zazu, the next minute they can be bursting into song with dozens of other animals that have really no reason to be singing with them, and we as an audience accept it because we know it's an animated setting, where something like that can just happen and then never be brought up ever again. In "The Lion King," the liberties afforded to the animated medium are on display in ways that many animated features do not capture. The anthropomorphism of the animals in that film is a very strange balance of naturalism with fantasy; they look for the most part like their real life counterparts, and they even exist in an ecology which reflects a real life savanna ecology, but at the same time, they display emotions, mannerisms, and facial expressions that only humans can, some look more cartoonish than others (like Timon and Pumbaa, Zazu, and the Hyenas), break out into song on occasion, and even have things happen like a lion cub getting raised by a warthog and a meerkat and growing up to live beside them. All of these elements were critical in telling the story that the makers of "The Lion King" had unfold in their film.
You just can't do any of this in a CGI/live action medium which is supposed to depict the animals as realistically as possible. Now, as far as CGI goes, this film looks gorgeous, no doubt. HOWEVER, if one is comparing it as a remake of an animated film populated by anthropomorphic animal characters, then it fails UTTERLY. How so? The expressions. ALL of the emotion conveyed by any of the animal characters here hinges ENTIRELY on the voice acting (who is not that great either; the actors sounds so annoyed). There are a FEW things they can do with the mouths and the eyes, but not much; in making the animals look so much like their real life counterparts, they've sacrificed a major storytelling feature of the animated medium. It doesn't help that the original character designs like Scar's weren't possible; Scar is clearly very exaggerated and cartoonish in his appearance, which helps convey his status as villain. The live-action one by comparison looks far more dull and generic. I had troubles distinguish between Mufasa and adult Simba as well. They both looks so generic that it's hard to tell.
The songs are another great problem. Beginning from the fact that they just... starts out of nowhere. The bad singing doesn't help, but more than anything they just comes across as completely awkward because you have no idea WHY they're even singing in the first place! This again shows a damning limitation of the CGI/live action medium, particularly when it comes to remaking films largely if not entirely populated (like in this case) by animals. Transitions to singing in live action are tricky things to handle no matter who the characters are; in musicals, the audience is just supposed to accept that it's a thing that happens, but even then they need to be led into because the characters themselves are the ones always breaking out into song. Animation, however, affords some flexibility, and "The Lion King" is a perfect example of this.
In conclusion, let me just put it this way... this is a bad movie. "The Lion King" is my all-time favorite Disney movie and holds a VERY special place in my heart. But these questions I raised don't just apply to "The Lion King"; many of them, I believe, are going to increasingly apply to more and more of these planned Disney remakes. Is every Disney remake a bad idea? Of course not! But some of them seem at best completely unnecessary, and in "The Lion King's" case we find a project which failed as a remake to a movie that quite frankly didn't need it. Sometimes, timeless is just that, and doesn't need to be touched one bit. If you want to watch a movie about humanized animals with a great story, great characters and great music just watch the original. And if you want to watch realistic looking african animals in a realistic looking african enviroment just watch a Sir David Attenbourgh's documentary. There is absolutely no need for this movie to exist. It's utterly pointless.