About what you'd expect

Rating: 5/10 (2 July 2020)

I was never a huge fan of the original Lion King. I can't exactly place why, but it never appealed to me the same way that it does to hundreds of thousands of other people. I had no desire to watch this movie, nor did anyone else I knew. It was inherently known by most that this remake was unnecessary at the very least. People complained a lot before it came out. People complained a lot after. The movie still made money, and so the circle of lethargy continues.
I just got around to watching it, and I tried to keep an open mind: it's the least I can do, but it's near impossible not to make comparisons to the original film especially when so much cinematography and dialogue is lifted straight out of it.
The first thing you'll notice upon watching it is that it's a very impressive looking movie. Some shots looks straight out of National Geographic, while some are not as impressive those ones are few and far between. There's a variety of environments, all teeming with atmosphere, and life. Everything moved believably too. I was surprised how quickly I got used to this aesthetic.
But it's been pointed out before that this leads to a lack of expressiveness. Traditional animation is typically warmer, more fluid, more inviting than CGI, but compared to other CG films this still feels lacking. It's hard to be invested in these creatures when it doesn't appear that they're invested most of the time. None of the character or charm of the original is found here.
Voice acting is hard. You have to convey a lot using a very limited tool set compared to stage acting, and trust that the performance will translate to the audience. Not everyone here is a voiceover artist - through no fault of their own, it's just a different medium. I don't know if professional voiceover artists could have mitigated this issue: there are line deliveries here that are good, but still felt flat and incongruent with what we're seeing. Without expression, it does push for body language, music, lighting, and environments to convey those missing aspects of the story, and that could be an intriguing creative push. Stories inherently come from characters, though, and if we can't connect to those characters, it doesn't matter what else you throw at your audience.
The other thing straight from the start is that this is a very slow movie. I was looking at my watch at some points, because it can become very apparent what's fluff, what's padding. Some of it felt like it was just showing off the technology, what it could do.
When you see these amazing visuals, you hear these celebrity voices, the one thought that was in my head ad nauseum was "This was a very expensive movie." That really takes you out of the immersion.
What's interesting to me is how they changed the characters. I liked these hyenas more than in the original film. They felt more dangerous, they just had a bigger presence that permeated throughout the film. More autonomy, I suppose. It helps make the ruin of Pride Rock feel more natural, since the hyenas had led their own homeland to ruin.
I grew to be very irritated by Zazu. I like John Oliver, but Zazu wasn't as smart, or as snarky as I remember the original being - traits that also play to Oliver's strengths. Most of his dialogue felt more like a caricature, like this persnickety British worrywort we've seen in countless other movies. It doesn't fit well into this at all. It might've been to make us root more for Simba, but I don't think you should drag others down to make your lead more attractive. Rafiki doesn't have his speech here: he could have been cut from the movie entirely and it would have changed nothing.
I also didn't care for Timon that much. I didn't care for the fourth wall breaks, he always had something negative to say. Pumbaa and him are excellent foils for each other, but Simba feels out of place here. Maybe that's intentional. Timon puts blame on others and refuses to acknowledge his own mistakes - something that Scar does repeatedly, but it's somehow okay for this character?
They spent some time more on Timon's philosophy, where life is meaningless, so you may as well have fun. They also infer that this philosophy is wrong, that there's only one correct way of thinking and that's the circle of life, but without ever explaining why. "It's not like we were concerned for you" - this could have been a message like you're not just living your life for yourself, but for other people as well. If those people help you find meaning in your life, find something to fight for, it could have been a powerful arc that brings the duo to the climax in a more natural way. But they don't do that. They're just there because they were in the original.
I did like the Beauty and the Beast allusion: I wasn't expecting that, and I found it funny. For any other musical number aside from Circle of Life which was the best of the bunch, refer to the original movie, because there is a lot of oversinging and riffing to the point of being annoying.
There were points in the story where I felt like this is very dated, in the sense where some of the dialogue feels especially rooted in modern colloquialism. It's just something that stood out to me. Some of the modernizations work: it's more logical that every lion would fight, I enjoyed seeing Nala leave the Pridelands. I didn't find her as repulsive as everyone else, and I didn't even mind her song Spirit.
But the modern sensibilities only apply to bits and pieces, not the story as a whole. It's still "good versus evil", "right versus wrong".
Scar contradicts himself. He says that he isn't very strong, but raves on about the society he'll build where the mighty get what they want. He also says he's fairly smart, but he goofs up at the end, and it undermines his entire character and everything he did up to that point. He has a big presence on the screen, he's interesting to watch and listen to, but I felt like they could have made his motivation more consistent and deeper than what's shown.
The hyenas are still widely accepted as a malevolent force with no attempts made to unify the two cultures, and no justification for the segregation in the first place. The whole movie still ends in a bout of fisticuffs. Simba still gets the girl even if it doesn't feel like a fitting conclusion this time around.
It felt like I was taken back in time.
They didn't take risks, there were no creative liberties. Which seems... Odd. There's always backlash to these remakes, this one especially was hit hard. Why not have a legitimate reason to make these retellings: something to distinguish them besides the aesthetic?
This is everything that you're expecting it to be, and nothing more.