Is The Lion King's Legacy RUINED 30 Years Later...?

welcome back to the anniversary series where yes it's official Lion King now as of the 15th of June 2024 has turned 30 years old and today for this anniversary series we'll be looking at some bits about behind the scenes and what exactly is its Legacy all these years later considering the fact that after multiple decades it's still relevant uh considered by many as the best Disney movie of all time with almost everyone agreeing at least it's certainly up there all on a hot streak from Little Mermaid Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin Lion King sat very comfortably in that lineup whil also going in a completely different direction from them in fact looking at 1994 for movies in general and it's kind of a great year for movies alongside the world of Lion King on the animation front you then have in the fleshy world the stories of sha Shank Redemption Forest Gump pop fiction full weddings and a funeral The Mask dumber and dumber yeah we're in serious Jim Carrey territory here True Lies and honestly the list goes on and yet against all of those fleshy fleshy Stories the highest grossing movie of that year was none other than the little 2D cartoon on the side Lion King at that time it was the highest grossing animated movie of all time as well as Disney's biggest in the company's history kind of looks like the kind of proper finale ending for 2D animation considering Toy Story 1 would come out 1 year later maybe there's something thematic about that being the final climax for traditional animation maybe and of course now it's become kind of ironic that we've gone full circle with the now definitively mid photo realistic remake now holding that very same title of Disney's biggest grossing movie in other words 30 years later and you can still use the sentence Lion King is the highest grossing animated movie as much as Disney doesn't like calling the Remake animated but I mean come on look at it now to get into specifics The Originals also still the highest grossing handdrawn animated movie at $986 million gross this was insane numbers for any release let alone an animated one why well because at the time no movie had ever made over a billion dollars in fact this wouldn't happen at all until Titanic did it a few years later and to make that fact even more crazy it was going on to make 2 billion that movie was a monster but back to Lion King beyond the success it had at the time as emphasized by it being added to Disney's soul sucking remake machine Lion King is a Timeless classic that is now a standard of most people's childhoods if there's one Disney movie that everyone has seen it tends to be this one somehow I was the outlier on that I didn't see this movie until 2016 but hey it's still Timeless even when you take the Disney timeline of every animated movie they've made people don't know where to put Lion King because it's not attached to any time period just nature is it an ancient civilization story where the humans hadn't grown up yet well who knows maybe there a post apocalyptic movie there's probably a film theory about it if not I'll make it Beyond a remake The Lion King went on to have two sequels with Lion King one and a half being perhaps the wildest idea of a straight to home video movie although apparently there was that one time they made a time traveling Cinderella 3 I think anyway alongside the sequels they also did the Timone and Pumba Cartoon as well as the Disney Junior series lion guard which honestly I have no idea what that's about but glad to know it's out there franchising doing franchising things it's also one of the very few Broadway musical adaptations that didn't just evade being completely terrible and soulless but actually was widely considered to elevate the themes and imagery of the original movie and it's great I went to see it once it's still happening on the west end over here not to mention just the themes of the story are so strangely Universal you know it's just life and yeah there's the Remake that I still hear people refer to as live action which I guess it's a compliment in a way but that's where the compliments start and end with me in fact I was very much part of the vocal crowd that said that photo realism limited the actual character expressions and emotions in that film so even that is kind of an L from me and yet whilst being the peak of Disney's Renaissance era in many ways the production was the beginning of the end of it you see a lot of the foundational figures responsible for this new era of Disney I'd say about Roger Rabbit onwards fell away during this production just after this movies released Disney chairman Jeffrey kenberg resigned after 10 years in his position he didn't waste any time about it either he co-founded DreamWork with Steven Spielberg less than 6 months later despite the fact that he was almost actually attacked by a real lion on stage at a press event that God apparently pissed off everyone even the main protagonist of Lion King although actually the real reason he left was actually because he had expected a promotion from CEO Michael Eisner that he ultimately didn't get so he's kind of got the Gen Z approach of que switching jobs and he make more money fair enough go get your bag I guess not sure if I have that opinion with Disney exx but sure but no you see the bigger loss to the Disney scene had happened a few months before Lion King's release when Disney Studio president Frank Wells tragically died in a helicopter collision with a mountain known to be a keen Daredevil and Explorer Wells was known for using his downtime to climb mountains and had in fact scaled the highest Summit on each continent Everest included Beyond mountaineering Wells had also found time to lead Walt Disney Studios into its most successful period since Walt's passing alongside eznar and kattenberg better still he was also fairly popular with the creative teams and other Disney workers which is something you don't really see every day in modern Corporation especially these days so to say the least his death caused a huge Shadow over the Disney team right before this movie was coming out this isn't to say that the issue started there for The Mouse House you see originally The Lion King crew were very much seen as the bee team in Disney's eyes you see following Beauty and the Beast breaking all kinds of records and becoming the first animated movie nominated for best picture the animation Department were ramping up their release schedule specifically kenberg had mandated that they were going to aim to release two movies a year because that's the lesson that should have been learned from Beauty and the Beast a notoriously difficult production that have the first couple versions thrown out before they even got it right hey there thank you for making it halfway through this video as per usual do subscribe if you haven't already we'll keep up with the occasional animated movie anniversary if you're interested but we also do all sorts of other things look at all these playlists that we do around the topic of animated movies and we're always pushing for something more so I'll be happy to hear your suggestions anyway let's get back to the 30-year anniversary of the original Lion King nevertheless they had a lot of people on the Beauty and the Beast who were ready to run their own films the talent behind animating that movie was ridiculous at all levels even in the smaller animation supervisor roles you had a young artist called Chris Sanders the guy who would go on to direct Lilo and Stitch and how to train your dragon from this team the best of the best would put on what Disney were gunning for as their next Oscar bait Masterpiece that's right they were put on to poah hontas the most memorable and culturally inoffensive of all the Disney movies yeah a real life Native American historical figure being made by a bunch of white nerds what could possibly go wrong anyway whil Disney put their a team on the movie that would go on to played second fiddle to Toy Story in 1995 the rest were left with another movie Hamlet with lions anyone fancy doing that for the team of the time this may have felt like it could be a step backwards Disney had been running hit after hit going back to their fairy tale adaptations that the Renaissance Era exclusively was at that point this talking lion movie seems like a pullback before Little Mermaid there had been movies like Oliver and Company and The Great Mouse Detective which to be fair were pretty decent actually The Great Mouse Detective is great I've seen it recently however they did represent the previous era of Disney the 1980s we've lost faith in our animation department and we'll move them out of the original Walt Disney Animation building to a cheaper facility era to go back to the random adaptation with talking animals thing did not seem like the hot ticket which is why it was second banana to that alltime Masterpiece pokus it's not even as direct an adaptation as previous movies I definitely think the movie is its own original story that's just been inspired by Hamlet depending on what side you fool on this debate it may very well have been inspired by Kimber the White Lion that's a whole other rabbit hole that I have never got my head around but let's just say the themes and beats are eily similar there anyway clearly this wasn't the direction Disney was looking to continue in alas B Team the two directors they chose weren't first choices before and to be fair didn't really have the career you'd expect after either for Rob Minkoff this would be his most notable credit but he'd subsequently go on to direct the Stewart Little movies the Peabody and Sherman movie and Eddie Murphy Haunted House movie I mean aside from that last one I'd say it's a decent enough CV but it's not the Lion King and co-directing with him you had Roger Alis the legendary director who would go on to direct Open Season oh I guess maybe they should have done more movies together anyway the pair were chucked onto this movie to try and make it work this isn't to say that Disney didn't care about the Lion King but when you're Banning strong you don't want to subtly come off with an absolutely terrible movie you want consistency which is something Jeffrey kattenberg would seem to forget when it came to running DreamWorks anyway they wouldn't sleep at the wheel with investing in the production for the songs they'd go back to Tim Rice for the lyrics following success collaborating on Aladdin however instead of their Golden Boy Alan Menin who would been no pun intended instrumental for the other movies songs they of course went for Elton John a pop Legend who'd go on to also contribute to the prestigiously modern classic Nomo and Juliet as for the score they went for relative newcomer to the game Han Zimmer yeah we never heard from that guy again as for voice cast this was fresh off of getting Robin Williams as the genie so after annoying Williams for using him in aladin's marketing which he specified not to do Disney were very keen to get into that business well kenberg certainly was and would later change the whole voice acting industry doing so with Shrek 7 years later anyway for Lion King they wanted a true Ensemble and boy did they get one James L Jones Jeremy Irons Rowan ainson Matthew brck whoopy Goldberg Nathan Lane to be fair Shrek gets all the crap for celebrity voice casting but Lion King clearly did a lot of the leg work here so yeah they've clearly invested big time in the music and voice cast however the story here is the animation team they were not the first team to carry that beauty in the be Beast Lion King baton and yet they wound up making what is now often considered the very best of the bunch Lion King is one of the most iconic and celebrated movies of all time it may very well be your favorite however just remember when it comes to who worked on the movie the Timeless success of the movie is very much an Underdog Story which is the most roll reversal pack of cards you can imagine for modern day Lion King being fully revamped with a new slick of paint and most likely covered as the major major a team I mean they had John Papo as the Director that time around and now going on to making more sequels based off of it I think it could be easy to see that 30 years later perhaps the magic of The Lion King has fallen off over time or perhaps The Lion King has stayed exactly the same as always being the perfect representation of Disney at any given moment this is Disney's largest success on the traditional animation stage right before 3D through Disney completely up from under the rug from from here they would leave Lion King Alone making the odd things off to the side while they stumbled and shuffled all the way through things and now they finally come back on their new era of Flesh tuing remakes of every movie Under the Sun but losing the Core Essence of what made these movies so great and nostalgic for simply trying to chase the buzz that is the success from such nostalgic Productions and on to the fact that since this video has been written the actual trailer for the second movie has come out and it looks all right I guess we'll just have to see what kind of Legacy the The Lion King franchise will get Beyond 30 years as maybe the good times were only in the '90s and it'll only begin to degrade more with time after all the lifespan of a lion is generally around 20 years anyway but at least it was good when it was good happy 30 year anniversary to Disney's original Lion King starring the director of Open Season my name's been Daz thank you very much for reaching the end of this video do share with us your memories of when you first watched The Lion King was it as magical as it probably was or were you like 20 like me and on that note I shall see you in a little bit [Music]

Channel: DazzReviews

Views: 18,334

Keywords: dazz, reviews, dazzreviews, the lion king, lion king, disney, movie anniversaries, lion king anniversary, lion king 30 years, disney lion king, lion king remake, mufasa, mufasa trailer, disney trailer, lion king trailer, lion king remake trailer, retrospective, history of, history of lion king, dazzreviews history of, dazzreviews anniversary, lion king legacy, original lion king

Id: fF-ymeZylNI

Length: 12min 50sec (770 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 20 2024