The Lion King (2019) Is a Trainwreck

[Music] this video is brought to you by curiosity stream when Lion King was adapted to the Broadway stage back in 1997 a key choice was made instead of dressing the characters in Lion outfits are trying to capture the look of a lion they decided to go in a very different direction they mounted wooden animal heads to the performers simply letting the actors act the show embraced the music of the movie of course but it didn't stop there it leaned into the emotional power of the story and the bright over-the-top colors creating the show that was highly expressionistic if not realistic 20:19 flyin' king takes the opposite approach in almost every way and while the stage version went on to be the most successful and third longest-running play in Broadway history I'd be shocked if this movie has a fraction of that impact much like the Beauty and the Beast and Cinderella remakes it's definitely very profitable but almost certainly destined to be a footnote next to the iconic original but really I take either of those movies over this one honestly I feel like I might know this year's Hellboy remake an apology I thought for sure it'd be the worst movie I saw in theaters this year and maybe in some ways it still is it's got a horrendously sloppy script but its biggest problem is that it was trying to do way too much and I take that slurry of weird concepts and ideas over sitting through this again a movie that truly feels like it was resurrected in the pet cemetery came back soulless a little creepy and fundamentally wrong are you happy mommy you daughter and look I usually try not to be too over-the-top or hyperbolic when we're viewing a movie but I really do think that this movie earns it because it just feels so cynical there's a cool new Lion King spoon free in Marc boxes of Cheerios and hey it even changes color and Milne famously the late 80s and 90s weren't incredible era for Disney Animation often called the Disney Renaissance films like Aladdin The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast were connecting with audiences in a way that Disney hadn't managed in years with Lion King debatably being the crown jewel of them all and the best of these movies hold up really well I think there's some dated pop-culture references but it almost doesn't matter when there's so much color and energy on screen and if there's one thing that I think these movies did well above all it was delivering big emotional musical crescendos when I think back on the Little Mermaid it's moments like this that come to mind Aladdin has a whole new world Hercules had I can go the distance even more recent Disney animated movies tap into this like frozen's let it go these are all songs where characters sing about their dreams and their feelings in a very straightforward Universal and powerful way and their songs that perfectly express that old Broadway saying that characters should sing in musicals when their emotions are so powerful there's almost no other way to express them the original Lion King is filled with these moments where important character beats are played out almost entirely through song something the stage play was able to use to great effect so how about the remake all right we obviously have to talk about the photorealistic elephant in the room the visuals and I should say it's obvious that a ton of work went into making these animals look as realistic as possible hundreds of people worked long hours to make that a reality and I think they really pulled it off my problem is not with those VFX artists it's with the people in charge who decided that hyper-realistic was the way to go with this story rewatching the original Lion King it just seems like such a bizarre decision to me as it strips away so many of the film's biggest strengths and I don't think there's any better example than the big Rafiki scene which I'm sure you'll all remember in the original version of the film it's really funny very important to the plot and honestly pretty breathtaking and how the new movie recreates it is everything that doesn't work about this film in miniature Rafiki isn't funny at all he barely gets any characterization so all this stuff yeah you can pretty much chuck that out the window next there's the visuals and this might be more important than you think I mean think about this story function that this scene serves it's basically the switch that makes Simba decide yes I should go back to the pride lands and take my place as king that's a huge moment and it's all sold in just a few minutes with these powerful visuals Mufasa in the cloud imparting wisdom to his son and this really great Spielberg Ian shot of Simba and pure awe so despite how quickly it all happens you immediately buy this as a plot development of course he's gonna go back to the pride lands the remakes version of this falls flat on its face it's afraid to get as theatrical or as expressionistic as the original so it really fails to sell Simba's choice if there's one thing that sums up Lion King 2019 the best it's that even though it's obsessed with recreating nearly everything from the 1994 film it's also the kind of movie that's really afraid to show us a giant lion in a cloud even more than the Jungle Book remake it's obsessed with the concept of realism but it really seems like everyone involved failed to ask if embracing realism was the best way to tell a story about singing animals because this choice has major consequences that expand far beyond just the animals can no longer show much emotion do you like the original be prepared scene with its clouds of green fog and its sinister look I sure hope not because all of that is stripped away the blue moonlight glow of the scene set at nights that's gone too leaving us with a far more dull look all this adds up to a fairy tale that's trying to look like a nature documentary and nothing against nature documentaries but that doesn't seem like a great way to tell this story each magical page of Disney's animated storybook The Lion King is filled with exciting and colorful adventures that bring Simba unease which leads us to the performances it turns out that the cast of the original was really lucky because they had animators that were actually allowed to portray how their characters felt visually our new cast actually has a much tougher challenge because they have to convey everything through their voices alone trying to get across what these characters are feeling without much help from body language at all except for maybe Billy Eichner who's Timon at least gets to be a little expressive thanks to the animal he's playing just being a lot more twitchy than lions and warthogs are in general though the obvious stunt casting does this movie no favors well I think the kid actors do a pretty good job with young Nala and Simba Beyonce is painfully miscast as adult Nala she nails the songs sure but she's no voice actor and that becomes very clear from the moment she's introduced acting has just never been her strong suit she still fit in Austin Powers 3 is kind of the weak link in Dreamgirls and is just plain terrible and obsessed but this Nala role is just unfair and leaves her with nothing but a song or two and her painfully awkward line readings Seth Rogen has the opposite problem he's pretty fun in Bantry scenes between Timon and Pumbaa but unlike the original actor he's definitely no singer and the film tries to stretch his talents there a little too far and look i like donald glover like i'm a big fan of him in community atlanta and even solo but he totally phones it in here giving a performance that feels like he could just sleepwalk through then there's Skaar and I can't even really critique this performance because it's just unfair the screenplay stripped scar of anything that made a memorable like Orson Welles wouldn't have been able to make him interesting with this material but was it all bad I mean I guess I'll give some credit to the new Timon and Pumbaa who I thought worked the best but still kind of felt like a pale imitation of the original there's just absolutely nothing here that felt interesting or daring to me except be the photorealism and as I've said I consider that to be a pretty failed experiment The Lion King 2019 has made a lot of money and will probably continue to and these remakes will keep coming until Disney runs out of animated classics that people have any nostalgia for I mean I guess that's fine but the Lion King both the original and the stage play are still beloved after more than 20 years and I'd be shocked if anyone cared about this movie like 20 days after seeing it so yeah 2019 Lion King left a bad taste in my mouth but to wash it out I watched some actual animals the documentary southern Africa explores the nature of the region with a ton of amazing 4k footage all without the creepy uncanny valley effect it was honestly like a really relaxing watch and you can check it out on curiosity stream now I've told you before that it's from the founder of the Discovery Channel but if you're still on the fence you really need to check out just how many documentaries it has to choose from we're talking over 2400 titles I've learned a ton about history nature and texts and subscribing and that's really just the beginning curiosity stream is available worldwide on a ton of devices and starts at the great price of $2.99 a month and you can get 30 days on the service free just by going to curiosity stream comm slash Captain midnite that's curiosity stream comm slash Captain midnite new 1940 play patrol you'd better hurry up and join at once because there's a big adventure ahead the thing to do now is to get started because we're going to have not only barrels of fun but loads of free gifts and

Channel: captainmidnight

Views: 712,635

Rating: 4.7525187 out of 5

Keywords: Lion King, lion king 2019, lion king 1994, simba, timon and pumba, song, scene, trailer, teaser, review, captain midnight, scar, be prepared, circle of life, can you feel the love tonight, i just cant wait to be king, beyonce, seth rogen, donald glover, billy eichner

Id: 1RBOukJzI1Q

Length: 10min 11sec (611 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 25 2019