I woke up on Tuesday morning and was greeted by a Facebook post from a friend; a screenshot of Rotten Tomatoes’ review of The Lion King; the ‘Tomatometer’ score was 52% and the viewer score was 89%.

“Another case of reviewers and the audience disagreeing” he said.

The ‘Critics consensus’ Rotten Tomatoes gave goes as follows:

“While it can take pride in its visual achievements, The Lion King is a by-the-numbers retelling that lacks the energy and heart that made the original so beloved–though for some fans that may just be enough.”

At first, I thought that couldn’t be true, I’d already heard some good praise online, so of course, I had to review it – although, a friend and I had already planned on watching it that day (which was yesterday).

 

Okay, so, spoiler warning, I guess? The original is a little older than I am and if you were born in the early 2000s I’m pretty sure you also watched it growing up. Heck, I know 10-year-olds who watch the original religiously, so you don’t have much of an excuse not to know it. Don’t complain to me about spoiling it.

While a visual masterpiece, The Lion King reboot falls flat in three areas: line delivery, physical expression and individuality.

I’m going to start with individuality, because that is where this film’s problems start.

The Lion King reboot (henceforth referred to as ‘The Lion King 2019’) is essentially a shot-for-shot, near line-for-line copy of the original. I sat through the opening and thought ‘Wow, they basically recreated the original opening sequence and it is amazing’ but about fifteen minutes in, I realised that they were still copying shots and lines, and I began to wonder if the entire film would be like that – spoilers, about 90% of the film is like that.

There are maybe two new scenes, and unfortunately, they don’t make up for the numerous scenes that had been removed.
Before I bite into him, I’d just like to make it clear that I’m a huge fan of Jon Favreau’s work as a director, he is amazing at what he does, and it certainly doesn’t hurt that he’s also a really good actor; but there are some decisions he had to have made while working on The Lion King 2019 and some of his choices don’t really make sense.

Of the two new scenes, one works as an amazing character moment for Scar and Sarabi, and the other seems to be more of a joke than anything – apparently Simba just grew up to copy Timon and Pumba and they’d like to have their originality back, so they push him to be his own person.
On the matter of the scenes taken out, half of the Be Prepared sequence is missing and so is one of Simba’s greatest character-building moments from the original.

Now, I know it sounds like I’m complaining about why the film wasn’t closer to the original when I just complained (in the first sentence of the third-to-last paragraph) that it was too close to the original; but that’s just it.
If you’re going to recreate something, shot-for-shot/line-by-line, then why take anything out in the first place? Why bother adding anything new?
I’d love to sit down with Favreau and find out why he did what he did, because I honestly can’t figure it out.

 

Up next is line delivery. Sometimes the actors sounded like they were just going through the motions; on more than one occasion, you would think a character would take a moment to process something new they’ve just discovered but instead, they just know and are instantly acting on that newfound knowledge – a good example would be when Nala and Simba recognise each other as adults, the scene seems almost overeager to skip half of itself in favour of moving on to the modern take of ‘Can You Feel The Love Tonight?’.
Mufasa sounds tired when compared to how he sounds in the original, which I originally thought of as a problem of some sort, but upon doing a little research, I discovered that this is something Favreau wanted, he wanted Mufasa to sound tired, to make it sound like there was a reason he was telling Simba that one day he would be king, because he was getting old and at some point Simba would have to take his place.
But in that same vein, Scar also sounds tired and weak, which works because he is starving and sickly for the opening act, but he never sounds menacing or conniving, he never sounds like he’s planning anything or like he’s mulling something over, he just sounds dead most of the time (even in the third act when he’s well-fed and has clearly put on weight). His lines, most of which mirror those of Jeremy Irons in the original, don’t match his character, he doesn’t seem charismatic enough to be saying the things he is saying.

 

Following on from that we have physical expression.
Here, again, we have a ‘two sides of the same coin’ situation.

To lead into this, we’re going to have to establish something about animals; they express less with their faces and more with their bodies. This isn’t to say they don’t have facial expressions, but many animals, especially cats, rely far more on overall body language than facial expressions, and what facial expressions lions do have are made up of such minute and slight changes that they’re barely noticeable to the untrained eye.
Cool, got that established?

Jon Favreau is no newcomer to putting human facial expressions on animals, as he did direct The Jungle Book (2016). The emotive faces of The Jungle Book fit the tone and theme of the film, as it was stylised; but Favreau didn’t want The Lion King to be stylised, he wanted it to be realistic.
The minutia of how lions express themselves is visible in the film, the slight changes around their eyes, the changes in pupil size, the body language, it’s all there (even if to a lesser extent).
The problem is that humans generally don’t understand animal body language, so, in what seems like an attempt to remedy this, the film gives us lots of shots in which to look at the faces, but, again, we don’t understand animal expressions, so we’re left searching for human emotion in the faces of lions.
Regardless, there is one animal expression most humans understand and can easily identify; fear. When the stampede starts and when Mufasa dies, we see little more emotion on Simba’s face than his mouth opening and sound coming out; the lack of recognisable facial expression leaves the viewer with a shot of a lion cub with his mouth hanging open – and while the voice cast did a good job, a film cannot rely only on vocals to get by, as the second half of ‘audio-visual’ needs to be present, film is an audio-visual medium, after all. Simply tilting Simba’s ears back and pulling them downwards would have gone a long way towards making his fear more easily recognizable.

There is, however, one scene in which Simba is given possibly a little too much physical characterisation, making him look bouncy, which, yes, I understand that he is supposed to be happy in the scene and potentially look almost like he’s dancing; then we end up with a lion that looks incredibly realistic but isn’t moving realistically – and it very nearly places him in the uncanny valley, even if only for that shot.

 

Because the original Lion King was animated, environments were drawn and coloured as brighter and more vibrant than they would be in reality, which gave the original film so much more character and flavour; Jon Favreau’s reboot is, as mentioned, going for a more realistic look, so animals and their environments are far more muted in colour, but, as far as visuals go, it works. Unfortunately, when it comes to tone and theme, sometimes the bright lighting (recreating the harsh African sun) makes a thematically and tonally dark scene just a little too bright in colour palate.
The same could be said for ‘Can You Feel The Love Tonight?’, as the scene takes place in what is either midday or early afternoon – which, kind of makes sense, considering that night time is far darker in reality than the original film would ever let on, but still, nothing some extra bright moonlight can’t fix.

 

On the one hand, I understand the ratings and reviews the critics are giving this film, and on the other hand, I understand how fans of the original might find themselves enjoying this movie; but, with or without the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia, Jon Favreau’s The Lion King has some issues. If you’re going to the cinema with the intent to enjoy the film, chances are you’ll have a good time, same goes for if you’re just looking for a faithful recreation of the original.

But in that same vein, that’s this movie’s biggest problem: it’s so similar to the original that it’s only reason for existing is a visual update. It is a good movie, but it’s definitely not as good as it could have been.