The Lion King

The bat­tered VHS copy of The Lion King my broth­er and I watched on what seemed like a week­ly basis through­out our child­hood (and, let’s be hon­est, well into ear­ly adult­hood) came with a short behind-the-scenes doc­u­men­tary loaded onto a bonus cas­sette. For some rea­son, we insist­ed on play­ing it before the fea­ture pre­sen­ta­tion, and I can still vivid­ly remem­ber a sequence in which a room­ful of Dis­ney ani­ma­tors are shown sketch­ing a pair of adult lions and a cub who have been brought to the stu­dio for research purposes.

Now, every­one knows what lions look like, but pre­sum­ably this rather unusu­al life draw­ing ses­sion allowed the ani­ma­tors to gain a more inti­mate under­stand­ing of these mag­nif­i­cent ani­mals, from their unique phys­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics to the way they move and inter­act with each oth­er. Cre­at­ing a fun, vibrant car­toon that would appeal to as broad an audi­ence as pos­si­ble may have been Disney’s remit when they embarked on what many con­sid­er to be the crown­ing achieve­ment of their so-called Renais­sance peri­od, but real­ism was lit­er­al­ly inked into the film’s DNA.

Twen­ty-five years on, this prin­ci­ple has been tak­en to its illog­i­cal extreme. Engi­neered by Jon Favreau, whose 2016 remake of The Jun­gle Book show­cased the awe­some capa­bil­i­ties of mod­ern com­put­er ani­ma­tion while putting a few neat twists on a famil­iar fable, The Lion King 2.0 is a high-grade pho­to­copy that is at once stag­ger­ing in its aes­thet­ic sophis­ti­ca­tion and shrug­ging­ly inef­fec­tive as a piece of visu­al sto­ry­telling. Like a herd of wilde­beest stam­ped­ing through an uncan­ny val­ley, it makes a thun­der­ous impact only to leave you ruing the pre­cious thing that has been lost amid the clat­ter of CGI hooves.

In Favreau’s film, the Serengeti and the myr­i­ad crea­tures that inhab­it it are brought to life with a lev­el of clar­i­ty unprece­dent­ed out­side of nature doc­u­men­tary. Yet as any­one who’s ever seen a David Atten­bor­ough show knows, ani­mals in the wild do not behave as they do in The Lion King. You’ll nev­er see a man­drill per­form a shaman­ic rit­u­al or wield a staff as a weapon. The warthog is not the meerkat’s pri­ma­ry mode of trans­port. An ele­phant bows to no one. The fun­da­men­tal short­com­ing of this daz­zling deep­fake is that its unwa­ver­ing com­mit­ment to pho­to­re­al­ism con­tra­dicts the fact that it is an ani­mat­ed fan­ta­sy about a singing lion.

De-anthro­po­mor­phise these char­ac­ters and you strip away their soul, too. The scene where Mufasa is killed is arguably even more dra­mat­ic this time around, but when the dust set­tles and Scar guilt-trips Sim­ba into flee­ing Pride Rock, you don’t feel any­thing because the char­ac­ters, by design, are inca­pable of con­vey­ing human emotions.

Com­pare this with Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff’s 1994 film, which con­tains one of the most dev­as­tat­ing shots in Disney’s entire ani­mat­ed cat­a­logue: lit­tle Sim­ba, hav­ing laid down beside his strick­en father, turns his head to look up at his uncle, and for a brief moment we can see that the fur on his cheek is wet from cry­ing. Real lions can’t cry, of course, so it would be inac­cu­rate and pos­si­bly jar­ring for Sim­ba to shed a tear in the equiv­a­lent scene in Favreau’s film. But what good is authen­tic­i­ty if it denies emo­tion­al connection?

Trade on people’s nos­tal­gia and leave out cher­ished details at your per­il – maybe this explains why Favreau and screen­writer Jeff Nathanson don’t real­ly med­dle with the source mate­r­i­al. Still, it’s sur­pris­ing how lit­tle nar­ra­tive ambi­tion they show. Like its pre­de­ces­sor, this film teach­es us some­thing of the del­i­cate bal­ance that exists between all liv­ing things, yet where the ancient, mys­ti­cal forests of cen­tral India are as essen­tial to Favreau’s The Jun­gle Book as Mowgli, Bagheera or Baloo, the African Savan­na is mere­ly the back­drop for this restag­ing of a lion prince’s belat­ed ascen­sion. Giv­en the cut­ting-edge vir­tu­al pro­duc­tion tech­niques at the director’s dis­pos­al, it feels like an oppor­tu­ni­ty to expand the world of The Lion King – to immerse view­ers more mean­ing­ful­ly in a land that will like­ly be for­eign to them – has been missed.

Lack­ing a com­pelling set­ting, expres­sive char­ac­ters, and with updat­ed ver­sions of sev­er­al key musi­cal num­bers – most notably ​‘I Just Can’t Wait to be King’, ​‘Be Pre­pared’ and ​‘Haku­na Mata­ta’ – severe­ly com­pro­mised by hav­ing to be ​‘per­formed’ by the ani­mals while main­tain­ing a veneer of eco­log­i­cal cred­i­bil­i­ty (alas, no goose-step­ping hye­nas here), The Lion King 2019 is a sort of cin­e­mat­ic Fabergé egg: you can’t help but gawp admir­ing­ly at its high-sheen, jew­el-encrust­ed sur­face, but it’s com­plete­ly hol­low once you crack it open.

So, with James Earl Jones the only mem­ber of the orig­i­nal voice cast to reprise their role (long live the king and all that), it’s left to a new class of celebri­ties to inject some per­son­al­i­ty into pro­ceed­ings. Again, the results are mixed. Jones, Chi­we­tel Ejio­for and Alfre Woodard add grav­i­tas as Mufasa, Scar and Sara­bi respec­tive­ly. Don­ald Glover is fine as Sim­ba. Bil­ly Eich­n­er and Seth Rogen turn Tim­on and Pum­ba, the wise­crack­ing dou­ble act at the film’s com­ic cen­tre, into a bick­er­ing queer-cod­ed mar­ried cou­ple (some would argue they were ever thus). John Oliver’s clipped speech and fussy man­ner are a per­fect match for high­ly-strung horn­bill emis­sary, Zazu.

And then there’s Bey­on­cé, who does a fine job as Nala despite being lum­bered with some dud lines; ​“lions attack!” being the most cringe/meme-wor­thy of the lot. The pop star and some­time actor also lends her vocal tal­ents in anoth­er sense, with a com­pan­ion album com­pris­ing orig­i­nal songs and music by var­i­ous African artists set for release the same day as the film. ​‘The Lion King: The Gift’ may prove to be anoth­er Queen Bey banger, but the sole cut to make it into the main body of the film, an anthemic bal­lad enti­tled ​‘Spir­it’, feels out of place along­side Elton John and Tim Rice’s trea­sured compositions.

Per­haps the most bewil­der­ing cre­ative deci­sion in The Lion King occurs at the out­set, before the film has prop­er­ly begun. In an unex­pect­ed and some­what iron­ic move, the digi­tised Dis­ney ident which has accom­pa­nied all of the studio’s ani­mat­ed out­put since 2006 – a sweep­ing, pix­ie dust-sprin­kled pan of the Sleep­ing Beau­ty Cas­tle and its sur­round­ings – appears re-drawn using tra­di­tion­al meth­ods. It’s an unin­tend­ed reminder that although the qual­i­ty of com­put­er-based image-mak­ing has improved dras­ti­cal­ly in recent years, it will nev­er sur­pass the artistry and won­der of hand-drawn animation.