[Movie] The Lion King (2019)

[Babadoo]

This is fucking awful.

Fucking SJW took away Jeremy Irons from us. I fuckin hate modern times. They are so shit.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

hmm...not receiving a lot of positive reviews.
I would have thought Disney would have hit this out of the ballpark.

Looks at their live action Alice in Wonderland remakes
Looks at their live action Cinderella remake
Looks at their live action Sleeping Beauty remake
Looks at their live action Jungle Book remake
Looks at their live action Beauty and the Beast remake

Uh huh

Come on. This is Disney. They only want to bank off of the brand recognition to generate sales. They don't care about the quality of the actual product.

This is fucking awful.

It's somehow worse than I had imagined it would be.

*finds out all main roles are voiced by black actors who are vocal about black sjw stuff*

Okay, fuck this shit.

Yup.

The whole point of voice acting is that it doesn't matter what you look like or your physical acting ability on camera; all that matter is your voice acting. No one cares that white guy Darth Vader was voiced by a black guy James Earl Jones, or that Leonard Nimoy voiced a black guy in Kingdom Hearts. No one cared because they were great.

[Kontinuum]

“The Lion King” hauled in an estimated $185 million in the U.S., the highest opening in July ever.
The film earned an additional $269 million internationally, bringing its total tally to $531 million globally.
Audiences were not deterred by critics’ reviews. In fact, on Rotten Tomatoes the audience score was 89% on Sunday.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/21/the-...in-the-us.html

[Svifnymr]

Just watched it, and it honestly did nothing but piss me off. All the characters fell flat (except Zazu and Pumbaa). It was like they were just reading their lines and lacked emotion. I didn't feel the connection between any of the characters. The voice acting was also bad. Angry, sad, happy - it all sounded the same (very monotone).

It’s soooo horrible compared to the animated movie, and maybe that’s because you can’t really animate expressions/emotions into their faces because they’re realistic CGI animals, idk.

It's like with the genie, I'd be curious what it would look like taking the original voices and setting the CGI to them.

[eschatological]

This movie is getting weird feedback. Critics have largely panned it, at 53% or so, saying that while the CGI is great and uncanny valley, it lacks emotional resonance because the lions look too much like lions, and you can't convey emotion with realistic lions, who are animals who don't really convey emotions with their faces. Most critics seem to think the actors are fine, but there's a disconnect there. And, unlike the Jungle Book and Beauty and the Beast (and to a lesser extent Aladdin), this seems to be a shot by shot remake, which most critics didn't seem to like.


Meanwhile, audiences are rating it pretty highly. 89% on RT, currently. The box office returns are high, but of course you can't begin to judge them until you see the second and third weeks. It seems like audiences are fine with just the CGI-fest.


Goes to show you how niche this forum generally is.

[rogueMatthias]

Just watched it, and it honestly did nothing but piss me off. All the characters fell flat (except Zazu and Pumbaa). It was like they were just reading their lines and lacked emotion. I didn't feel the connection between any of the characters. The voice acting was also bad. Angry, sad, happy - it all sounded the same (very monotone).

It’s soooo horrible compared to the animated movie, and maybe that’s because you can’t really animate expressions/emotions into their faces because they’re realistic CGI animals, idk.

That's because studios forget that "Voice Acting" is a whole art unto itself - It's NOT just giving people lines on a bit of paper to read. Though many actors can excel at it, it needs to be treated differently, and if the animation isn't expressive it'll become very flat without somebody experienced to voice it.

(I'm still baffled why they felt they had to intentionally get all British and American black actors for all the African lions to avoid them being "whitewashed". According to Favreau their skin colour alone gave them "more authenticity" to VOICING African animals. I can't help but feel in a decade or so people will facepalm at that decision).

[Verdugo]

I'm still baffled why they felt they had to intentionally get all British and American black actors for all the African lions to avoid them being "whitewashed". According to Favreau their skin colour alone gave them "more authenticity" to VOICING African animals.

Sometimes, you have to wonder who is really racist.


Because that shit up there is fucking racist.

[McNeil]

I recently watched this in the cinema. The good are the beautiful CGI used for the landscapes and the animals, very nicely detailed to the point of looking real which is what they intended. There is also quite a lot of good humor coming from Timon & Pumba, they are one of the best parts this movie had. They added a few more scenes that mostly take place during Scar's reign at Pride Rock. There are at least 3 new scenes that I know off: The first shows Scar and his hyenas trying to chase and kill some animals while Zazu watches from a distance, but they all get away. The other shows Scar feeding on a zebra and tries to convince Sarabi to be his queen, which she refuses. The last scene shows Nala escaping Pride Rock while having to dodge Scar and his hyenas as she wants to find help somewhere.. One of the original movies flaws was the lack of scenes of Scar ruling the Pride Lands so I'm glad that this got added in.

There are also some shortcomings. As almost everyone says there is a huge lack of facial expressions for all animals, which makes some scenes look off and robs itself from all emotion. The scene with Mufasa climbing towards Scar is a perfect example of a great scene that got heavily downgraded due to going life action. Mufasa being thrown off looked like he was some plush toy, and Simba's cry made him look like some cat who wants milk or something. Another complaint is how they deliver the lines from the original so underwhelming, like how Mufasa in the remake leaves out the ''brother'' part when asking Scar to help him. The tone felt completely different and it was hard to get emotional for this scene.

And I wished for the movie to do some more than just copying all the exact scenes and most dialogue from the original. The original movie had some flaws of their own that they could've worked on, and I wanted to see more of Scar and Mufasa's backstories. This is still something that hasn't been properly told, and there is still confusion of how Scar got his scar and what his original name was.

The music was for most part really good, and held up well with the originals. The only song that got worse is ''Be Prepared'', which got shortened to only a few minutes and Scar doesn't do much singing. I like how much darker its tone has gotten though. The Stampede soundtrack got a lot more intense which is probably one of Zimmer's better works for this movie.

Overall the movie was alright but could've been better. I think I would still prefer this to Simba's Pride and Lion King 1.5

[AwkwardSquirtle]

So they had an opportunity to add He Lives In You and they didn't? Idiots.

[Kyphael]

Just saw this. Talk about a movie that didn't need to be re-made, not because it's a re-make, but because it's a step down from the original, and that's what re-makes set out to avoid, right?

The first act is so boring, it's a shot for shot re-make, except the life-like lions talking is weird. They don't reflect the voice actors' expressiveness, not that the voice actors are even that good. It got a little better in the second act after Mufasa dies, but it's still a movie that doesn't justify existing. James Earl Jones sounds old/tired, and the voice reflects that, making Mufasa seem like an old tired lion, his voice isn't vibrant like in 1994. No Whoppi Goldberg or Cheech Marin makes the hyena boring. No zaniness since you can't pull off a lot of the fun stuff the cartoon did with "life-like" lions. The actor voicing Scar isn't particularly bad but you definitely miss Jeremy Irons.

Only Timon and Pumba are mildly entertaining, the movie only gets interesting when they show up. It's all so life-like and not cartoonish, it's like a National Geographic with Lion King music, I kid you not, it was very boring, I kept wishing I was watching the cartoon. The new voice actors for Rafiki and Zazu are good but again, their fun characters are grounded by Jon Favreau's "realistic" version, it's so tonally different, yet still not interesting in its own distinct way. And you know how a lot of times you go in with such low expectations, it ends up being good because your expectations were REALLY low? Well... I went in with low expectations, and it somehow managed to be more boring than what I expected.

When you strip away everything that made the original a classic, you're just left with classic music, mediocre dialogue and life-like talking lions. But there's no magic. The final act is better but the whole movie as a whole doesn't work. Just a lot of wasted time too, like the little mouse Scar catches at the beginning, for some reason he has a minute-long scene that shows him scurrying around Pride Rock before he ends up under Scar's paw. Oh, and when Beyoncé sings as Nala, she makes sure you're hearing Beyoncé, and not Nala.

I almost WISHED some human characters showed up at one point.

- - - Updated - - -

So they had an opportunity to add He Lives In You and they didn't? Idiots.

A version of it plays during the credits.

[Kraenen]

Meanwhile, audiences are rating it pretty highly. 89% on RT, currently. The box office returns are high, but of course you can't begin to judge them until you see the second and third weeks. It seems like audiences are fine with just the CGI-fest.

Goes to show you how niche this forum generally is.

I know what you're going to say but I have to say it - an 89% on RT is not equivalent to audiences rating it highly. An RT audience score is such that an audience member rated the film 3.5 / 5 or higher. A 7/10 is decent, but I wouldn't assume it's been given high praise, more likely to be more consistent praise. And it's Lion King, a Disney product. It will have some consistent wide appeal even if it's mediocre on a technical level.

[ohwell]

Me:

Oh okay, Jungle Book wasn't so bad after all. Let's try and have an open mind about this one.

*Watches trailer*

Eh... is this supposed to be Scar? Is Jeremy Irons dead?

*googles Jeremy Irons*

Hm, he's still alive. Did he rape someone? Someone accused him of harassment or something? Drugs maybe?

*googles Jeremy Irons drugs rape*

Nothing of substance, weird.

*googles Jeremy Irons Lion King remake*

Finds interview of him saying he wasn't even asked to play his role.

Hm, okay. Maybe this is some "passing the torch" type of deal, new fresh faces / voices and stuff.

*finds James Earl Jones reprising his role*

*finds out all main roles are voiced by black actors who are vocal about black sjw stuff*

Okay, fuck this shit.

Notice all of the "joke" roles are the only ones white actors are cast for as well. If they were to do a live action Cinderella by Disney today where the only black actors were servants or comedic jackasses, we would never hear the end of it.

- - - Updated - - -

This movie is getting weird feedback. Critics have largely panned it, at 53% or so, saying that while the CGI is great and uncanny valley, it lacks emotional resonance because the lions look too much like lions, and you can't convey emotion with realistic lions, who are animals who don't really convey emotions with their faces. Most critics seem to think the actors are fine, but there's a disconnect there. And, unlike the Jungle Book and Beauty and the Beast (and to a lesser extent Aladdin), this seems to be a shot by shot remake, which most critics didn't seem to like.


Meanwhile, audiences are rating it pretty highly. 89% on RT, currently. The box office returns are high, but of course you can't begin to judge them until you see the second and third weeks. It seems like audiences are fine with just the CGI-fest.


Goes to show you how niche this forum generally is.

You also have to take into consideration that people are just rating it for Beyonce as she has frothing at the mouth followers. I mean hell they were sending death threats to a NBA team owner's wife for talking to Jay-Z over her body. These people probably haven't even seen the movie and are rating it highly which is balancing out the real ratings of utter crap that seems to be the consensus.

I mean look at Black Panther that people were seeing about 20 times when it wasn't really even one of the better MCU movies simply because of the idea of the movie.

[eschatological]

It seems very convenient that when the audience score lines up with certain expectations (CF The Last Jedi, critically praised and audience disliked) persistent, proven tanking of the score is ignored..........while when it doesn't conform to this forum's expectations, accusations of it of having boosted reviews among audience members, without proof, flow freely.

Of course, this runs counter-intuitive to reality, where people on the internet attack things they don't like, and generally don't care about things they do like enough to fake it. Even your example falls flat - the picture in question was like a meme on the internet for a day, and the people who were negative about it were negative because they hated said owner's daughter for "encroaching" (I agree it was a silly overreaction by Beyonce's fans), and not some love of Beyonce. Her fandom is similar - it's not about loving and discussing her songs, it's about demeaning anyone who denies her status as great, or whatever. I once said she's not even the most talented musician in her own marriage, and nearly got my head cut off, even though I agreed that, for a pop singer, she's very talented.


Everyone I've talked to in actual reality who has seen this movie generally enjoyed it. I'm also in my late 30s, so everyone I talked to who saw it went with their kids to reintroduce them to a Disney classic.

[Skulltaker]

Everyone I've talked to in actual reality who has seen this movie generally enjoyed it. I'm also in my late 30s, so everyone I talked to who saw it went with their kids to reintroduce them to a Disney classic.

My personal problem with this movie is that it is extremly lazy, and lazy disgusts me. It does nothing new, and everything it does is objectivly worse than the original, with the small exception of the soundtrack (the instrumental part) is slightly more rounded, but that is it. The voice actors do an ok job, but are by far not as charming as the original, with the exception of Nala, who had the same voice actress, and even there, the voice is only half as good as with the original, because the animals don't convey the same emotions. The movie takes plenty of the charm of the original away, and replaces it with a fart joke.

[eschatological]

From a technical standpoint, it's not lazy at all. It's fairly ambitious.

If you're worried about the story, well, Disney stories have always been lazy. The Lion King is Hamlet with lions. Aladdin is a 1000 year old story. The Little Mermaid about 300 years old. Beauty and the Beast, same. Accusing them of not re-writing the story when the story wasn't original to begin with seems a bit out of touch.

[McNeil]

Lets not forget about Kimba the White Lion, which is what the original movie has been based off. Even if Disney denies it, all the similarities are there.

[RobertoCarlos]

From a technical standpoint, it's not lazy at all. It's fairly ambitious.

If you're worried about the story, well, Disney stories have always been lazy. The Lion King is Hamlet with lions. Aladdin is a 1000 year old story. The Little Mermaid about 300 years old. Beauty and the Beast, same. Accusing them of not re-writing the story when the story wasn't original to begin with seems a bit out of touch.

The Lion king is a rip off of Kimba the White Lion a Japanese shōnen manga series. Even has the pride rock fight much like Scar/Simba and other iconic scenes

even to the point matthew broderick who voiced the original simba thought he was playing the role of Kimba and thought it was a western remake

[Val the Moofia Boss]

From a technical standpoint, it's not lazy at all. It's fairly ambitious.

The photo-realistic CGI? Ofcourse. The film itself? Nope.

[eschatological]

That's exactly what the word "technical" means.

Also, directing a completely CGI film is difficult, and I credit Jon Favreau for the effort. As many have noted, one of the main flaws of the film is the inability to express emotion through realistic CGI lions, and I don't really know how he could have fixed it, short of.......well, not making it CGI.

[RobertoCarlos]

That's exactly what the word "technical" means.

Also, directing a completely CGI film is difficult, and I credit Jon Favreau for the effort. As many have noted, one of the main flaws of the film is the inability to express emotion through realistic CGI lions, and I don't really know how he could have fixed it, short of.......well, not making it CGI.

you hire andy serkis and make the animals features more human like they did with planet of the apes