The trailer for Disney’s new “Lion King” film is out, and in the 25 years since the original, surprisingly little has changed.
That goes for its audience, for one. The film’s original viewers have grown older but no less nostalgic for the classic musical. It also applies to the movie itself. Disney’s summer 2019 update seems practically identical, except it actually looks a little worse.
“The Lion King,” to be released July 19, will feature CGI lions instead of the adorable or scary cartoons that marked the childhoods of millions of fans.
Speaking of scary, the villainous lion Scar looks pretty tame in his updated form. Missing the black mane and the glowing green and yellow eyes, he’s more malnourished cat than devious foe.
In fact, all of the computer-generated animals ironically look less real than their cartoon predecessors. As the impressionist painters knew, sometimes photorealism isn’t needed to imitate reality. Now that they look more “realistic,” the original characters’ anthropomorphic charm, from raised eyebrows to upturned lips, is nowhere to be found.
A side-by-side comparison of the trailer with clips from the original film shows not only that the characters have lost some of their pathos, but also that, as some fans have pointed out, each scene looks like someone took the colorful original and slid the saturation to nearly zero.
Check out the new The Lion King trailer compared to the trailer from the original movie from 1994! ? pic.twitter.com/CYJt74iHTS
— IGN (@IGN) April 10, 2019
We have various artistic mediums for a reason — because some stories don’t translate well into other forms of art. Take, for example, Disney’s upcoming live-action “Aladdin” remake. Will Smith’s CGI genie looks nothing like the cartoon, and it may be a sign that some things are best left to the imagination, not turned into a blue-painted actor with abs.
Audiences may gain little from the “Lion King” reboot, but Disney benefits a lot. The mega-corporation, in a mad scramble to maintain copyrights on all of its classic stories, has been on a roll with the remakes. Since 2015, it has released real-actor versions of “Cinderella,” “Beauty and the Beast,” and “The Jungle Book.” Each made millions at the box office, and “Beauty and the Beast” grossed more than a billion.
So Disney preys on our nostalgic sensibilities and raids our wallets. In return, we get a less-pretty reboot of the film responsible for getting “Hakuna Matata” occasionally stuck in our heads. As consolation for stealing our money, at least Disney will give us Donald Glover and Beyonce in the remake.
When the film comes out, will millions of Americans, including me, still go see it? Absolutely. Will it, thanks to the development of realistic CGI, surpass the original? Certainly not.
