BW Media Spotlight

After posting a video last week about a questioned view that it was similar to Hamlet (the conclusion being it wasn’t) and the recent passing of one of its main stars (despite being in maybe a third of the film tops), I figured now was as good a time as any to get this banked review out to the world…leaving one left as of this writing.

The original animated version of The Lion King is superior to the “photorealistic” remake, and I could tell you that before watching either. While Michael Eisner tried to pump this “didn’t need to be a franchise” for as much cash as he could squeeze out of it, Bob Iger is possibly worse, by trying to remake the franchise in his “animation sucks even though that’s what Disney was founded on” mentality. If it isn’t live-action it’s trying to fool you into thinking it’s live action. However, this is one of the big movies of the “Disney Renaissance”, when the company finally moved past the loss of Walt Disney and got back to making his dream come true of entertaining audiences with animation and theme parks…and making a lot of money in the process.

I never really got to see this movie until recently, or any of the sequels except for the CBS Saturday morning Timon & Pumbaa series and the Disney Junior kids series The Lion Guard, a show that seemed to be reworked so it could be forced into the Lion King story. It was okay. It wasn’t the original, though, so it’s nice that I finally got to see it. Was it worth it? Does it live up to the hype?

RELEASE DATE: 1994
RELEASED BY: Walt Disney Pictures & Walt Disney Animation Studios
RUNTIME: 1 hour 28 minutes
RATING: G (who says G is a death note for movies?)
VIEWING SOURCE FOR THIS REVIEW: Freeform
STARRING: Matthew Broderick, James Earl Jones, Jeremy Irons, Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Nathan Lane, and Ernie Sabella
SCREENWRITERS: Irene Mecchi, Jonathan Roberts, and Linda Woolverton (plus a long list added to “story by”)
DIRECTOR: Roger Allers & Rob Minkoff
BOX OFFICE: $424,979,720 domestic, $979,046,652 worldwide gross, according to IMDB
ESTIMATED BUDGET: $45,000,000 according to IMDB

Just for fun I looked up the remake’s data. With a budget of $260,000,000, way more than the hand-drawn movie, The 2019 demake made $543,638,043 domestic and $1,662,020,819 gross. Admittedly more, but at the same time I don’t know if IMDB counts for current monetary worth, and there isn’t as much praise for the version that makes the animals look like animals instead of animated beings. I’m not hearing anybody waiting for Mufasa to come out. I could probably drum up more interest in Simba’s Pride than what’s coming.

Continue reading →