The Lion King (2019)

Most movies would be improved, I think, by imagining that you are watching them with Jeff Goldblum. And as I was watching The Lion King, Jon Favreau’s 2019 remake of the 1994 animated classic, I had the acute feeling that Goldblum’s Dr. Ian Malcolm (from Jurassic Park) was sitting next to me. I could almost hear him say, “Your animators were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”
 
By the time the end credits rolled on The Lion King, I found myself asking the same question I ask of nearly all of Disney’s live-action remakes: “Why?” Why does this film exist? Why was the remake almost identical to the original? And why was I surprised that, yet again, Disney pulled the wool over my eyes in convincing me that I hadn’t already seen this story?
 
From its opening frames, The Lion King is an exercise in déjà vu. The sun rises on an African plain, and the same Zulu opening vocals from Lebo M. ring out. If it’s not precisely shot-for-shot, it’s close enough, as Mufasa (James Earl Jones) and Sarabi (Alfre Woodard) present their son Simba (JD McCrary, then Donald Glover) to the kingdom he will one day rule. All of this has happened before, and the “Circle of Life” might as well be the creative bankruptcy that leads to a rinse-and-repeat mode of content creation.
 
To be fair, that sequence is the very model of ‘iconic’; it was, after all, packaged as a teaser trailer for the 1994 film, and it’s an absolute banger of an opener. Don’t fix what isn’t broken, they say, so I’ll give director Jon Favreau a pass on the first five minutes. When you’re a cover band, you play the hits, no matter how many times you’ve heard “Hey Jude” or “Free Bird” in your life. As the film unfolded, I thought we were heading into fairly interesting territory. This 2019 version begins to deepen the psychological profile for its villain Scar (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and his cackle of hyenas, who rebel against Mufasa for largely different reasons this time around. An explanation for his eponymous scar, and a few line changes to his solo number “Be Prepared,” feel like early forays into giving us a reason to run through the paces once more.
 
Perhaps ironically poignant, the first time that I noticed a major content change was in a sequence that revolves around, of all things, a dung beetle and his bespoke fecal boulder. Every creature in the savannah plays some small part in accidentally delivering to Rafiki (John Kani) a snarl of Simba’s mane, proving to the mandrill shaman that the lion king is still alive. It’s a fascinating rebuttal to Timon (Billy Eichner) and Pumbaa (Seth Rogen), who had just prior rebuked the idea of a “circle of life,” and it’s a slightly more credible way for Rafiki to learn of Simba’s exile. But in the end, it is an extended sequence about ossified manure, perhaps more suited to Planet Earth than a Disney feature.
 
In fact, the whole thing comes off as more of a thought experiment than a movie proper. What if, The Lion King asks, we could remove all abstraction from the original and render it as lifelike as possible so that we become not spectators but voyeurs in the animal kingdom, watching a wildlife documentary? Why include a bird who can smile or roll his eyes when we can give audiences a Zazu (John Oliver) whose physical features are limited by how an actual hornbill can move? Indeed, why make the film in such a way that the only expressions on the characters’ faces are provided by the Kuleshov effect? 
 
The answer, it seems, is behind the scenes. As far back as his Jungle Book, Jon Favreau has been experimenting with what technology can allow him to do, and the making-of featurettes for both movies show Favreau exploring his imaginary world through the use of VR technology. (A similar technical invention allows Favreau to shoot much of The Mandalorian in an immense soundstage called “The Volume,” so perhaps all’s fair in love and Star Wars.) If Favreau’s directorial outings are more about pushing the envelope of special effects, reskinning classic films just to see if he can, then The Lion King is a roaring success. But one can’t even call this a live-action adaptation – it is, rather, just differently animated, an identical remake only slightly less inessential than Gus Van Sant’s Psycho.
 
It’s not that The Lion King is badly made. The effects are good, even to the point that one might assume these were actual animals filmed on genuine African landscapes, and some of the voice casts are decent upgrades; Ejiofor in particular is a more Shakespearean Scar, while Eichner and Rogen are the surprise best-in-show (excluding, naturally, James Earl Jones’s return as Mufasa). Despite being slightly longer than the original, all of it feels overly familiar. “I know, I know,” I found myself thinking, “You’ve told me this one already.” There is a long gap between 1994’s Lion King and the Hamletthat inspired it; the difference between 1994 and 2019’s Lion Kings, however, is merely one of overlaying an Instagram filter.
 

The Lion King is rated PG for “sequences of violence and peril, and some thematic elements.” Directed by Jon Favreau. Written by Jeff Nathanson. Starring Donald Glover, Seth Rogen, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Alfre Woodard, Billy Eichner, John Kani, John Oliver, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, and James Earl Jones.