We all saw that teaser trailer that dropped for the new live-action version of Disney’s The Lion King and while it did look amazing it did seem like the remake isn’t going to have any surprises for fans of the original 1994 animated classic.
A few comparison videos popped up on the internet, breaking down the almost identical similarities of the new trailer to the original film’s iconic opening sequence song, “The Circle Of Life”. (Check out IGN’s video below.)
(Remember when that song had us all trying to learn how to properly pronounce the Zulu intro? For those that don’t know it’s, “NANTS INGONYAMA BATHIKI BABA!!!!!” And for those that really don’t know, the English translation is, “Here comes a lion, Father”. Yes, seriously.)
However! Sean Bailey, President of Motion Picture Production at The Walt Disney Studios, assured The Hollywood Reporter that the remake wouldn’t be an exercise in redundancy.
“The Lion King is a revered and beloved movie, so you’d better revere and love those parts that the audience wants. But there are things in the movie that are going to be new. [And] it is a new form of filmmaking. Historical definitions don’t work. It uses some techniques that would traditionally be called animation, and other techniques that would traditionally be called live action. It is an evolution of the technology Jon used in Jungle Book.”
Disney fans who have enjoyed the studio’s recent string of live-action films that do what they can to avoid becoming shot-for-shot remakes will be relieved by Sean’s remarks but Iet’s not for a moment forget that the trailer included a shot of a wildebeest stampede.
THE wildebeest stampede. The one that ends up with Mufasa dead (and a ten-year-old me traumatized and alone because it was the first time that my mother dropped me off at a theater by myself).
If Disney really wanted to impress us, maybe they would give us a movie where Mufasa survives assassination by wildebeest, puts Scar on trial, establishes treaties and trade agreements with the hyenas, raises Simba to adulthood who doesn’t have to go through his weird bug-eating phase, yields the crown so he can live out his golden years with Sarabi in whatever the lion equivalent is to Boca Raton and no human child has to cry their eyes out.
I’m sorry, I’m just mad that I know I’m going to go see this movie regardless and will end up crying my adult eyes out and I won’t have my mother’s misplaced trust in my maturity to blame this time around.
The Lion King will debut in theaters on July 19, 2019. See you then.
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