Review of The Lion King (2019) by Berik — 23 Jul 2019

The Lion King (2019) is in every sense of the word a carbon copy of The Lion King from 1994. Except, it misses all the things that made that movie good, and this movie is just the empty husk that remains.

To be clear, The Lion King (2019) is NOT a bad movie! It just misses some very important elements that the original had. By going the direction of Live Action (which is basically just CGI) the expressiveness of characters is lost, as emotions don't come across through facial animations. Animals have the same empty stare on their faces (Which is more realistic ofcourse) but don't express the emotions that should go with their lines.

The visuals on screen are very beautiful, but do little for the movie. The music sounded muted, and didn't match what was happening on screen. Which is surprising considering the original movie did this right, but in this version the music feels downgraded. Considering the voices are done by popular people rather than experienced voice actors, this feels cheap. That brings me to the next point: The voice actors.

There are a few characters like Simba, Nala and Scar that have voice actors that don't seem to match very well. Especially when 'Can you feel the love tonight' starts playing, there's a lack of harmony between Donald Glover and Beyonce. One is just talking, and the other one tries way to hard. A shame.

In this version, Scar actually has a backstory! He's the brother of Mufasa (a.k.a. Lion on steriods) and was beaten in a power struggle to lead. Thus he became the scarred lion that hates his brother. Other than this though, Scar is not at all impressive as a character. What's left to say? Disney clearly doesn't care about the quality of their rushed remasters, so why should we? My recommendation: Watch the original movie from 1994. You'll enjoy it way more than this movie. I give The Lion King (2019) a 6/10. It's an average movie.