The boring king

The latest ‘live-action’ remake of a Disney animated classic is a low-hanging cash grab

It’s a bleak era in American cinema when Walt Disney Studios, the world’s largest, wealthiest entertainment conglomerate, even after accumulating more than 2 billion dollars in box office receipts this year—and that’s just from Avengers: Endgame—continues to raid the tomb (“vault”) of its pre-existing animated classics rather than throwing money at original animated stories. Yet, this is where we find ourselves in 2019 as we plop down in our overpriced, reclining seats to catch Disney’s latest “live-action” update to the 1994 animated classic, The Lion King, opening this Friday. 

One would think, much like the updating of a favorite classic song by a fresh, new artist, they would allow for a re-imagining of the source material. But 2019’s The Lion King, much like Smash Mouth’s cover of War’s “Why Can’t We Be Friends,” is a soulless, capitalist cash grab by Disney to curry favor with ‘90s nostalgists while giving their children something to look upon agog in hopes it’ll keep them entertained for a couple hours.

Trust me, dear reader, when I say there are only a miniscule handful of new and original shots in this film. Understand that I am not overexaggerating when I tell you that this Lion King is a near shot-for-shot remake of the animated film. Directed by John Favreau, responsible for other Disney classics like Cowboys & Aliens and the first two Iron Man films, he shepherded another Disney live action remake The Jungle Book to almost a billion dollars. This go-round, his role as director seems more like supervising this IP refresh than lending anything close to an auteurist’s update. 

The idea of re-creating the classic Disney film with VR-augmented cinematography and photorealistic updates to characters like Simba, Nala, Timon and Pumba and more sounded very enticing when the film was announced. And with an inspired cast of some of the most popular actors, comedians and musicians—like Donald Glover, Beyonce and Chiwetol Ejiofor—seemed an inspired refresh to the classic animated film. 
What audiences will endure is nothing more than a near-two hour episode of “Planet Earth,” Serengeti edition, featuring a new cast of famous people reading lines, verbatim, from the original script with the occasional flourish of genuine humor. 

And what of the craft on display in this update. Does it elevate the hero’s journey Simba faces or reimagine everything the sun touches in the original, a world that was so gorgeously rendered in saturated, Lisa Frank-style colors? This Lion King doesn’t so much as elevate Simba’s journey as it trudges through it; and it doesn’t reimagine the world as much as it drains any sign of life and color from the original, replacing it with a color palette that seems more inspired by a desaturated beige-wasteland. The only real moments of genuine surprise and laughter comes from the comedic banter between Billy Eichner and Seth Rogen as the new meerkat and warthog ride-or-die duo, Timon and Pumba.

This new Lion King is a tepid, cynical cash grab from the mouse house. Its inevitable box-office success will undoubtedly ensure the carcasses of many of our favorite animated Disney characters to be re-animated, literally, and paraded around in the newest “Live-Action,” VR-fueled, IP-controlled hellscape that is our modern American cinema.