The Lion King Review: Disney Classic CATapulted into 21st Century

It’s 1994, Disney's The Lion King has captured audiences everywhere and, with its incredible soundtrack, award winning animation and hilarious script, takes its place in the movie Hall of Fame. It’s now 2019 and a new generation is getting the chance to experience the magic again.

This still could easily pass for a Planet Earth 3 sneak peak. (Source: The Sun.)

After watching the trailer, I feared the darker tone and bleak colour palette could never compete with the vibrancy of the original- but this definitely wasn’t the case. The iconic story became just as compelling and exhilarating as before. The sequence for I Just Can’t Wait to Be King proved this: exciting and comical without the loud colours of the original, but now showcasing Disney’s incredible CGI animation skills.

Yet even with CGI’s undeniable importance to the film, it was also the feature's biggest downfall. The hyper-realistic animation meant that the characters had lost any form of expression that the audience could connect with, notably in the feature’s climax, in exchange for a novelty of “look how realistic those animals are” that lasted 5 minutes. Disney obviously wanted to revamp the original for a modern twist, but if the dialogue was removed this film would be less Disney classic and more nature documentary.

CGI created many issues with character expression and depth. (Source: The Cheat Sheet.)

However, what they lost in this aspect they more than made up for in the renewal of the already incredible soundtrack. The modernisation of Can You Feel the Love Tonight with Beyoncé Knowles and Donald Glover’s powerful and haunting duet created an unbelievable climactic atmosphere; and the new hilarious ad libs in Hakuna Matata made for huge laughs in the audience.

This film was always going to have some trouble living up to the legend of the 1994 feature, but with a modern soundtrack and some of best CGI animation in recent history, director Jon Favreau’s take on the classic has undoubtedly become King of the Jungle in the Disney universe.