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| Simba aims for the elephant section... |
Spearheaded by studio chief Jeffrey Katzenberg, worked on for six years by 20 writers(!) and released to near-universal acclaim, The Lion King became the highest-grossing animated film of all time - a record it held until 2003. Beloved by a generation of filmgoers (as well as their offspring,) the film has been popular for over 20 years. It has spawned two direct-to-video sequels, a pair of animated series, a successful Broadway adaptation that’s been running continuously since 1997, as well as several popular parades, shows and productions at each of Disney’s theme parks worldwide (including the fantastic “Festival of The Lion King” at Disney’s Animal Kingdom.) Speak to any Disney fan (especially if they’re a #ChildOfThe90z) and they'll regale you with tales of seeing the movie at the theater - how they were overwhelmed by the majestic power of the “Circle of Life” opening, cried at Mufasa’s demise, or cheered upon Simba’s reclaiming of Pride Rock; how they would spend endless hours replaying the soundtrack on cassette, or the thrill they felt upon popping open that big white clamshell VHS to relive the magic over and over again.
Well, I’m not gonna do that. I’m gonna nitpick all the stupid shit I don’t like about The Lion King.
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| Whaaa? |
Don’t get me wrong – I like the movie very much. It’s such a well-made film, how could I not? I do feel that it’s overrated, however, and that much of its ongoing popularity is driven by nostalgia and its value in the marketplace. Had the film come a few years later it certainly would’ve been appreciated, but not held up as the revered benchmark of animation it is now.
Undoubtedly the best part of the film is its music. The songs by Tim Rice and Elton John are catchy and memorable, and the sequences they accompany stick in one's mind instantly. Though not as well integrated into the story as the songs of Alan Menkin were (or would be,) as pure ear-candy the music is always great to re-visit. The score is an equally sonic treat, with African choirs and powerful rhythms that prove just how good a composer Hans Zimmer was before he disappeared up his own ass (I think that’s where Inception-style BWONGs live.)
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| I see a bad moon a-risin' ... |
Let me address the issue of the vocal performances. Now I’m not going to harp on about the lack of African or African-American actors in the cast, as I feel that a movie about non-anthropomorphized talking animals doesn’t necessarily have an obligation to be culturally aware. Besides, James Earl Jones (Mufasa,) Madge Sinclair (Sarabi,) Robert Guillaume (Rafiki,) Niketa Calame (young Nala) and Whoopi Goldberg (Shenzi) all turn in some of the best performances of the film. The casting of Jonathan Taylor Thomas as the young Simba was definitely an example of mid-‘90s stunt casting, though he did a decent job as far as I’m concerned. Moreover, Nathan Lane and Ernie Sabella, as Timon and Pumbaa, are comic-relief roles, so authenticity or dramatics aren’t required. Rowan Atkinson (Mr. Bean himself) is an odd choice for Zazu the hornbill, although this seems like your typical “we need a stuck-up sounding Brit for a mid-level authority figure” casting more than anything else.
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| #SimbaPhotoBomb! |
But regarding the voices for Simba and Nala as adults, who in their right mind thought that casting Matthew Broderick and Moira Kelly, two of the blandest and most lily-white actors on the planet, was a good idea!? Even accepting that one could conceivably imagine JTT’s voice maturing into that of Broderick’s, how the hell does any offspring of the ultra-baritone Mufasa end up sounding like a milquetoast bookkeeper? Call me biased, as I can count all of Broderick’s performances I like on less than three fingers (and no, Ferris Bueller isn’t one of them,) but was he really the best choice for the role? Really!? It’s not even stunt-casting, since no kid I can recall would’ve leapt out of their seats and ran to the local Cineplex at the thought of an older David Lightman voicing a cartoon lion. And while I think Kelly is a strong actress in the right roles, when her Nala exclaims “What wouldn’t I understand!?” in the most overwrought, whiney voice imaginable, it sends me running for the toilet.
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| Thanks to Nala, I learned what a "Fuck Me Face" is ... wait, is Nala an anagram!? |
Another odd vocal choice is that of Jeremy Irons as the villain Scar. Like many of the other vocal choices, it seems he was hired in a sort of vacuum – right for the fiendish character as written, but with no consideration given to the others cast in the film. Irons’ performance is convincingly calculating, cruel and conniving, but again are we to believe he's related to Mufasa and Simba? Perhaps he and Zazu went to the same boarding school?
Speaking of Scar, his plot to covertly stage a coup by killing Mufasa feels more akin to a rebellion, when one considers that he has an army of hyenas at his beck-and-call. It’s indeed a strange and troubling caste system that operates in the Pride Lands, as the majestic lions lead a monarchy from the lush savannah, and hyenas are cast out to a barren and rocky graveyard without any reliable access to sustenance. The hyenas, as followers of bad guy Scar, are automatically made villains by the film; yet when one realizes just how many hyenas there are (and not just his three cronies that are seen to threaten Simba and Nala,) the whole affair becomes more complicated. Are we supposed to side with a monarchy that has pushed down an entire species in this cartoon form of cultural oppression?
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| Come and see the violence inherent in the system! Help, help, I'm being repressed! |
Yet during the “Be Prepared” number, in which Scar spells out his plan to seize power (necessary to explain how a coup works to the kiddies,) we are slapped in the face with Nazi symbolism – if you can call rows of hyenas goose-stepping past a Scar-topped pulpit “symbolic.” Let’s face it; they’re literally acting out a Nazi rally. So they’re all evil, then? In the wild, hyenas travel in large packs (called clans – not Klans) - so where are the hyena families? The children? Hell, these hyenas could be clone warriors, bred to fight for a power-hungry general, as far as we can deduct from the movie itself.
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| Subtle. |
But Scar doesn’t even utilize this hyena militia to seize power – just his three lackeys. And again, it’s all clandestine anyway, staged to look like an accident in which Scar would legally (so to speak) accept the throne from a dead brother and his (apparently) deceased heir. So if Scar doesn’t need the support of the hyena population to take the throne by force, why allow them access to Pride Rock and all of the riches they’ve been denied thus far? Is Scar actually trying to be progressive, allowing an outcast class to ascend into paradise out of the goodness of his heart? If so, this paints him not as a power-mad despot, but as a radical revolutionary. And yet this is troubling too, since the film then goes on to portray a Pride Land over-run with hyenas that strip the lands bare of all natural resources. So then is The Lion King condemning immigration as parasitic? It would seem so, as the two hyenas with speaking voices, Banzai and Shenzi (Ed just laughs, after all,) are voiced by a Latino and an African-American (Cheech Marin and Goldberg,) against an increasingly White cast of lions.
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| They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. |
The Pride Lands are shown to be dried up and desolate after years of hyena habitation, the land stripped of all plant life and water. After Simba returns to vanquish Scar and (presumably) banish the hyenas back to the Hell from whence they came, only then does it begin to rain, returning life to Pride Rock. Far from a lone occurrence, the film is full of this kind of bizarrely psycho-reactive nature. This is actually a literary device called the ‘pathetic fallacy,’ in which human (or in this case, animal) emotions are attributed to aspects of nature. This idea is taken to radical extremes throughout The Lion King; note the wild seismic and volcanic activity during “Be Prepared,” the spotlight-like ray of sunshine that illuminates the presentation of newborn Simba, or the aforementioned death-and-rebirth of the Pride Lands which accompanies Scar’s rise and fall. Since we see the spirit of a deceased Mufasa that is able to make clouds appear in the sky (if we take Simba’s vision at face value,) then perhaps we’re to assume that nature itself is in some way controlled by “the kings of old?” That sure would stink if, say, a nearby village was wiped out by torrential rains because some dead lions were pissed off.
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| More subtlety. |
Though I can’t necessarily fault the filmmakers for utilizing a well-worn literary device to heighten drama, it’s just one of several examples where The Lion King will take an individual element to extremes. In my review for Bambi, I mentioned how that coming-of-age film plays like a gentle character-study, as opposed to The Lion King’s operatic epic. What irks me about this film is not its epic scope or intense drama, but the way that none of it seems to flow naturally. Like an opera, everything is played for over-the-top spectacle, and not in a way that flows seamlessly with the story. At some point during the making of this film, a decision was made to push each individual element of the film “up to 11,” cohesion be damned. “Timon and Pumbaa are wacky sidekicks, so let’s have Nathan Lane act like a used-car salesman and add a bunch of fart jokes!” “’I Just Can’t Wait To Be King’ is a fun musical number, so we’ll have everything turn into a frenetic Technicolor music video!” “Scar is a villain, so let’s get Jeremy Irons and have him be Hitler!” “We want kids to cry when Mufasa dies, so let’s stage his death so that he falls screaming into a giant wildebeest stampede!” “The confrontation between Simba and Scar has to be epic, so let’s make Pride Rock catch on fire and have them duke it out in slow-motion!”
Believe me, I could go on.
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| It's over, Simba! I have the high ground! |
These emotionally-draining sequences and in-your-face gags all seem to be individually screaming for your attention, detracting from the story as a whole. This is a shame, as I feel that the story of The Lion King is strong, and unique in the Disney animated canon. It deserved to be handled with a more delicate hand, rather than studded with one giant set-piece after another. This is, I believe, why many of the critical reviews upon its original release agreed that the film was “very good, but not great,” and did not lavish the same praise upon it as they had previous releases (1991’s Beauty And The Beast being the prime example.) That the film was (and is) so popular is a testament to the hard work and dedication to all involved in its creation, but I’ll never be able to see it as more than a well-made missed opportunity.
useful information and posts :)
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