Last week the Walt Disney Company announced that they were going to create a “live-action” remake of The Lion King, just as they did with Cinderella, The Jungle Book, Beauty and the Beast, and Pete’s Dragon. They have not set a release date but Jon Favreau, who directed the remake of The Jungle Book, is set to direct the remake of The Lion King. He is also working on a sequel to The Jungle Book. Like The Jungle Book remake, The Lion King will also include some of the original songs.
I have been watching Disney for as long as I can remember. I’m as old as the original Lion King movie and still enjoy watching the classic Disney movies and listening to their soundtracks. I’m a huge fan and hope to work in the Disney College Program after I graduate this spring. When the news of this Lion King reboot was announced, my friends knew I’d have an opinion, although many thought I would be excited for it.
The reality is I am tired of the reboots and quite frankly not looking forwards to this live-action reboot. Sure, it may have made sense for the other movies, but those movies all had one thing The Lion King doesn’t: humans. What is the point of creating a live-action movie if there aren’t humans? The Jungle Book pushed it with really only needing one human for Mowgli.
It seems like Hollywood in general is doing a lot of remakes lately. Some of the latest movies are also incredibly similar to each other, such as White House Down and Olympus Has Fallen. They were literally the same thing: a White House employee (former or upcoming) has to save the people within the White House, including the president and a child. Both had Asians as the attackers. Hollywood needs some new ideas, or maybe just producers and studios that can actually create original content.
The remake of The Jungle Book wasn’t as good as the original. It is hard to make movies better than the original so this isn’t a surprise. I’m not saying it was bad, but I still would watch the original rather than the remake. I didn’t find the characters as loveable as the animated versions. King Louie was incredibly large and creepy to me in the remake. (And let’s be honest, Christopher Walken isn’t exactly my number one choice for singing “I Wanna Be Like You.”) I expect the same to be true for the remake of The Lion King: the characters just won’t be as loveable because they’ll be weirdly realistic, even if they make them abnormally proportioned like King Louie.
Many people don’t remember or aren’t aware that Disney already did a live-action remake of The Jungle Book. This original remake was released in 1994 and grossed $13 million more than what it cost to make ($30 million). This 2016 remake raked in nearly $1 billion, with nearly $800 million in profits. In comparison, the original 1967 movie cost about $28.7 million and made over $170 million in today’s money. Clearly people were interested in watching it, at least at the theaters, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re going to buy it once it’s released in stores and online.
There’s an old saying “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Disney may want to take this advice. Live-action remakes might be cool for the old Disney movies with humans, but if a majority of the characters are animals, just leave it alone. Disney is known for its animated movies and should stick to those. If they really want to do these live-action movies, why not do more movies like Maleficent where it is related to classics but shows the backstory or something? Someone make a movie about the seven dwarfs and why they’re living in the woods, who they’re mining for and how they got there. There are so many ideas out there; there’s no reason to be making remakes. Honestly, what would Walt Disney think about this unoriginality in his company?
I’m not going to say that I won’t watch the upcoming Lion King, but I know that I will be pretty critical. I am hoping that they use some of the original cast, such as Matthew Broderick, James Earl Jones or Jeremy Irons. They’re all alive and it’s hard to imagine Simba, Mufasa and Scar with any other voices. I can’t say that I am particularly excited about The Lion King remake because it was such an iconic movie and nothing will compare to it, but it will be interesting to see how they recreate it and who is cast.
