I'm also among the crowd not going to see this - obviously many others are and to be honest I normally don't bother posting about things I'm not interested in since don't like to drag things down for people who are looking forward to it by moaning or come across as arguing for people not to be excited about something, so that's not what I want to do here.
But seeing the point about The Jungle Book reminded me about some reasons I was fine with The Jungle Book and really liked the new one, but didn't feel the same about this. For one, The Jungle Book is based on a book that was quite different from the original Disney animated film, so there was quite clearly a way to do another adaptation differently. Where as The Lion King is an original story (similarities to other works notwithstanding - the 1994 film is the first "The Lion King", not an adaptation of some other source material). Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that only things that have source material can be revisited, but it does mean there's a difference in how the new film relates to the old one. If there's more source material to draw on then you can take some different things while still keeping elements of the earlier adaptation in - if the earlier film is the source material then you either have to do a more direct remake, or make a lot of changes and bring in more original material. Now doing something quite different could be good, depending on the changes, but it's a risk since people will tend to see the first film as more "sacred" if it's the original material, not an adaptation.
The other thing about The Jungle Book is it was quite a bit older and had parts of it that felt quite dated (at least from my perspective). Two of the major voices were big jazz musicians of the time, you have the weird Beatles vultures... there's very clearly ways to take it out of the '60s. Combine that with the fact that there were significant elements of the original book not in the animated film then there's an obvious idea of what that modern film might look like that seemed interesting to me. But with The Lion King I'm not so sure - photorealistic animal animation isn't enough of an "improvement" to make a shot for shot remake seem worthwhile, but I'm not sure what changes and new directions they could take it in that I'd like if it's stil meant to be The Lion King.
Also, with The Jungle Book most of the voice actors are dead or at least no longer working, if you want to bring that story to a new generation you very clearly can't just do the old film again. Though I know 25 years is long enough for multiple reboots in this era, it somehow just feels more respectful of the older work if it's not revisited for long enough that it actually needs new people to carry it on. With The Lion King as far as I'm aware you could literally just get most of the old voice actors to do it again. And in fact they did that with James Earl Jones, which is in fact another thing that put me off this - I don't know if I've seen anyone else say this, but to me it feels like it'd be more jarring having one of the original voices interacting with a cast of new ones than just having a clean slate. Hearing James Earl Jones Mufasa will just make me feel like I should be hearing Jeremy Irons as well, or Rowan Atkinson, or Nathan Lane. Plus it feels a bit like hedging their bets - the Lion King needs a remake, but we're not bold enough to recast probably the most impactful voice from it even though everyone else is different.
I realise that's a lot of complaints, just trying to join in the existing discussion about the appeal of a remake though rather than dampen the enthusiasm for those who are hyped. The Lion King was the first film I went to see at the cinema and remains one of my favourites being probably the best Disney animated classic, but it's not one I was keen for a remake of in principle, and the info / trailers we've got for this one haven't made me interested.
Topic: Lion King - Official Trailer (Read 11209 times)
