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Unfolding like the world's longest and least convincing deepfake, the new "Lion King" fatally misunderstands what once made Disney special.

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Unfolding like the world’s longest and least convincing deepfake, Jon Favreau’s (almost) photorealistic remake of “The Lion King” is meant to represent the next step in Disney’s circle of life. Instead, this soulless chimera of a film comes off as little more than a glorified tech demo from a greedy conglomerate — a well-rendered but creatively bankrupt self-portrait of a movie studio eating its own tail.

With the possible exception of 2015’s “Cinderella,” which was touched with just enough magic to feel like a new wrinkle on an old fairy tale, all of Disney’s live-action rehashes have been faint echoes of their animated predecessors. But “The Lion King” isn’t an echo, it’s a stain. This zombified digital clone of the studio’s first original cartoon feature is the Disney equivalent of Gus Van Sant’s “Psycho.”

‘The Lion King’ Review: Disney’s Remake Is a Disastrous Plunge into the Uncanny Valley
Unfolding like the world's longest and least convincing deepfake, the new "Lion King" fatally misunderstands what once made Disney special.

David Ehrlich

Jul 11, 2019 12:00 pm

@davidehrlich

“The Lion King”

Disney / screencap

Unfolding like the world’s longest and least convincing deepfake, Jon Favreau’s (almost) photorealistic remake of “The Lion King” is meant to represent the next step in Disney’s circle of life. Instead, this soulless chimera of a film comes off as little more than a glorified tech demo from a greedy conglomerate — a well-rendered but creatively bankrupt self-portrait of a movie studio eating its own tail.

With the possible exception of 2015’s “Cinderella,” which was touched with just enough magic to feel like a new wrinkle on an old fairy tale, all of Disney’s live-action rehashes have been faint echoes of their animated predecessors. But “The Lion King” isn’t an echo, it’s a stain. This zombified digital clone of the studio’s first original cartoon feature is the Disney equivalent of Gus Van Sant’s “Psycho.”

Unlike the rest of the Disney’s latest rehashes, “The Lion King” isn’t live-action: Favreau, who previously inched towards this same technological asymptote with his playful update of “The Jungle Book” in 2016, has made a fully animated film working overtime to disguise itself as an episode of “Planet Earth.”
Sometimes, the graphics look so good that your brain struggles to make sense of why they don’t look better (Pride Rock, we learn, is located deep inside the uncanny valley). Other times, the animals are constrained by the boundaries of verisimilitude; forget the original’s Busby Berkeley-like choreography of “I Just Can’t Wait to be King” or the unbridled expressionism of “Hakuna Matata,” because all these hyper-realistic animals can do is walk around their drab environments and fall over each other. (Don’t ask how Zazu the hornbill can speak the Queen’s English even though his beak only moves up and down.)

Most often, the animation is just bland in a way that saps the characters of their personalities. Scar used to be a Shakespearian villain brimming with catty rage and closeted frustration; now, he’s just a lion who sounds like Chiwetel Ejiofor. Simba used to be a sleek upstart whose regal heritage was tempered by youthful insecurity; now he’s just a lion who sounds like Donald Glover. Watching them come to blows against a realistic-but-dull background suggests that Favreau was so busy trying to figure out if he could, that he never stopped to consider if he should.