Without much fanfare or warning, Disney dropped a teaser trailer for the “live action” remake of The Lion King…
… and I won’t lie, I got chills from watching it.
In no small part this is unsurprisingly due to the gorgeous visuals on display in this new teaser – the “realistic” rendering on display is quite stunning. Mainly, though, the chills arise because this trailer shows only beat-for-beat remakes of scenes from the original*, and the original, especially coupled with the great score by Hans Zimmer, will almost always give me the chills.
As for the enterprise as a whole I still have massive concerns about what will result from this remake. The remake of Beauty and the Beast left me cold in more ways than one** and I do wonder what the intent of this is (besides making a tonne of money, of course). There are only a pawful of narrative (or other) weaknesses that I’d say would need ameliorating; will they address those or miss them, will they try to shoehorn in unnecessary stuff, will they go for some radical reworking, or will they just leave it as a pure visual overhaul?*** Some of those paths could lead to something amazing. The others… not so much.
The 1994 release of TLK really landed for me in ways I may never be able to fully understand why. It had a monumental impact on my life, both in terms of how it spoke to me, what I took from it, the many friendships I developed around it, and the life-directing choices that emerged from it. I’m not concerned that the remake will ruin my time or memories of that time – I would never give anyone or anything that power – but this movie is something special to me. I already think it is a great movie, with good storytelling.
Again I won’t lie: they are clearing doing this, and I so want, and hope, that whatever gets released next year remains equally great, moving, wonderous, and powerful.
Paws crossed.
* Which makes me wonder why they didn’t actually pull a page from the original and release the entire Circle of Life sequence as the trailer…
** And Lindsay Ellis unraveled it even further here, enumerating a number of things that point to why my view of the remake had been souring further since I’d written my review…
*** Perhaps strangely I could get behind this direction. It does leave open a big question of “why bother?” but at the same time, so long as they’re being honest about what they’re doing, there’s an appeal to making something purely for aesthetic delight.
Lynx Thoughts 