June 24, 1994
There’s this term they got now, “Disney adult.” I’d rather jump in a pool of lava than be called that. I feel that it goes without saying that animation is an artform, that Disney is a historically great animation studio, and that adults can appreciate their films if they want to, so turning it into an identity group is not necessary. I’m not a person who would strut around in a Winnie the Pooh letterman’s jacket like I think I’m Ryan Gosling in DRIVE, I’m just an ordinary respecter of excellence in animation.
Most of my favorites are ones from before I was born, like PINOCCHIO, but I also respect the now-vaunted “renaissance” period of the ‘90s and enjoyed most of them in theaters. I was in my teens or twenties then, so I was never indoctrinated by the clamshell VHS tapes, and maybe my tastes are just weird. I used to rate BEAUTY AND THE BEAST and ALADDIN at the top but to me their greatness has faded a little with time, so I’m afraid I have THE RESCUERS DOWN UNDER, POCAHONTAS and TARZAN at the top. I know millennials love MULAN and I wish I did too, it seems like the subject matter I’d like best, I just think the animation and story are mediocre by their standards.
And, even worse, I never liked THE LION KING (as I confessed when I reviewed its widely derided, $1.664 billion box office grossing 2019 remake). I’ve watched the original several times over its decades of existence, always thinking this is gonna be the time it works for me. Never does.
But this time I think I came close! This 30 years later viewing is the most I’ve ever liked it. I appreciated things I might not have paid attention to before, I forgave things that used to bother me, I even felt like there was a thing I was too hard on it for. I still don’t like some of those songs, though.
Did you know original co-director George Scribner (OLIVER & COMPANY) quit when they told him it had to be a musical? He wanted it to be more like an animated National Geographic special, and had them figuring out how to do lens flares and stuff. The opening of the finished film does seem to visually reference some of the shots you’d see in wildlife documentaries, but also gets much of its power from the song “The Circle of Life.” (The animals aren’t singing it, though. This part is technically a musical montage, not a musical.)
Those opening minutes are the best part of the movie – this over-the-top glorification of all life on the African savanna, gorgeous artistry re-creating the majesty of the sun rising, waterfalls, fog, dust, sunbeams. I forgot until I read about it that they just played that whole sequence in theaters as the teaser trailer. Good idea. Supposedly it went over so well that producer Don Hahn worried they were setting expectations too high.
The movie’s use of color to create different types of lighting is spectacular. It’s funny that Hans Zimmer did the score because there’s a Jerry Bruckheimer quality to the use of magic hour and orange sunlight. I recently heard Zimmer (RENAISSANCE MAN) on an episode of the Team Deakins podcast. I didn’t know he had a history of working with South African choirs on the films A WORLD APART (1988) and THE POWER OF ONE (1992), and that’s why they wanted him for THE LION KING. He claims he had a warrant out for his arrest in South Africa for recording the illegal Black South African anthem for A WORLD APART, that Disney didn’t want him to go there to record and asked who should finish the score if he was killed.
This time is the most I’ve ever appreciated that score. I guess I’ve always overlooked the incidental music, which I now realize really stands out from other animated movies. There’s the African-inspired sounds but also there’s some of the texture and bluster of what Zimmer would be doing the following year in CRIMSON TIDE. It’s just so bombastic compared to anything you’d hear in a modern animated feature, and that works really well with some of the live-action-inspired filmmaking like the JAWS zoom-in on Simba before the stampede, the “camera” rotating 360 degrees around him as he faces Scar, and the slow motion slap fight.
I’m sorry to say that I never really caught that before, that they did a slow motion fight scene in front of fire, with embers floating around. That’s new in animation. Especially with animals. Has there been 2D animation with speed ramping in a fight? That would be cool. Anyway, I like how much of this moves the camera the way I would love in a live action movie.
This time I also loved the dramatic smash cuts to the title at the beginning and end. Another modern filmmaking technique that seems thrilling when applied to animation.
Another funny thing I read was that lyricist Tim Rice wanted them to be big pop songs that adults could enjoy, and his first choice to collaborate with was Abba! In those days you could do a musical about Africa with Abba or Elton John and no eyebrows would be raised. Before eyebrows became woke. I probly would’ve gotten a kick out of the Abba version, and I have grown to sort of enjoy Elton John (even though I find him cheesy), but the more Broadway style shit probly won’t ever get through to me. I can respect how “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King” turns into fantasy, Busby Berkley style choreography and stylized colors, but I just don’t think the song adds much to the story or characters other than to underline how vapid and annoying Simba can be. I also felt that way about “Hakuna Matata” (it means “shit happens”), and I still don’t particular enjoy that there’s an entire verse based on the concept that Pumbaa is an outcast because he has horrible gastrointestinal problems and constantly emits horrifying farts. (Also it’s a plot hole because later they show his ass for a long time and he clearly has no butthole.)
But I can recognize now that the song is important to the story to explain the “problem free philosophy” Simba enjoys in the years skipped over with a CONAN THE BARBARIAN wheel of pain style transition. It’s just kind of funny that arguably the most popular song (although there are three certified smashes in this thing) is the one that the movie later shames Simba for agreeing with. I don’t think people were listening to it outside of the context of the movie thinking “but it would be wrong to live that way because we all have responsibilities.”
The song I totally forgot was the one Scar sings. I think that one kinda sucks. But I’m just not a Broadway guy. I do, however, wish I saw Julie Taymor’s Broadway adaptation. I have faith in her.
I prefer the parts of the movie where they get across the same ideas more economically. The scene where Simba says “Hey, guess what, Uncle Scar? I’m gonna be King of Pride Rock!” communicates his entitlement and childish lack of awareness, plus Scar’s bitterness, in a way that makes you kinda get where he’s coming from, even though you personally wouldn’t move to the next stage of plotting against your baby nephew. Scar is an evil jerk but I honestly think if he didn’t grow up in a royal family or birth-order-based monarchy he would’ve turned out different.
Maybe if they cut the two wackest songs they wouldn’t have had to rush through the climax like they were being chased by the cops. When Scar thinks Simba is back from the dead like THE CROW, he turns the the assembled masses against him by revealing that he fled because (he thought) he was responsible for Mufasa’s death. And then the master stroke of his plan is to… immediately turn around and brag that actually he killed Mufasa. Kinda seems like a whole alternate framed-for-murder plot they decided against but couldn’t quite bring themselves to delete entirely so they did the thirty second version.
I identified in my review of the remake that a story about a prince inheriting the throne isn’t very relatable to most of us. And returning to the original recipe I realize that’s not the only thing that makes Simba fall flat for me. Disney princesses can be simplistic, so much so that Belle just reading books seemed like progress at the time, but I think some of the male protagonists have it even worse. In that era there was this idea that the most universal protagonist is a human (or lion) low sodium saltine cracker. Just a bland, blank, non-threatening, non-personality-having weiner of a guy. Who better to voice a stale bowl of white rice than Jonathan Taylor Thomas and Matthew Broderick? (See also: Donnie Osmond as the singing voice of the male lead in MULAN.) If they never betray any soul or personality it counts as being a sweetheart.
But there’s one way he’s relatable: he gets told what to do by older people. I apologize if anybody’s sick of me talking about boomers vs. gen-xers in this review series, but I’m afraid it’s relevant here. THE LION KING very much reflects the then-very-common boomer complaint that the new generation were lazy “slackers” who didn’t care about anything and didn’t want jobs, just wanted to grow their hair long and play bass and write a poem or some shit. Everybody was so charmed by the farting warthog and the cynical Billy Crystal mouse or whatever* that they didn’t notice they were part of that same scoldy lecture. Simba, it may seem real great enjoying life and doing what you want in paradise, having a great time with your best friends, singing and being peaceful and not hurting anybody. But it’s wrong. You have to do the job your dad said you have to do, of lording over everybody and marrying the girl you just wanted to be friends with. And he doesn’t think that’s what he wants in life but then he does it and decides it’s awesome, Dad was right, shoulda followed the rules all along.
I wish they really would’ve underlined his slackerness by giving him a soul patch, and turning his mane more into stoner hair. Maybe have them play hacky sack with an acorn.
Anyway, that’s the moral that babysat millennials, who have grown up into a world where little Kopa’s never gonna get to be the Lion King, because his dad Simba never even got a chance, because Mufasa’s generation refuse to become constellations, won’t let go of power, won’t let society change except by moving to the right until Scar’s positions seem moderate. All the lions in power agree that most of the resources should go to the hyenas (if we take the scene where they’re goose stepping to mean they represent the military and cops).
Consider this: Then-Disney-chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg, who has said THE LION KING is “a little bit about myself,” is an advisor and campaign co-chair for the 2024 Biden re-election campaign. I mean I agree, it’s better than letting Scar get in again, but why the fuck does a CEO who peaked 30 fucking years ago get to be an important voice in our future? Go enjoy life, dumbass, your turn is over. Also how the fuck could a person be responsible for Quibi, losing $1.35 billion in 7 months by trying to convince people that the dumbest thing they ever heard of is actually cool, and then come out thinking “You know what? I should keep telling people what to do”? It’s an almost unfathomable level of delusion. But that’s the type of guy that gets a say in this shit.
Look, I’m sorry to defame Mufasa, I look forward to his upcoming CG movie from acclaimed director Barry Jenkins, which I hope will add some depth to him. But right now he represents an old way of thinking that’s full of shit. The Circle of Life sounds beautiful and poetic and all that but it’s just an excuse. It’s fuckin trickle down economics. Mufasa says, and I think the movie definitely agrees, that it’s okay for lions to eat the antelope because one day the lions will die and fertilize the grass and the antelopes will eat the grass. But Mufasa and the movie also tell us that the elephant graveyard, where Whoopi and Cheech live, is the scary place you should never go to. The movie portrays the scavengers as scum of the earth, scary threats who circle around little kids, planning to eat them. When Nala needs to convince Simba to come back she just says that Scar allowed hyenas into the Pride Lands. Simba is immediately outraged, and we’re supposed to be too.
Yeah, that Circle of Life sure does move us all, huh? Giraffes and zebras better fuckin show reverence for the baby lion, because we let them eat grass. But carrion eaters, we don’t consider them part of the circle. They need to be segregated.
That’s my take now. But I get that it’s a well made movie too. It’s got something for everyone: an IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT joke, a love scene that probly sparked furry awakenings all around the globe, a part where the baboon Rafiki does a Bruce Lee noise and I thought it was cool at the time but now I suspect it’s supposed to be funny. But the animation is good, it was the first non-sequel, non-anthology original story for a Disney film, it takes itself mostly seriously, I somewhat respect it now.
THE LION KING was the biggest movie not only of the summer, but of the whole 1994. It was the highest grossing animated movie ever made and kept that record until FINDING NEMO came out. In five years they’d had the comeback of THE LITTLE MERMAID, the best picture nomination of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, the casting coup of Robin Williams in ALADDIN, and now this new peak of financial success and acclaim for the vaunted artform of drawings that move. Then ten years later they stopped doing it, but THE LION KING is not at fault.
* * *
Additional notes:
On this viewing I was kind of fixated on Scar luring little Simba to the scene of the wildebeest stampede by telling him “your father has a marvelous surprise for you.” Simba believes he caused Mufasa’s death himself and has to flee, he doesn’t get that his uncle lied to him. So did he spend his years of exile wondering what the surprise was that his dad had for him?
Only while researching this review did I learn that the singing voice for adult Simba, Joseph Williams, was the lead singer of Toto in the mid ‘80s and also is the son of John Williams and is responsible for
1) singing the Gummi Bears theme song and
2) writing the English lyrics for “Lapti Nek” and “Ewok Celebration.” In other words, one of the greatest songwriters who ever lived, and it’s not even close.
Like all Disney movies THE LION KING went through a long development with an endless cascade of writers and artists reworking the story. I would like to note that one of the many people who wrote a treatment at some point was Miguel Tejada-Flores (REVENGE OF THE NERDS, FRIGHT NIGHT PART 2, BEYOND RE-ANIMATOR, FRANKENSTEIN’S ARMY), and two screenwriters they met with much later were Billy Bob Thornton (!) and SPEED-script-doctor Joss Whedon.
Tie-ins: There were 186 licensed products and promotions with Burger King, Nestle, Payless ShoeSource, etc. In 1994 alone they made literally a billion dollars on products based on THE LION KING. The box office wasn’t even that important!
*when this came out I’d never heard of Nathan Lane, I thought Timon was Billy Crystal, and listening to it now I can see why
June 24th, 2024 at 8:18 am
I also never liked this one because of its lame characters and lazy storytelling, and I’m not enough of an animation fan to give it a pass on its technical merits. Most of the Disney renaissance movies have messages I find morally repugnant, which normally I don’t mind, but these movies are supposed to be so wholesome and openly instructive that they just make me angry. I’ve talked before about BEAUTY AND THE BEAST’s domestic violence apologia, but there’s also LITTLE MERMAID’s extremely-on-the-nose symbolism of a young girl giving up her voice in exchange for legs to spread for some fuckin’ dude she doesn’t even know, and of course this movie’s whole-hearted hard-on for generational privilege. Plus, their broad, hammy comedic sidekicks laid the groundwork for the Doritos-commercial-style comic relief and its attendant lazy catchphrase synthetic-joke-substitute humor modules, which continue to ruin movies to this day. I look at the damage this fuckin’ warthog has done and I’m like, “That’s gonna leave a mark! AWKwaaaaard!”
So, no, I am not a Disney adult. I believe you could get punched for saying something like that.