The trailer for The Lion King came out yesterday and, just like the other Disney live-action reboots, it is a mirror copy of the original. As someone who grew up watching the animated movies, I couldn’t help but feel like the “magic” isn’t quite there.
I don’t mean Disney’s magic because that can’t dull down (not yet anyway). It’s just that when you see your favorite animated movies retold in live action, they’re just the exact copy minus the cartoonish vibe that we’re all used to.
Plus, these animated films seemed to do well on their own. So why the need to remake them? InStyle noted that since Disney has intellectual property to all these stories, they have the liberty to create and recreate them over and over again—even producing spin-off films. The rise of CGI technology also plays into this as they can milk it to recreate animal-led movies like The Lion King and Dumbo.
It’s like oversaturation at this point because the live-action films have the same script, scenes, and the characters look like their animated counterparts. Disney, in my opinion, doesn’t need to do this because they’re capable of making original stories that are great like Christopher Robin and the new Mulan, and they can explore other tales too. (Unless they already left the latter to Pixar who’s churning out amazing films until now.)
On the other hand, kids today would get to experience the movies we grew up with, but in a totally different light. Still, it’s quite sad to think that they wouldn’t be familiar or appreciate the cartoon version as much, even though we all probably said, “I can’t wait for my future kids to see this.” The new era of fairy tales is really here.
Photo courtesy of The Lion King‘s Instagram account
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