The Lion King Review: Disney Marathon

Spoilers

I’m back baby, no longer burnt out and ready to review the second half of the Disney Classics line-up. I’m probably going to start taking weekends off though, don’t want to get burnt out again and these reviews take a while to write. They’re anywhere between 1000 to 5000 words long and now that I’m on the movies I actually care about, they’re tending to lean more on the longer side of the spectrum. Anyway, let’s get back to these reviews starting with The Lion King.

Remember that time when Disney’s B-Team made one the best animated movies ever? Yep, the main people at Disney were working on Pocahontas whilst the left overs worked on The Lion King. Apparently, the Pocahontas team laughed at the creators of The Lion King. Nobody thought The Lion King would be any good, Pocahontas was going to be Disney’s next hit, right? Right?

Nah Pocahontas is kind of trash whilst The Lion King is a masterpiece. We’ll get to Pocahontas tomorrow and oh boy do I have a lot to say about that train wreck, but let’s stay positive now and talk about The Lion King. Is it the best thing Disney has ever made?

Why is it held in such high regards? Well let me explain why everyone including yours truly loves The Lion King. Starting with that plot of course.

We start with a breath-taking view of the Pride Lands, a savannah located somewhere in Africa. All the animals are on their way to see the new born lion prince Simba, son of Mufasa (the current king) and Sarabi (the current queen). Imagine celebrating a leader who views you as nothing more than an object to consume, oh wait that’s the case with most leaders. To be fair this monarchy only kills what they need to survive and are presented as being loved by everyone for it. Later on in the movie, Scar truly does view everyone as his next meal. So apparently zebra’s and the such are chill with you eating them, as long as you don’t eat all of them.

Playing over this soaring shot of the savannah is the song “The Circle of Life”. The song starts with some lyrics in Zulu which translate to get this…

“Here comes a lion, father
Oh yes it’s a lion

Here comes a lion, father
Oh yes it’s a lion
A lion
We’re going to conquer
A lion
A lion and a leopard come to this open place”

Much less mystical now isn’t it. And why are you talking about leopards. I don’t see no damn leopards in this movie.

We then get the iconic lyrics that we do understand. A description of nature and the circle of life. A system only made to explain why the lion heroes get to eat animals with an equal level of intelligence of them. It’s cool, the Zebra love getting eaten, they get to eat the grass which is made of the lion’s corpses. What else could you want. Sounds a lot like lion propaganda to me.

The shot eventually reaches Pride Rock, the home to the lion monarchy. Rafiki a magical Mandrill who just chills around with the lions holds Simba up to the air and rubs some fruit on his forehead (I swear it’s a cool scene). Everyone cheers, excited to meet the new king that’s going to eat them. Scar the antagonist of the movie didn’t show up to the fruit smearing ritual and was instead just vibin’ in his cave. Scar wants to be king and was second in line to the throne until Mufasa and Sarabi had a child. Scar is understandably upset but is too weak to do anything about it. He could challenge Mufasa to a fight, that’s how lions work. The problem is Scar is physically weak and would get demolished by his brother. Scar is a great villain; his lack of strength makes him a perfect match to Simba later on in the movie who wouldn’t exactly be the peak lion body after doing nothing but eating bugs and singing for a few years. What he lacks in strength he makes up for in cunningness and charisma. He can trick people into doing exactly what he wants and because of this is a formidable foe for our heroes. Mufasa arrives at Scar’s cave and scorns him for not attending his son’s ritual. Their dynamic is amazing. Scar has no respect for his brother but knows he’s not one to be taken lightly. Mufasa doesn’t respect his brother either but doesn’t know the true evil he’s capable of.

Some time passes and we get to truly meet the protagonist, Simba. Simba is arrogant, prideful, and doesn’t get what it takes to be the king. He believes that being a king is just about getting what you want, he’d make a great real-life monarch then, but unfortunately for him he lives in Disney land where everything is romanticised. Mufasa tells Simba what it means to be king, including to not invade foreign powers such as the place where the light doesn’t touch for some reason. Simba, curious about this mysterious land goes to ask his uncle Scar about it. Scar tells him it’s an elephant graveyard and that he definitely shouldn’t go there, but in a way to make it sound cool because yeah Scar totally wants Simba to there to get merked by some hyenas.

Simba goes and grabs his friend, Nala. They trick the adults into allowing them to leave by telling them that they are heading to the water hole. The adults agree as long as they bring Zazu. Zazu is essentially the monarchies advisor, although nobody listens to him so I’m not really sure why they keep him around. Now Zazu won’t want Simba and Nala going to an elephant graveyard to the young pair of friends decides to ditch him and do so with a musical number. Can we all start doing this please? In a conversation that you don’t want to be a part of? Musical number. In a boring lecture at university? Musical number. It’s perfect. The specific musical number they use is “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King”. It’s catchy and visually spectacular. The colours on display here are breath taking and takes me back to the trippy imagery that early Disney was full of. Although this time it isn’t racist.

After their musical number the pair arrive at the elephant graveyard. The Pride Lands are so colourful yet here everything gets dark and whatever the opposite of colourful is. Zazu catches up with the pair and immediately demands that they head back, but the trio are cornered by some hyenas. These three are Shenzi, Banzai, and Ed. They sure are the comic relief villains that aren’t actually funny. The whole thing with the hyenas is one of the only big problems I have with this movie. It weirdly creates this message that could be perceived as an algorithm for race mixing being a bad thing (yikes). I know that was almost definitely not the point of the movie, it’s a celebration of African culture to some extent so I doubt the creators want race segregation. That’s not my problem as its almost definitely not the intention, my problems come with the hyenas in general doing what the gargoyles do to The Hunchback of Notre Dame (although of course not to the same extent). The sometimes ruin the tone of great scenes and are so disconnected to everything else. Maybe have Scar’s henchmen be other lions, I know some people may say there’s only really a max of three male lions per pride, but who said anything about male, give us some evil lioness henchwomen. It would have made the conflict more interesting, it’s a battle within a pride not someone bringing in his weird friends to ruin the party. Anyway, that was a weird tangent, again I love this movie but I thought it was worth mentioning. The three hyenas are about to kill the trio when Mufasa turns up to scare off the hyenas and take the trio back to the Pride Lands.

Mufasa has a speech with Simba about being a king. He mentions that all the stars in the sky are previous great lion kings and that one day he will die and Simba will have to be the next great king.

We cut back to the hyenas who it turns out Scar was mates with (gasp). He tells them that if he’s King he’ll give them access to all of the food in the Pride Lands and the hyenas will never go hungry. He sings the song “Be Prepared” which I’m gonna be honest, is my favourite song in the movie. It transforms Scar from some cruel uncle into someone who is actually compared to Hitler. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, they based the hyenas march on footage of actual Nazi’s marching. The song is also just so menacing, I guess when a villain is being compared to Hitler that’ll probably happen. Scar has a plan to kill Simba and Mufasa, and explains it to his hyena army.

The next day, Scar takes his nephew to some random gorge and tells him to just wait there for a surprise. The surprise happens to be hundreds of wildebeest. These wildebeest were set off by Scar and his hyenas. Scar tells Mufasa that his son is in trouble so Mufasa heads on over to stop his son from getting trampled to death. We all know what happens, Mufasa rescues Simba, long live the king, Mufasa fucking dies. Simba then tells his dead father to get up and Scar convinces Simba that it was all his fault leading to Simba running away. Now in the Disney Renaissance it seems that the majority of the movies have a perfect scene. A scene that you fell in your soul. A scene that transcends simple cinema. The Little Mermaid, and The Rescuers Down Under don’t have one but Beauty and the Beast has the ballroom scene. Aladdin has the flying carpet scene. Pocahontas, I guess has “Colours of the Wind” although the rest of the movie is so bad it drags that one great scene down. The Hunchback of Notre Dame has “Hellfire”. Hercules has “Go the Distance”. Mulan has “I’ll Make a Man Out of You”, and Tarzan has the opening scene. The Lion King has three of these scenes. These are the opening, this scene of course and the whole dead dad in the sky scene. I can’t name a single movie that has this many flawless scenes. Where do we start with this scene? The wildebeest all look amazing, they’re computer animated and are a technical marvel for their time. Disney for the most part knew that computer animation looked like shit at that point so used it wisely. Since they’re going so fast you can’t really view them clearly. There’s so much of them, it adds to the chaos and urgency of the scene. Mufasa’s actual death is traumatic. They linger on his body just long enough for it to be disturbing without desensitising us to the corpse. Earlier in the movie Simba said the very same wake up lines to his father when he was actually asleep. This brings so much more tragedy to this scene. Simba is in denial.

Anyway, Simba runs off and is found by Timon the meerkat and Pumbaa the warthog. These two are alright. They’re the comic relief characters but go slightly beyond that as they introduce a new lifestyle to Simba. They teach Simba how to live a carefree life, ignoring all worries. This apparently involves eating a lot of bugs. The only thing I can think of with this bug eating scene is the fact that in certain dinner services on the Disney Cruise line they play this scene in a compilation of Disney characters eating. The idea is to celebrate food in Disney movies but I don’t want to watch characters eat bugs whilst I eat.

Pumbaa and Timon introduce the concept of “Hakuna Matata” to Simba, in the song surprisingly called “Hakuna Matata”. I love it how this song is the one that we’re meant to disagree with but it’s the catchiest. The whole movie has the theme of doing what you need to do, the idea to not turn your back on your responsibilities, Simba needs to go back and fight Scar for example. This song however is what most people remember. I can guarantee more people came out of this movie with the idea that living a carefree life is the way to go than people who actually took away the message the movie wanted you to take with you. During this song Simba ages and becomes Ferris Bueller. People complain about Matthew Broderick’s performance, in fact that is the only complaint I ever really here about the movie. I don’t know. He’s definitely not the best as adult Simba but he doesn’t do a bad job.

Anyway, whilst doing nothing, Pumbaa gets chased by a lioness. Simba comes to Pumbaa’s rescue and it turns out that the lioness is Nala. Simba and Nala chat and play for a bit and Nala gives Simba what can only be described as “fuck me eyes”. If Robin Hood wasn’t what made you a furry it was probably The Lion King. The song “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” is sung and its great, much better than the actual romance. Oh snap. Yeah, I think the romance is a bit rushed. They chill out as kids where the idea of being together physical repulses them and the next time they see each other they are rolling around on the floor on top of each other. I see nobody else mention this, am I the only person that doesn’t buy their relationship?

Nala explains to Simba that he needs to come home and take back the Pride Lands from Scar. Turns out that Scar and his hyenas have completely overhunted and ruined the environment. Should have respected the circle of life you dummy. Simba is like “nah mate I’m all about that Hakuna Matata life you get me” and Nala isn’t very happy so she gets out of there.

Rafiki shows up and hey look it’s the third perfect scene in this movie. Rafiki tells Simba that his father is still alive (what a sick prank) and takes him to a lake where Simba sees his reflection. His father has been in him the whole time, wait that sounds weird. He then looks up to the sky to see his father just chilling in the clouds. He tells his son that he needs to take his place as king and dethrone Scar. The music in this scene is breath taking, Hans Zimmer didn’t have to make a soundtrack that hit this hard but he bloody did anyway.

Simba now full of courage decides to go take out his evil uncle. Pumbaa and Timon go with him. They catch up with Nala and are ready to take on Scar. Pumbaa and Timon distract some hyenas so that Simba can go and confront Scar. Simba tells Scar to step down as king. Scar of course isn’t happy about this so sets the hyenas on Simba. Simba is almost defeated when Scar tells him that he, Scar killed Mufasa. Simba goes 100% and takes down Scar. A battle commences between the lioness’s and the hyenas. When cornered Scar insults the hyenas, blaming them for everything. The hyenas hear this. Simba eventually beats Scar and Scar gets eaten alive by the hyenas. The Pride Lands go back to normal surprisingly quickly and Simba and Nala have a child, the intro happens again but this time with Simba and Nala’s baby.

Oh, can I smell a sequel? Yes, a direct to DVD sequel which I’ll tackle in another marathon. Not now.

The Lion King is a masterpiece. Not a 10/10 in my opinion like many people claim it is but it’s bloody close. It looks gorgeous and I’ll just repeat that the score is amazing. The movie is more mature than most of Disney’s offerings and is one that I reckon you’d enjoy more as an adult than as a child. Tomorrow I’ll be discussing Pocahontas. Yay. See ya guys and gals.

9 / 10