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Lion King (2019) is Disney's 6th big release of 2019 and it's third "live-action" remake of the year out of four. Unlike Dumbo and Aladdin though, this one doesn't have any actual live-action scenes and is completely CGI. This one is based on the Disney animated movie released in 1994. The 1994 Lion King was one of the biggest movies of all time and it was the second highest-grossing movie of all time for a while. This movie was HUGE and it became a classic over time, a movie that many people have a special place in their hearts for and passed on to their children. From a business standpoint, it's a no brainer to release a new version of this movie. So far most of Disney's live-action remakes have been pretty successful and have earned lots of big money for the company. How does this one measure up to the original and how does it compare to the other remakes of the past few years?

So this movie plays out exactly like the original from 1994. And when I say that, I mean that it's the exact same story and it's almost an exact copy of the original. The story plays out just like the original, a lot of the scenes and most of the dialog are just copied and pasted in this new movie. Basically, if you've seen the original before, you've already seen like 95% of this movie. The major differences are of course the visuals and the voice acting, which I think are both done really well. The weird thing is that the visual style holds back the vocal performances of the movie, which leads to the main problem I had with this new version. The life-like characters, especially the lions, don't really show much emotion. There are scenes where the voice actors are expressing joy or sadness, but the character's faces are just emotionless and don't really match the emotion they are expressing in the music. The other major problem that comes from that is the songs. The songs are all sung very well by the new voice cast (you got Childish Gambino and Beyonce so it's going to be great), but the problem is that during the songs the characters can't really do much since the visuals are going for realism. In the original, most of the songs took place in colorful music-video style sections that really fit the tone of whatever song was playing. In this new one, they can't really do that so instead, you just have the characters kinda running around a boring location not really matching the tone that the song is going for. It just doesn't feel as fun or exciting as it's trying to be.

Even with all its flaws, I can't say I disliked this movie entirely. It's still the same Lion King story I loved since childhood. The new voice actors did a great job as I mentioned before. The visuals are really stunning and can be really beautiful at times. It really pushed technology to a whole new level when it comes to visuals and it's exciting to see what film will start to do with this level of CGI. Sadly, the most impressive aspect of this movie is what held it back the most. It took away a lot of the emotion from the story and made some of the originals iconic scenes weaker in comparison. That along with not adding anything new to the story or trying something different really left me disappointed at the end. When walking into a remake like this, you want it to be just as good if not better than the original and you want to see some new additions/changes to the story. Maybe people who don't have a strong connection with the original will like this movie a lot more than I did. Maybe others will love the nostalgia this movie brings and love it for that reason. As for me, I was really disappointed by it and will stick to the original version.

-Hakuna Matata-