The Lion King remake

No, it's not live action. I Needed to get that out of the way seeing as virtually every source reporting the remake has said that it will be... Though it definitely rolls off the tongue better than "photorealisticly animated", so I get why. 

Let's not pretend we don't know why Disney is doing this. It's all about cashing in on nostalgia, and I guess introducing a new audience to the film... but mostly the cash part. Film is an art, but it's also a business, and with Lion king being one of Disney's biggest films, a remake was inevitable. Of course original ideas will always still be around, but there's more money to be made in a project that has a preexisting audience. We may be bored with the lack of more original content, but at least there's some originality in reworking existing stories... kind of. They're more like alternate versions with extra details that aren't all that necessary, but it's not like Hamlet with lions was necessary either... I'm honestly curious as to what the remake will be like.

I don't usually like watching live action adaptions of animated movies, and I feel kind of the same about photorealistic animation. It can be very beautiful, but it just seems a little boring and limited in comparison when animation can usually be so unrestricted. I haven't yet seen the Jungle book remake (again, not live action, everything is animated apart from Mowgli), but from what I've heard it has a little more going on than the original, so I'm willing to put my prejudice aside to check it out. I also know there's a stampede scene in there, which has to be a contributing factor to the Lion king remake, doesn't it? Well, that and Shere Khan, he's set the standard for realistic animated big cats, I guess. 

(He's got a kind of scar thing going on...)

This Lion king remake could be beautiful, think of some of the visuals from the original and how those could translate to a realistic style. It'll be interesting to see what the characters look like too, even if animals with human expressions can look a little strange. I'm interested in what might be added the this version of the Lion king. It's already been announced that some of the original songs will be in the film, I hear it's a bit misplaced in Jungle book, but it's still just singing animated animals. I feel like the remake could show more of a society in the Pridelands. The whole circle of life thing is always going to be strange when you humanise it, but it would be cool to see what that does to interactions between the different animals, especially hyenas as they're ostracised so much. I'm hoping the film will do more of it's own thing, but it might take influences from other content like the musical. We might see more of Nala dealing with Scar's rule and finding help, or maybe we'll see more of Simba fighting his guilt. I mean, "I just can't wait to be king" does seem incriminating when you think about it...

There might even be a perspective shift. Probably not the whole film, but we might see more of what motivates Scar. We know he wants to be king, but we may even see just how deep that goes. There's a series of short Lion King stories that was only released in the US, and it reveals that Scar essentially attempted to murder Mufasa once before... and got his scar in the process. That could work, it definitely makes him more evil, though I'd like to see if they come up with anything else. 

I'm actually looking forward to this remake. I could hate it, but I just want to see what it will be like. Our nostalgia fuels our love for the original despite its flaws, so maybe a remake could have a place in our hearts too. 

...And if not we have the original.