10 Terrible Movies That Were Actually Groundbreaking
7. The Lion King (2019) Was The First Movie Shot Entirely In Virtual Reality
Jon Favreau's 2019 remake of The Lion King is a textbook example of a groundbreaking failure - a film which touts mesmerisingly photorealistic digital animals, yet in turn sacrifices all the soul and heart of the 2D animated original.
There's something profoundly off about seeing these perfectly rendered CGI creatures speaking aloud, the expressiveness of their original counterparts ripped away in the misguided pursuit of "realism."
It didn't stop the film from grossing over $1.6 billion worldwide, but left many wondering why - other than for money, of course - Disney bothered with such a charmless reimagining of one of their most beloved animations.
Favreau's remake wasn't just a watermark for lifelike animal VFX, though - it was also the first ever movie to be shot entirely inside of virtual reality.
On Favreau's prior 2016 remake of The Jungle Book, he made limited use of VR tech to map out the movie's heavily digital world, but for The Lion King, he shot the entire movie - except for the opening shot, which was actually filmed in Africa - in a VR space.
During shooting, Favreau would don a VR headset to "enter" the various digital environments created for the film, allowing him to line up shots, choose lighting setups, and then have his camera operators perform the required camera movements with special viewfinders while walking through the studio.
It's certainly a fascinating and ambitious way to make a movie, and it goes without saying that such tech will one day be put to stellar use. But here? Not a chance.