The Lion King Review: 3 Ups & 7 Downs

5. It's TOO Reverent To The Original

It wasn't exactly clear just how close The Lion King would be to the original movie pre-release, but given that most of the recent remakes have actually injected some of their own contemporary personality into the fray, for better and worse, it seemed likely the same would be true here.

As it turns out, this new take is dangerously close to being a shot-for-shot remake of the original at times, lifting entire sequences pretty much wholesale while adding almost nothing new in terms of shot selections, personality or modern flavour.

It's oddly reminiscent of Gus Van Sant's misguided shot-for-shot Psycho remake, which cleared the bar of matching Hitchcock's imagery but did so with none of his charm or brio.

It's hard to shake the feeling the new Lion King should've actually tried to reinterpret the material rather than simply produce a facsimile. Otherwise, beyond printing a few billion bucks for Disney, what's the point?

There's obviously a line where remakes deviate too far from what made the original great, but there was certainly room for a new take that stayed true to the core themes and ideas while reinventing it for a new generation.

Instead Favreau, presumably at Disney's mandate, went the safest, least-creative and most boring route possible. What a missed opportunity.