The Lion King (Jon Favreau-directed 'live action' remake, 2019)

it’s about time he returned the favour

lmao

loooooool

This looks fun.

The Lion King is a wonderful adaptation of an iconic classic. It has a few small changes which enhance what was already great and everything else is right on point. The CG can be slightly distracting at times but the emotion quickly covers that. Loved it. pic.twitter.com/9QmsP3PmNh

— Germain Lussier (@GermainLussier) July 10, 2019

wow the reviews are in it must be good

WaPo editorial yesterday made a p convincing case that this film/the basic story/source material are essentially fascist (regardless of the ethnicity of the voice talent).

We knew that in '94 tho, no?

Probably, I just hadnt thought about it

Also, I've no idea which thread this belongs in, if any, but ...

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D--gK60XsAEi3rY.jpg

WaPo editorial yesterday made a p convincing case that this film/the basic story/source material are essentially fascist (regardless of the ethnicity of the voice talent).

― Οὖτις, Thursday, July 11, 2019 9:52 AM (fourteen minutes ago)

hamlet?

idk how far back you wanna trace the lost prince vs. usurper of the throne plotline but it goes back way before Hamlet

(and that's not really one of the aspects that are fascistic)

this looks like dogshit

half the point of hamlet is that it is a psychedelic self-deconstructing version of a story you already know. it couldn't be hamlet if its plot were original. the lion king has more to do with henry iv anyway imo.

did not see wapo piece but yes clearly the hyenas are an underclass repressed in the name of a supposedly virtuous natural hierarchy that organizes sentient beings by species. scar at least is an interesting figure tho: not merely a pretender but a political adventurer, glibly fluent in revolutionary language for the purpose of exploiting class division on his way to supreme personal power. (his death at the vengeful hands of the very disaffected who formed his core support is nifty.) given this villain all the movie actually needs to become antifascist (if not antimonarchical) is for simba to learn values from timon and pumbaa that convince him to abandon his evil father's pious blather about the food chain and grant the hyenas full citizenship. by avoiding both this ending and its tragic mirror, in which t+p are cruelly banished (like falstaff) in a symbolic restoration of (im)moral order, i'm sorry to say that the film renders itself juvenile.

Lotta Richard III in Lion King too, obviously.

def-- scar is nothing like claudius tbh

half the point of hamlet is that it is a psychedelic self-deconstructing version of a story you already know. it couldn't be hamlet if its plot were original. the lion king has more to do with henry iv anyway imo.

I'm assuming that the people who wrote disney's the lion king are not experts in pre-early modern english literature and that the basic structure of "heir to the throne's father is killed by his uncle - who makes it look like an accident and usurps power to become king. prince fucks around a bit for a while - hamlet with the actors and rosenkrantz and guildenstern, simba with poomba and timon (ok poomba and timon are good guys and r and g are spies for claudius). mufasa is horatio (ok that's a stretch)" is more likely to have been taken from one of the best known pieces of world literature than not.

Which Shakespeare play is it where a warthog's dank farts kill all fauna within six yards' distance?

merry wives

there are a number of fart jokes in shakespeare's oeuvre

thanks for the fascism heads up comrades, my cousin wanted me to take him to see this so i punched him in the face

Good!

cousin-punching is praxis

They talk, yes, which makes them likely to set up a fascistic dictatorship (the dictator dictates, i.e. speaks) but the fact that these are animals is not irrelevant to the tale. Aesop, La Fontaine and their ilk are least interesting when read as allegorical anthropomorphists.

i have shot mine arrow o'er the house,
and punched my cousin

Comedy of Errors: "A man may break a word with you, sir, and words are but wind
Ay, and break it in your face, so he break it not behind."

Othello: "CLOWN: Are these, I pray you, wind instruments?
FIRST MUSICIAN: Ay marry are they, sir.
CLOWN: O, thereby hangs a tail.
FIRST MUSICIAN: Whereby hangs a tail, sir?
CLOWN: Marry, sir, by many a wind instrument that I know."

And many more!

dlh otm, maybe you should write a wapo editorial about this movie

…and apply for an assistant professorship in Media Studies at the University of Utrecht.

*"The Aristocrats!" tone of voice* "The Lion King!"

"The Aristocrats!" also would have worked at the end of Midsommer.

They're deepfake-action remaking The Aristocats now too?

Yep! And Mulan!

And Little Mermaid!

They talk, yes, which makes them likely to set up a fascistic dictatorship (the dictator dictates, i.e. speaks) but the fact that these are animals is not irrelevant to the tale.

well it cuts both ways right cuz its preshishely becaushh they are animals that the natural order of predation can be so explicitly defended (just as human fascism must wrap itself in darwinian rhetoric). and since they not only talk but all talk the same language-- and since, ed aside, they are all fully sapient (made with such large discourse, looking before and after)-- it is hard for me to read the movie as glimpse into alien landscape. intrigued tho

in fairness the hyenas are shunned due to their overconsumption - which when allowed to continue unchecked under scar destroys the ecosystem - and thus are not really analogous to subaltern populations in our world - who consume much less than the rich and powerful

counterpoint: that characteristic slots neatly into caricatures of "welfare queens", "lazy" black people etc.

or Jews as rapacious parasites etc

Oh right, Jon Favreau directed it!

xp

well it cuts both ways right cuz its preshishely becaushh they are animals that the natural order of predation can be so explicitly defended (just as human fascism must wrap itself in darwinian rhetoric). and since they not only talk but all talk the same language-- and since, ed aside, they are all fully sapient (made with such large discourse, looking before and after)-- it is hard for me to read the movie as glimpse into alien landscape. intrigued tho

It does cut both ways, no question about it, but speaking on behalf of kid pomenitul, exposure to fable-like narratives was primarily a means of encountering an otherness and strangeness beyond human ken rather than a mere mirror of adult mores. Denying their pedagogical, domesticating function would be silly, but allegories are always more (or less) than just allegories: there is an inevitable opaqueness to them that thwarts authorial and hence moral intent. Utterly transparent allegories (or symbols, for that matter) are a pipe dream and child me was mostly glad to catch a glimpse of the animal 'kingdom', irrespective of its presumed social/hierarchical structures, which I found less interesting than the individual characters on display, as well as the art and voice acting that brings them to life.

oh for sure, to be clear i watched this movie on vhs more or less daily 1995-1996 and had a crush on nala

Review: 'The Lion King' looks so realistic it makes the music sound fake | Datebook https://t.co/kJeLySJEcB

— Mick LaSalle (@MickLaSalle) July 17, 2019

Which just goes to prove ...

Lion King reviews are camp.

— Kyle Stevens (@cinementalist) July 11, 2019

watching this on TV now, how on earth did they manage to fuck it up this badly? every character looks like it's been killed, stuffed and had its lips animated with the wombo app

i saw two seconds of it, channel-hopping, and it looks even stupider than i imagined

their rules are baffling - their realism accepts lions talking and singing and believing in the divine right of kings but not dancing or emoting or being gay (disney won't rest until they've reimagined all their great villains as straight)