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The Lion King
| Released |
7 October 2011 |
| Director(s) |
Roger Allers, Rob Minkoff |
Starring
|
Matthew Broderick, Jeremy Irons, James Earl Jones |
Writer(s)
|
Irene Mecchi, Jonathan Roberts, Linda Woolverton |
| Producer(s) |
Don Hahn |
| Origin |
United States |
| Running Time |
89 minutes |
| Genre |
Animation, adventure, comedy |
| Rating |
G |
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Milking the cash cow.
Taking a 1994 Disney classic like The Lion King and rereleasing it in 3D was a canny marketing ploy by Hollywood studio executives. Ostensibly just a promotive move to advertise the October blu-ray release of the animated classic, the 3D version of The Lion King has proved such a huge success ($77.7 million worldwide and counting) for the Walt Disney Company that it has bigwigs frothing at the mouth over what classic movies can be retrofitted next. Top Gun is already on the cards but no doubt Terminator will get a look in, maybe even Titanic if we can stomach it.
It's hardly worth detailing the premise of The Lion King as any child of the nineties will have its 'hakuna matata' mantra seared into their memory but nevertheless for the uninitiated the story goes like this: Simba, a cute little lion cub is destined to become king of the prideland following in the majestic footsteps of his father, Mufasa. However his evil uncle Scar has other plans in mind-those of the usurping kind. Together with a cohort of scavenging hyenas Scar plots to kill Mufasa and run little Simba out of the prideland, thus claiming the throne for himself. After years of exile however, Simba is persuaded by his three best friends Timon, Pumbaa and Nala, to return to his homeland and overthrow his evil uncle, thus completing the 'circle of life'.
The fundamental principal of good-overcoming-evil in The Lion King is hardly revolutionary yet its very winsomeness coupled with the vibrant colours of the African plains and Oscar-winning songs is what makes this animated movie so appealing to children and adults alike. This is Disney at its best. So why the need to rerelease it seventeen years later in 3D? The simple and rather unsavoury answer is money. Studios have a blu-ray DVD to sell and the only way to shift the numbers they need to generate the figures they want is to reintroduce the movie to a new, younger audience. An audience that has already been spoilt by Avatar and its ilk. Expectations are higher and in order to survive the movie industry has to adapt. There is no real harm done here-The Lion King rather suits its 3D reinvention. The colours are brighter, the score is still unnervingly catchy and the moral undertones are perhaps more relevant today in the wake of the War on Terror than they were nearly two decades ago.
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Louisa McElwee |
