Wednesday, November 28, 2018

Because Reasons

So Walt Disney is re-making The Lion King for 2019, following its 2017 success with a live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast.

Of course, the new Lion King won't be live-action, since animals don't talk or do other things that people do, like sing catchy songs about slackerdom as a life philosophy. It will still be an animated movie, but as I understand it, it's being called "photorealistic." Meaning computer-generated. This space is on record as suggesting that the Beauty and the Beast remake existed primarily as a cash grab (although a number of Friends of This Space -- FOTS -- think differently. The one I'm thinking of didn't review the movie on his blog, just on his Facebook. So -- sorry, no link). But it did at least feature real human beings in front of our eyes as the Beast characters.

Lion King will have none of that. It is essentially another animated movie, except that this one's done entirely by computer. The original was a mix of hand-drawn and computer-generated imagery (such as the wildebeest stampede). The video found at the above link at Bored Panda shows some of the shot-for-shot similar scenes, although there are supposed to be some different scenes and a new character or two. As with the Beast, I have no desire to see it. I've already seen The Lion King, and if I have need to watch it again I own a copy. It has no more appeal than did Gus Van Sant's color remake of Psycho. So I can say I have no reason to see it.

Which doesn't mean Disney has no reason to make it. We'll have to wait until summer 2019 wraps to see how many millions, if not billions, of individual rea$ons it has, even though they will all boil down to just one.

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