The new and the old “bear” no comparison

En­thu­si­ast fans of the new com­puter-gen­er­ated an­im­a­tions from Dis­ney Stu­dios re­mak­ing clas­sical films could present count­less points in their fa­vour with per­fectly ac­cur­ate ar­gu­ments. How­ever, a con­stant feel­ing of déjà vu works against the ex­quis­ite visual tech­nique, and the mix­ing of the already-used with the new rises a chal­len­ging task for the viewer: ” «Trust me», I kept all the «bare ne­ces­sit­ies» from the old films to make you feel «Hak­una Matata» and keep you on the edge of your cinema seat dur­ing the new, thrill­ing ac­tion scenes”. 

Every­one knows the ”Bare ne­ces­sit­ies” of Ba­loo and Mowgli singing through the In­dian jungle in the 1967 an­im­ated film, and loves the wise Ba­gheera, the pan­ther, es­pe­cially when he be­comes ex­as­per­ated by Mowgli’s naugh­ti­ness or by the morn­ing noise of the ele­phant patrol. But is there any­thing sim­il­arly charm­ing about the new, more real­istic and tech­nic­ally ad­vanced film of 2016? A re­make should not be com­pared to the ori­ginal film, you would say, but is this really a remake?

The Dis­ney Stu­dios put all the new tech­no­lo­gical ad­vance­ments to use in a film re­pro­du­cing the 1967 film al­most identic­ally. The spe­cial ef­fects are re­mark­able, the pace of the ac­tion scenes is thrill­ing and the real­ism of the an­imal char­ac­ters is im­press­ive, but whenever you re­cog­nise a line or scene and you real­ise it is al­most a per­fect copy of the drawn ver­sion, a feel­ing of be­trayal over­shad­ows any de­light it might produce. 

Not to be mis­un­der­stood, the new ver­sion has many great ad­vant­ages and the cine­matic ef­fect on the viewer is con­sid­er­able, as you watch in awe through­out the film how each char­ac­ter moves, speaks and in­ter­acts with his en­vir­on­ment, like in a Dis­cov­ery or An­imal Planet doc­u­ment­ary. The visual tech­nique renders any fa­cial ex­pres­sion ac­cur­ately, every strand of fur moves in­de­pend­ently in the wind, nat­ural an­imal be­ha­viour is re­pro­duced in the smal­lest de­tail and everything is im­proved with the mi­ra­cu­lous gift of speech. If the first an­im­ated ver­sion en­dowed the an­imal char­ac­ters with speech in a fairy-tale-like man­ner, as no one ques­tioned the as­sump­tion that all an­im­ated an­im­als spoke, the second ver­sion of the film makes every char­ac­ter seem so nat­ur­al­ist­ic­ally real that speech comes as an ar­ti­fi­cial ad­di­tion, mak­ing an­imal snouts move in an un­nat­ural way, es­pe­cially when they sing.

Sim­il­arly, the 2019 Lion King re­pro­duces the 1994 Dis­ney an­im­a­tion telling the story of Simba, the lion cub who runs away from home after his father gets killed and the African an­imal king­dom is ruled by his mis­chiev­ous uncle. Two of the most mem­or­able Dis­ney sidekicks were in­tro­duced by the 1994 film, namely Ti­mon and Pum­baa, the smart meerkat and the vali­ant warthog who sup­port Simba through­out his com­ing-of-age pro­cess. Dis­ap­point­ingly enough, their nat­ur­al­istic ver­sions play a rather grot­esque role in the new film. The two char­ac­ters are no longer charm­ing and amus­ing, they be­come rather stale, with a type of hu­mour teen­agers and adults might ap­pre­ci­ate, but chil­dren would find the role they play in the new film rather dif­fi­cult to understand. 

How­ever, a point that must be made in the fa­vour of the new­est ver­sions de­pict­ing the clas­sical tales of the Jungle Book and the Lion King is the way they build more com­plex por­traits of the neg­at­ive char­ac­ters. Both Shere Khan and King Louie are im­press­ive and massive char­ac­ters that mark the whole plot with their strong per­son­al­it­ies and their vi­ol­ent out­bursts. Es­pe­cially King Louie has re­ceived spe­cial at­ten­tion from the film pro­du­cers as he im­poses through his im­press­ive size and phys­ical power. Sim­il­arly, Scar re­veals a com­plex ma­nip­u­lat­ive per­son­al­ity that gains Simba’s trust only to use it against him, while con­trolling an army of hungry, un­pre­dict­able hy­enas. His dark ap­pear­ance is no longer a ri­diculed mask for the gen­eric bad char­ac­ter, sug­gest­ing chil­dren view­ers he is sure to be de­feated in the end, but a real dan­ger­ous char­ac­ter hid­den in­side Simba’s family.

The new ver­sions of The Jungle Book and The Lion King are no longer an­im­ated films for chil­dren with feel-good songs and happy end­ings. The ac­tion-packed scenes and vi­ol­ent chases con­stantly pose the threat of someone get­ting hurt or killed, like the con­front­a­tion with King Louie, the wilde­beest stam­pede that kills Simba’s father, or the en­counter of the young lions with the hy­enas. They all trig­ger the same amount of ad­ren­aline as real an­imal en­coun­ters in the wild and the out­come of each con­front­a­tion is not as pre­dict­able as usual. There is no longer an em­bel­lish­ment of nat­ural vi­ol­ence or a light de­pic­tion of the prey-pred­ator re­la­tion­ship that de­scribes the law of the jungle. Every scene brings an ad­di­tion to the dram­at­ism and con­stant danger faced by a real lion cub left alone in the wil­der­ness or by a young boy find­ing his way in the jungle. Young adults would find it en­ter­tain­ing in the way a fight between Iron Man and a bad ter­ror­ist is, how­ever, very small chil­dren would find little if no con­tent ap­pro­pri­ate for their viewing.

The pre­vi­ous men­tion of Iron Man was not by chance, as the dir­ector of The Lion King (2019) and of Jungle Book (2016) is Jon Favr­eau, fam­ous for pro­du­cing Iron Man (2008) and Avengers: In­fin­ity War (2018) and Avengers: En­dgame (2019). This as­pect by it­self ex­plains many of the dif­fer­ences that set the two re­cent films apart from their old an­im­ated ver­sions. How­ever, by choos­ing this dir­ector, the Dis­ney stu­dios have clearly aimed at a dif­fer­ent, more mod­ern pub­lic, but most im­port­antly, at an older pub­lic that ac­cepts the pres­ence of songs and de­clar­at­ive moral teach­ings be­cause they act as in­her­ited trade­marks of the ori­ginal films.

Tak­ing all into con­sid­er­a­tion, the new Jungle Book and The Lion King stand apart among an­im­ated films with an­imal char­ac­ters through im­press­ive tech­no­lo­gical ad­vance­ments that cre­ate a very nat­ural visual ex­per­i­ence. The ac­tion scenes and the com­plex­ity of the char­ac­ters ap­peal to a more de­mand­ing pub­lic that ap­pre­ci­ates what was ini­tially a chil­dren’s story be­cause it chal­lenges ex­pect­a­tions and of­fers a more de­tailed and soph­ist­ic­ated cine­matic ex­per­i­ence. How­ever, the two films lose in the eyes of the view­ers by claim­ing to re­make the clas­sic Jungle Book and The Lion King, with their mem­or­able songs and charm­ing char­ac­ters. Their clash is ir­re­con­cil­able in a strange cre­ation that wants to bring the old and the new to­gether, when re­main­ing true to their own time would have made them mem­or­able cine­matic masterpieces.