Why the allegations?

[SummerSnowLeopard]

Okay, SuperBabyKopa, some people think that Kopa isn't canon but he is. They just don't beleive in him and do not see the facts that are right in front of their faces.

[Harvs]

Kopa ain't in the movie. Then who gives a poop?

[DGFone]

Considering the huge Kopa canon war that waged sometime around when I signed up, people cared - a lot.

I personally go with whatever fits whichever criteria I need it to. I read plenty of fanfictions where Kopa is alive for one reason or another, and I am fine by it. At the same time, you can think of just as many reasons in SP why Kopa doesn't need to have even existed for Simba to act the way he does in the movie, and go with the SP director's decision that Kiara was the one and only cub of Simba and Nala.

Obviously, just as Harvs just pointed out, seeing as Kopa wasn't in the official sequel, then generally you are more inclined to go with the fact that he isn't canon. Until you realize that The Lion King: Six New Adventures (the books where Kopa is featured in) are just as canon as Simba's Pride, that's when you get funny results.

Perhaps what made The Lion King so great is the fact that it was planned from the beginning to the end as a stand alone. Sequels were not in the creation process of it, and when Disney decided to make more Lion King material, they used other branches of their studios - with their TV department getting the job for Simba's Pride. But at the end of the day, the only "official" plot of The Lion King is the first movie, and I guess the Broadway musical, because the director helped write the plot for it too. Other than that, both Simba's Pride and 6NA are equally official and unofficial at the same time.

[TheLionPrince]

[quote="DGFone"]
Obviously, just as Harvs just pointed out, seeing as Kopa wasn't in the official sequel, then generally you are more inclined to go with the fact that he isn't canon. Until you realize that The Lion King: Six New Adventures (the books where Kopa is featured in) are just as canon as Simba's Pride, that's when you get funny results.[/quote]

Not necessarily. I do find Simba's Pride more official than Six New Adventures because actual filmmakers that worked on that film (much like the "canon" filmmakers) were officially working for Disney at that time. Take for example, Simba's Pride director, Darrell Rooney, he started at Disney in 1978 according to the reference citation. Kovu's lead animator, Andrew Collins, who confirmed that "Fluffy" is really a female in this Disney Adventures magazine interview, is listed here as being employed by Disney since 1989. If you're still not convinced, Simba's Pride producer, Jeannine Roussel, lists her resume as working on several Disney projects.

Six New Adventures gets held to a different standard for me because the writers of the book wrote other books for different publishers. For example, Judy Katsche (who wrote "Vulture Shock") is listed as writing many published books for different publishers other than Disney as listed here, which makes me think she isn't an official Disney employee. Even Kopa's creator, Alex Simmons acknowledges here that Kopa was his creation (not Disney's), and that the book series were thought be separate entities from the movies.

[quote="DGFone"]Perhaps what made The Lion King so great is the fact that it was planned from the beginning to the end as a stand alone. Sequels were not in the creation process of it, and when Disney decided to make more Lion King material, they used other branches of their studios - with their TV department getting the job for Simba's Pride. But at the end of the day, the only "official" plot of The Lion King is the first movie, and I guess the Broadway musical, because the director helped write the plot for it too. Other than that, both Simba's Pride and 6NA are equally official and unofficial at the same time.[/quote]

I agree with you for most of it, but I don't find the Broadway musical canon at all because Roger Allers and Irene Mecchi (co-screenwriter of the original film) wrote the musical in accordance to Julie Taymor's vision (not their own) in which she demanded Rafiki to be a female, and for King Scar to make undesired sexual advances with Nala, which is denied to have never happened in the original film because it was written out from the film according to Allers's comments before the deleted scene is played in the video:



Much like SNA, the Broadway musical should be viewed as a separate entity of the film.