by CEVRAM » August 12th, 2024, 7:34 pm
To me personally, the classic 2d Lion King introduced more than just another franchise to the world of animation. It invented an entirely new artstyle and approach to drawing animal characters that many people have since fell in love with and is universally recognized across multiple generations for it's uniqueness and charm. Therefore, the transition to the CGI formula, irregardless of color saturation or brightness, effectively strips this beloved household name of what made it special and memorable in the first place.
I know that some artists have come up with creative interpretations of the original TLK style over the years, but these always maintained a level of connection and ressemblance to the source material to the point where anyone is able to make a direct association between the two at first glance.
This is not the case when it comes to the highly realistic depictions of CGI productions, where non anthropomorphic animals look basically the same across different worlds and are deprived of all the captivating features that only more “cartoonish” stylizations can provide. You could pretty much drop Aslam from Narnia into the 2019 remake or the upcomimg Mufasa movie and he wouldn’t look out of place there, and the same applies to any other fictional lifelike looking lion from a different universe.
Now visuals aside, which are my only major pet peeve with Disney’s current outlook on the franchise, the actual plot seems interesting enough to make the movie worth watching for me, under the mindset that it’s storyline takes place in an alternate, and completely unrelated dimension from the 1994 and 1998 releases.
