My Lion King Forum

Everything the light touches is our kingdom.
But how large is that, exactly?
Because technically, sunlight "touches" a great deal of space, encompassing the great African plains, the whole world (at some point in the day), and even beyond that. And I don't think Muffy meant that the entire solar system belongs to him lol
The kingdom obviously extends past the Serengeti, which was the place used as the inspiration and filming spot for TLK. In early scripts of TLK, especially the COL scene, animals are described to be migrating from very remote places such as Kilimanjaro, which is another National Park in Tanzania, and Victoria Falls (Zimbabwe??).
Is Mufasa's roar really that powerful? A normal lion's roar is only supposed to extend to a radius of about five miles. So if we're assuming that all the animals that were in range and went to the presentation were all the animals in his entire kingdom, then the Pridelands would actually be only 10 miles in diameter all around, aka much smaller than Mufasa led Simba to believe. Furthermore, it only took Simba and Nala a couple of hours at most to ditch Zazu during IJCWTBK and enter enemy territory, so unless Pride Rock lies on the very fringes of Mufasa's kingdom, the Pridelands can't be very large either.
Thoughts?

Interesting thread there!
Haha I kind of thought about this before too :P. I think that when he said "everything the light touches", he meant in the sense of everything that was visible in the distance from where they were sitting.
They only rule over the Pridelands though right? If Pride Rock is say, in the centre of the PrideLands... Then there is also the space behind it to consider...

Well by the time Muffy showed the kingdom to Simba the sun was still rising,and thus it wouldn't have been able to "touch" the same amount of land as it would perhaps in the middle of the day. It is an interesting question though as Mufasas kingdom was obviously rather above average size still.

[quote="FlipMode"]Haha I kind of thought about this before too . I think that when he said "everything the light touches", he meant in the sense of everything that was visible in the distance from where they were sitting.[/quote]
Ooh I like that idea the image of Mufasa being able to watch over all the animals in his entire kingdom from the top of Pride Rock is somewhat reassuring ^^ Many aspects in this film are not meant to be taken literally anyway, like the idea that the stars in the sky are really dead kings lol. So maybe Mufasa meant that everything within their range of vision (aka whatever the sunlight reached at dawn) from that particular promontory belonged to him.

[quote="Amanda"][quote="FlipMode"]Haha I kind of thought about this before too . I think that when he said "everything the light touches", he meant in the sense of everything that was visible in the distance from where they were sitting.[/quote]
Ooh I like that idea the image of Mufasa being able to watch over all the animals in his entire kingdom from the top of Pride Rock is somewhat reassuring ^^ Many aspects in this film are not meant to be taken literally anyway, like the idea that the stars in the sky are really dead kings lol. So maybe Mufasa meant that everything within their range of vision (aka whatever the sunlight reached at dawn) from that particular promontory belonged to him.[/quote]
This makes the most sense. But something I've always laughed at is that "That shadowy place" doesn't belong to them, so if the whole place is shadowy (aka at night) does none of it belong to Mufasa at night?

[quote="FlipMode"]I think that when he said "everything the light touches", he meant in the sense of everything that was visible in the distance from where they were sitting.[/quote]
THIS^^

I don't think Mufasa mislead Simba =) First of all, Simba was very young, and probably couldn't get much concept of sizes or distances on that scale. Also, In SP, The Outlanders make a very big deal about the wonderfulness of the pridelands, which leads me to believe that they're almost certainly the largest and most powerful pride in the area.

I always kinda thought everything that was visible from the tip of Pride Rock. That could exclude what's behind it; no one really seemed to care much about what was back there except Kiara when she was running off in SP. It seems to me that Mufasa's roar probably couldn't carry that far. Case in point, the big long zoom-out that took place during the beginning of TLK 1 1/2.

That brings me to another point, which pretty debunks my earlier statement if true. You could just barely see Pride rock from the place Timon lived, and it seemed to me that wasn't part of the Pridelands, unless it was and the Pridelanders just didn't really care about it. It sort of seemed to me that Timon and Pumbaa's journey prior to stumbling upon Simba was through the Pridelands.

I think that in TLK1, the Pridelands did simply include everything visible from Pride Rock. After all, when TLK1 was being made, the producers and scriptwriters probably didn't anticipate that little tidbit I mentioned from TLK 1 1/2. They probably hoped and assumed (partically correctly) that that little detail would be pretty much ignored if they didn't draw attention to it.

[quote="Mike"]I don't think Mufasa mislead Simba =) First of all, Simba was very young, and probably couldn't get much concept of sizes or distances on that scale. Also, In SP, The Outlanders make a very big deal about the wonderfulness of the pridelands, which leads me to believe that they're almost certainly the largest and most powerful pride in the area.[/quote]
Yes. Mufasa's Pride is quite possibly the best in the world!

Someone should draw a map...