The Two Majesties Oil Painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme

[Moka]

I was at the Milwaukee Art Museum recently and stumbled upon this painting. Look familiar?

[quote]The Two Majesties (Les Deux Majestés)
A highly esteemed Salon painter and respected professor at the École des Beaux-Arts, Jean-Léon Gérôme embodied the artistic establishment of late-nineteenth-century Paris. Like Delacroix and Chassériau before him, Gérôme recorded the daily life and customs of the people and places he saw on his many travels to North Africa and the Near East with the zeal of an ethnographer. This painting is remarkable for its quiet solemnity. A huge, solitary lion, the king of the beasts, gazes across the seemingly endless terrain at the majestic setting sun, thus explaining the romantic title. The eerie grandeur is dramatized by the lion's profile, the single vertical element, against the horizontal planes of the desert.[/quote]

Just thought I'd share this coincidental resemblance.

[Regulus]

I guess this is where Disney started taking notes.

[Lauren]

That painting is very beautiful.

[TheLionPrince]

The painting is really beautiful! I would love to own it if I could! However, the painting also reminds me of the last screenshot of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith:

http://screencaps.us/sw/2005-starwars3/full/revenge-of-the-sith-starwarsscreencaps.com-15813.jpg

Luke's step-uncle and his wife take a gaze across the desert plains of Tatooine at the majestic setting sun during sunset.

[DGFone]

The "making of" did say that The Lion King art style was heavily inspired by, as they put it, "enhanced naturalism". And sure enough, guess what form of art this painting is? Yup: naturalism.

I won't be surprised at all to know that Disney saw this painting while they were making the movie. Although at the same time, the whole "characters in the sunset/rise" is one of the most popular lighting scenes for movies, so Disney could have easily reached this same scene without actually having seen the picture.

But if I had to take a guess, I would say that they knew about the painting versus not knowing about it.

[Regulus]

[quote="TheLionPrince"]The painting is really beautiful! I would love to own it if I could! However, the painting also reminds me of the last screenshot of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith:

http://screencaps.us/sw/2005-starwars3/full/revenge-of-the-sith-starwarsscreencaps.com-15813.jpg

Luke's step-uncle and his wife take a gaze across the desert plains of Tatooine at the majestic setting sun during sunset.[/quote]

That scene was modeled after the binary sunset scene in A New Hope. I don't really see much resemblance, other than the fact that it's a sunset, and as it has already been pointed out:

[quote="DGFone"]the whole "characters in the sunset/rise" is one of the most popular lighting scenes for movies[/quote]

[TheLionPrince]

[quote="Regulus"][quote="TheLionPrince"]The painting is really beautiful! I would love to own it if I could! However, the painting also reminds me of the last screenshot of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith:

http://screencaps.us/sw/2005-starwars3/full/revenge-of-the-sith-starwarsscreencaps.com-15813.jpg

Luke's step-uncle and his wife take a gaze across the desert plains of Tatooine at the majestic setting sun during sunset.[/quote][/quote]

That scene was modeled after the binary sunset scene in A New Hope. I don't really see much resemblance, other than the fact that it's a sunset, and as it has already been pointed out:

Yeah, I knew that! That was the scene when Luke steps outside, and sees the binary suns of Tatooine. I was going to include that it was inspired by A New Hope in my post, but either I forgot or I was tired. While there isn't a resemblance, I still see a similarity with a character gazing across a plain looking at the sun during a sunset.

DGFone, do you know any more movies that have the "characters in the sunset/rise"? It adds an epic quality to it, I must say. I think Lawrence of Arabia had it if I remember correctly?

[DGFone]

[quote="TheLionPrince"]
Yeah, I knew that! That was the scene when Luke steps outside, and sees the binary suns of Tatooine. I was going to include that it was inspired by A New Hope in my post, but either I forgot or I was tired. While there isn't a resemblance, I still see a similarity with a character gazing across a plain looking at the sun during a sunset.

DGFone, do you know any more movies that have the "characters in the sunset/rise"? It adds an epic quality to it, I must say. I think Lawrence of Arabia had it if I remember correctly?[/quote]

If you watch the Nostalgia Critic episode on Pearl Harbor, he makes fun of Michael Bay running out of sunset funding. Although the worst scene like that I will have to say goes to Avatar, where they filmed a sunset, and then went and CGI'd the sun out in post. It looks very strange to see ocean water reflect the sun, when there's no sun to reflect.

In the end, I would say that while the sunset/sunrise is still an easy way to make a scene more "epic", but because of that, it's also one of the most over-done cliche's in movies. The only times I see it done right is when the lighting is used to enhance the scene rather than be the main focus - such as when Simba and Mufasa have the talk on top of Pride Rock. The sunrise was there, but the main focus was still on the lions.