by DGFone » May 8th, 2015, 5:50 am
I'm surprised that no one has mentioned these very simple facts as to why Star Wars is far more poplar:
When it first came out in 1977, there really wasn't much like it. Sure, the story is cliched like mad, but the effects for the time were amazing, and in the end, despite all the cliches, the story was still good enough that people enjoyed the movies. Two more sequels a few years later only increased the fan base of these movies.
The Lion King on the other hand, already arrived when there were far more competitors around. Sure, it's a great animated movie that looks amazing and has a great story, but so is Beauty and the Beast. Simply put, The Lion King is the best of the Disney Renaissance, but in the end, it's the best of a series of great movies. I think Frozen has a huge fanbase for similar reasons as Star Wars: recent movies haven't been as good, so by comparison, Frozen is much better. The Lion King didn't have this advantage of being released in the middle of a slump.
And the other reason is related: Star Wars is far older, and it has currently six official movies, with three more to come. The Lion King is basically based on the fact that a lot of people agree that one movie is great. (Most people as far as I can tell are not aware of TLK 2 and 1 1/2, or at least haven't seen them).
For Star Wars, there are six movies to gain fans of. There are fans of the original trilogy, and there are fans of the new trilogy, but they are all considered SW fans.
The TL;DR version is simple: Star Wars is more popular because it has a 2 decade head start on The Lion King
