Will the remake be realistic?

[TLK_Kid]

[quote="Warthog"] Yes, maybe it could be similar to Kovu's.[/quote]
Yep, that would work just fine.

[quote="Warthog"] A mandoon/babrill would be interesting. XD
By the way, I think he is just a mandrill with an abnormally long tail. In "The Lion Guard" we see baboons, that are clearly a different species from Rafiki's, and we also see that Makini (Rafiki's apprentice) has a short tail.
But if Disney wants to be realistic, Rafiki should be a baboon in the remake, since mandrills do not occur in Serengeti.[/quote]
It's a new species, seen only in The Lion King remake. Get your tickets now. I also think he's probably a mandrill, but maybe Disney used elements of a baboon's appearance in his design?

[Elton John]

[quote="TLK_Kid"][quote="Elton John"] how exactly did they ‘dig their own graves?’[/quote]
Cuz. Timon is a meerkat, but meerkats don't live in the Serengeti where the movie is set.[/quote]


meerkats also don’t sing elaborate musical numbers

or befriend lions

or.....

I don’t think Disney had realism in mind when they created the original.

[TLK_Kid]

[quote="Elton John"]meerkats also don’t sing elaborate musical numbers

or befriend lions

or.....

I don’t think Disney had realism in mind when they created the original.[/quote]
Well...ehh...

Okay, fair enough.

But that's all because it's a Disney movie, and rules of nature/logic/basically the universe don't apply. You'd think when choosing what type of animal Timon would be, they'd at least choose something appropriate to the region.

Then again, it's possible Timon isn't from the Serengeti at all. In 1 1/2, his home is shown to be pretty far away from the Pride Lands. Maybe he's from southern Africa and traveled up to where the story's set?

[Littlefoot]

[quote="TLK_Kid"][quote="Elton John"] how exactly did they ‘dig their own graves?’[/quote]
Cuz. Timon is a meerkat, but meerkats don't live in the Serengeti where the movie is set.[/quote]
Well, about that, Disney probably didn’t know at the time they made the original that they’d be doing a live-action remake 25 years later. Also, it’s not exactly like animated movies featuring anthropomorphized animals pay much attention to accuracy.

[Panpardus]

I think at least part of the original script was set closer to the Kalahari region, which is where meerkats are from; otherwise it's just general geographic inconsistencies. That said, I think they could get away with species-swapping a few characters to make more geographical sense. For instance, making Timon some other type of social mongoose -- like a banded mongoose: http://www.krugerpark.co.za/images/1-ba ... e-590a.jpg -- would be a great choice and wouldn't remove anything from his characterization. In fact, real-life banded mongoose are known to form close associations with both baboons and warthogs, so you already have a built-in ecological reason for Timon and Pumbaa to hang out together in that scenario. (And confer with Rafiki, if they want to hint at any of that Lion King 1.5 dynamic.)

As for things they could do to more accurately represent the various characters design-wise, I'm sure they'll find ways to work around it. They'll probably just default to more realistic colors for various characters while still trying to keep the individualized designs, especially for the lions since there's so many of them to have to keep track of. This doesn't have to reduce the movie-accurateness of the designs of course; if you look to biology, there's ways to make it work. For instance, Mufasa and Simba can keep at least their golden pelts due to erythrism, a condition that makes animals more reddish:

Spoiler: show

while Scar can have more grey-brown tones (complete with mostly black mane) like so:

Spoiler: show

Rafiki could be made to be a proper baboon and it wouldn't change anything, he just wouldn't be naturally colorful, although they could have him paint his face as part of his ceremonial position as Royal Mjuzi if they're going to keep that angle. Same with Zazu; if they want to make him a proper hornbill species then it won't matter all that much that he's not bright blue.

At this point my greatest fear is that they'll try to pull an anthropomorphized look like what Andy Serkis' Jungle Book film Mowgli is doing, but given what they did with The Jungle Book, I think we should be fine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzPUQsuHvEg