Going into more detail on how unrealistic the materials are...
- Real-life lions and animals cannot speak.
If there were speaking amongst African animals, it wouldn't be English.
Real-life lions see no more meaning to love than, well, sex.
If a real-life lion encountered a monkey or bird, it would promptly ingest it without further thought.
Real-life lions don't "look up to the skies" to consult their past pride leaders.
Real-life lions don't come up with sophisticated plans to take over a pride - they simply attack, or don't.
Hyenas don't play with their prey.
Lions and hyenas, no matter how evil, do not join forces.
Real-life animals simply do not have the mental capacity to do what was done in the Lion King films and other materials.
Despite the incredible unrealisticnes of the Lion King materials, they have been undeniably a smash hit among audiences all over the world. They were able to achieve this largely by finding the right balance of realism and fantasy. real-life lion footage is often boring. Hardly enough to fill over an hour of movie time with any interesting plot. Cartoon lion footage is often so unrealistic that viewers are actually past the interested phase, and are flat-out bothered. Disney has achieved a balance that seems to have gone over well in the film and book industry.
The only question is, how did they decide what was the best level of realism? The characters can talk, and have human-like intelligence, but no unrealistic physical abilities such as dexterous paws, unrealistic strength, or supernatural flight.
One unrelated, but interesting detail, is that only the main characters can talk. All others, such as the zebras, wildebeest, etc., seem to be regular animals lacking speech and intelligent thought capabilities.
The Lion King and related materials aren't the only Disney movies to have such a balance. Cars has it, too. If one watches the special features on the Cars DVD, they will hear from the makers themselves that they had to re-do much of the movie after they decided that the realism balance wasn't correct. So obviously, Disney keeps this in mind.
I don't know how they do it, but Disney seems to keep a reasonable balance in all (or most, anyway) of its movies that involve fantastic characters and events. The Lion King is no exception. This, I would say, has been a major key to the success of these incredible films.
