Why Simba is the true Conspirator

[KopaLeo]

The script writer didn’t say this openly, was because that the deeper meanings of the movie is for us to dig out. Remember, the one who wrote the script was not a child! He was not with that simple a mind. I suggest you guys to read The Catcher in the Rye when you have some time, it is a very good example. Though the book was meant for the middle school students to read, its meaning was not just that much at all. It contained a lot of allusions to Genesis, we simply didn’t notice them. Because even the book was written in the tone of a young man, the author was a writer who could see deeply into the cores of social problems. This is also true for TLK.


This remark made by cioz seems to fit here.

[Azdgari]

Did you read Amadeus's post? =P

And while that's all well and good, that's not a response to any of our posts. I'm failing to see the evidence for this theory beyond the fact that Simba's (shocker!) excited to be King someday.

[KopsTheTerminator]

[quote="KopaLeo"]The script writer didn’t say this openly, was because that the deeper meanings of the movie is for us to dig out. Remember, the one who wrote the script was not a child! [/quote]

No. Simba was way too young, do you really think children his age are able to come up with such twisted and sinister plans? Children that age may dislike their parents because they don't understand why they don't them have their way, but they never KILL them (unless they have some sort of mental disorder or something.. xD). Seriously now? Like Flip said, there's a difference between analyzing and over-analyzing. Does Simba look like some psychotic, sinister cub to you?

[MurderVictim]

Okay...Wow...

"I Just Can't Wait to be King" is obviously about Simba being excited of his future role. Think about it: He was just told that one day he would inherit the land he walks on. That he would be called "King". I would think a lot of us would be excited about that, especially as young children. Simba was just far too young to realize the downsides of him becoming king, which was his father dying and him needing to take quite a bit of responsiblity. Which he eventually learns.

Simba, to me, was the equivalent of a seven year old. Maybe eight or nine. Not exactly an age where one would want to kill a parent. He couldn't possibly plan to kill his father...He loved him! He was absolutely heartbroken when he found his dead body. He cried next to Mufasa after nudging under his massive paw for some last comfort. Does that really say "prince that wanted his father dead"? No. It really doesn't. If the creators wanted us to see Simba in another light, they would have made it more obvious, at least a tad. Sorry, but all this sounds like is twisting meanings around till someone sees what they want to see.

[KopaLeo]

Translator’s note: These are the ensued debates cioz made. Some other posts were translated as well to make his posts more sensible. They may not be direct replies toward your arguments, but they made some new points and supported the theory. The purpose I translated this is not only to share this rather twisted interpretation, but also because I saw no sound refutations in the original post, and I hoped to find some here, since the theory made me turn around in my bed and have bad dreams about evil Simba. I read all your arguments, and they were much more cogent than the ones they made in the original post.


—Your analysis was good, but you were thinking too much! The movie was meant to be teaching us good and beauty!

—No, you are stupid. TLK was not some complicated novel, just a fun-for-the-whole-family movie. Also, how could Timon and Pumbaa tell Simba was the prince first time they saw him?


Perhaps they didn’t think that Simba was the prince when they first adopted him. But they did so with the idea that “maybe he’ll be on our side”, and they found that they won big. Think about the scene where they talked about the stars, maybe they had already deduced that the lion they adopted was no normal lion.

The director could make Pirates of the Caribbean, which was with an extremely complex plot, of course he could make a TLK with a hidden meaning.

We are normal guys, and politicians are politicians precisely because they have superhuman judgment and deduction abilities. Just take a look at the historic events. Han Xin (Liu Bang’s biggest helper in the conquering process) followed Liu Bang (a guy who started off as a peasant and ended up becoming the first king of Han Dynasty), because he could tell that Liu Bang can become the emperor. This is their superhuman gift, something that is beyond our imagination.

—“maybe they had already deduced that the lion they adopted was no normal lion. ” They were merely two funny morons.

—You are just trying to cause troubles.


History can’t be that simple, TLK also. Undiscovered meanings are not nonexistent. Every movie must be watched dialectically, its deeper meanings dug out, to completely understand the movie.

—Interesting conspiracy theory

—Did the production group of TLK say that they meant the story to mean that? And your theory was fuul of holes, stop showing your stupid nonsensical ideas. (personal remarks)

—You analytical ability was very good, but maybe it suits Detective Movies and Suspicion Movies better, not for TLK.


You are right, I am fond of reading and watching books and movies about detective stories, and I can boast that I’m quite good at it now, at least for some low-standard detective books, I can guess the ending after reading the beginning. As for high-standard ones, I can do it roughly.

But that’s not my main point here. As a little lion, Simba’s “I Just Can’t Wait to be King” was very much not for his age. Say it was due to the cub’s innocence, maybe, partially. But compare him with Kiara, and you can see that for cubs, it is not normal to think about becoming the king all the time. But Simba the conspirator thought about it.
Kiara was the true reflection of an ordinary lion: innocent as a cub, without a worry. Simba wasn’t like that at all, not ever since he was a cub.


—TLK is not Machiavellian.



If lions are not Machiavellian, then why was there a Scar? Look at him, his evil was as plain as the scar on his face, his ambition was completely exposed. Everyone knew it.

Look at the real lions, they are down right Machiavellians. Lions usually fight over preys, and they fight openly for the status of th leader of the pride.

We can’t imagine that Disney didn’t take what happens in the true lion prides into the movie: everyone was with conspiracies, everyone can see only his/her own good, the problem is only who has the best strategy.

About Timon and Pumbaa, I’ll discuss them later. Let me first talk about the animals appeared at the ceremony, the problem is: did they want to pay their respect to the royal family? The answer is clearly no. Mufasa’s explanation about the Circle of Life had already indicated clearly that lions hunt, they eat the animals who attended the ceremony. Then why did they attend the ceremony? The answer is to protect themselves. If they didn’t pay their respect, lions would be fiercer to them. Lions, who were at the top of the food chain, could talk loftily about the Circle of Life; for the smaller animals, the only important thing was to avoid being eaten by lions and live on as long as possible.

When Timon and Pumbaa first saw Simba, they knew it was a lion, which means they had seen lions and lion cubs before. Timon wanted to run at the first sight of it, which means they had been chased by lions before. In the jungle, according to them, there wasn’t any herbivore like antelopes, only bugs. However, it was unlikely, given the size of it, so their real purpose was to incept Simba with the idea that there were only bugs in the jungle, so that he wouldn’t go preying. OK what I wanted to say was that, Timon and Pumbaa raised the lion with extreme caution, letting the lion have its strength, but not its wild nature. Why? They wanted to benefit from it without endangering themselves, and they benefited big. Maybe they didn’t know that Simba would become the king, but even befriending just a normal lion could benefit them big. Also, when they first returned to Pride Lands, Simba said “this is my home”, and Timon and Pumbaa recognized at once that Simba was the Lion King and bowed, which meant that they knew about lions’ social structure(we can infer from TLK1.5 that they probably learnt it from the Pride Lands). So they made use of this system: little cubs must belong to a pride. Even if Simba was not the Lion King, he could be used as a protection in case some other lion wanted to hunt them. The scene of Nala’s hunt proved this point clearly.

That much supporting details can’t be coincidences, but clear proofs of my theory!

—You are imaginative, too much. Your analysis was right, but the production group didn't mean it. They meant to teach true, beauty, good, responsibility, life. And the I Just Can't Wait to be King, Simba wasn't thinking about killing anyone, just that he would be the king one day.

—You are just making the plot to agree with your theory.

—You think too much.
—You think too much.
—You think too much.
—That's right, he thinks too much.


If you think so, please compare him with Kiara. When Simba said that she would be the queen, she said “But what if I don't wanna be Queen? It's no fun.”
That’s how a cub should think and talk. Cubs should be thinking about having a carefree life, not giving out orders.

I repeat: from a superficial point of view, TLK was adapted from Hamlet, TLK2 Romeo and Juliet, TLK3 was meant to be funny. Even so, the two Shakespearean dramas are not simple odes for justice and love. For the hidden meanings, you can search for some professional analysis, there are plentiful of them.

OK, get back to the main point. Since Simba knew that he would become the king one day, why did he just can’t wait to be? This is a very important problem, on which I developed all my analysis and logical reasoning. Now let’s think about Simba’s intentions. He backed himself with the position of Future King, and mustered all the animals to help him to go to the Elephant Graveyard. From this we can see that Simba was no normal lion, but a Machiavellian one. A small cub, under normal circumstances, couldn’t possibly fool the experienced majordomo Zazu. But Simba was so able, he managed the impossible. Such a long time was portioned to the scene, the aim was unmistakable: foreshadowing. This is not simply a failed plot of Scar, but an allusion of Simba’s much more sinister conspiracy. It’s never too young to be ambitious. The talents of the conspirators, was way beyond the normal people.

Also, if you want to claim that Disney can’t make animations without deeper meanings, I won’t take it. Many Disney animations are either satires to current global affairs or some politicians. In short, under the childlike, “funny animal” characters, are not only meanings about true, good and beauty. Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, are not just mouse and duck, but with meanings. As for the actual meanings and satires’ object, you can search them out.


As for my method of looking back to the story from the perspective of my theory, this is the standard way to analyze movies and books. You must look into the deepest of the movies and books before analyzing; plowing through every sentence, making sense of every word to really understand it.

The script writer didn’t say this openly, was because that the deeper meanings of the movie is for us to dig out. Remember, the one who wrote the script was not a child! He was not with that simple a mind. I suggest you guys to read The Catcher in the Rye when you have some time, it is a very good example. Though the book was meant for the middle school students to read, its meaning was not just that much at all. It contained a lot of allusions to Genesis, we simply didn’t notice them. Because even the book was written in the tone of a young man, the author was a writer who could see deeply into the cores of social problems. This is also true for TLK.

—This is just a fun-for-the-whole-family movie, why so much conspiracy theory? You are paranoid，with a perverse system of values.

—You are just bending the story backwards to prove your theory.

—Mufasa was the real conspirator, do you know why? (this is probably a sarcasm)


I have explained why Simba just couldn’t wait——he backed himself with the position of Future King. The experienced majordomo Zazu was hard to fool, but Simba managed it. Why? This is worth noting.

Mufasa was not with so many conspiracies, because he approved it when Kovu assumed the throne. Because these were just internal conflicts, the power wouldn’t be seized by other prides.

But internal conflicts need the power of the people (the author was probably referring to Maoism), Scar allied the hyenas, Simba the lionesses. Look the parade of Scar’s troops, I feel that he could seize the power by pure military force.


Mufasa was in the end just a great king who died saving his son, Simba was the acclaimed hero. Because he was the rightful king.

Mufasa was not happy with a total outbreak of the Simba-Zira conflict, at least superficially. He was always expressing that: it was not important that I died, it was not important that Scar killed me, but you shouldn’t continue the internal conflict for too long (the original language was referring to the Cultural Revolution), for if the total power of the pride was wasted too much, other prides could usurp. From the start that Mufasa told Simba to reclaim the throne, to later support Kovu, he expressed the basic idea that “moderate internal strife was acceptable, but not total outbreak” The true agitator who caused the total warfare was Simba, because he was the extreme egoist. He first adopted the totally antagonistic policy, then he found that his daughter fell in love with Kovu, and his conspiracy was in danger of being leaked. So he hastily decided to do them a favor and make Kovu the king.

All in all, Mufasa was a very normal lion: talk little and do things. But he was not the main character, for him, he could only give Simba lectures, but whether Simba listen or not was another matter. Look TLK, from the appearance of it, Simba didn’t accept Mufasa’s teachings before Rafiki explained it.

The We Are One song was also a hint. Simba was trying to instill the idea that “We are one family”, but Kiara asked back “am I just one part of some big plan?” This indicates clearly that Simba was not forced to fight a final war with Zira’s pride, but he planned it all. Since the candidates of Kiara’s mate were few, Simba made a brilliant move: to remove Kovu’s power as he was made the king. In the end, Kovu would be without personal followers, powerless to rebel. And we have adequate reasons to believe that Kovu would be hen-pecked after he had become the king, because it was Simba who made him the king, he would feel inappropriate to say else. Without Simba’s acceptance, he had already died on the war field. So to say Simba was the true conspirator, this is a point alluded many times in the movies, and not a ridiculous theory at all.

—You’d better say that all Disney-made animations are dark and evil, without any bit of good and beauty. Disney would never think about the dark and complex things, they meant to express the good and noble spirit, and this is the essence of animation (you can call me childish for all I care). If what you think is true, then why TLK, why Disney? Simba cried after his father’s death, and the background music was so sad, it could be faked (and none else was there). And Simba was not like what you’ve explained. If he wanted to become the king at all costs, why did he need Nala’s love? Why did he think it was all his fault? Why did he go to the pond to meet his father’s spirit? Why didn’t he return? If the TLK fans ever get to know your theory, they would hurl all their abuse at you without doubt (fortunately this seems not be the case). Do you think guys at Disney have your kind of thinking? Do you think Disney made TLK just so that you can show off your nonsensical dark logic to everyone? Don’t abuse TLK to show off here OK? How dare you say that about Simba? Just because you have a mouth?

Guys, it’s meaningless for me to say more. We are totally debating nothing about what I meant to post this now. I was talking about another interpretation of TLK, since Disney usually add social satire into the animations. Now this post is becoming a debate about whether I should explain in this way, not whether this is a right theory. This is my personal interpretation of the animation, I meant to discuss it and refine it with everyone. But you keep criticizing the meaning of it, and didn’t pay any attention to the explanation itself.

So I felt that I should stop here, because if you think TLK is such a simple movie, why did it acquire a long-lasting widespread appeal? Like Shakespearean dramas, TLK is with deeper meanings. I’ve made my point and I’ll stop here, I won’t reply the post anymore.

[Azdgari]

[quote]politicians are politicians precisely because they have superhuman judgment and deduction abilities.[/quote]

I'm sorry, but that is the quote of the century. xD



MOVING ON:

I actually read every word. This is your interpretation, that's fine. All the power to you, you've clearly spnt a lot of time working on it. But I feel obliged to continue to point out the flaws I see with it, if just for the sake of having a good discussion. Here's a few things that stuck out to me.

A) I don't understand what you're arguing about Timon and Pumbaa. Yes, they taking Simba in had a fringe benefit of having a lion to protect him. What dos this have to do with Simba's conspiracy?

B) You're essentially saying every single action and every single iota of personality that the movie gave Simba was basically a ploy (well, actually you did this for pretty much every character in the movie, so this isn't exactly isolated.) And I say for the thousandth time, simply watching their bonding scene before Mufasa is killed should disprove this theory in and of itself, but there seems to be no response to that. Taking a step back, the cornerstone of your theory remains that a young (equivalent to what, 10, 11 years?) child murdered his dad so he could be King.

B) [quote]If you think so, please compare him with Kiara. When Simba said that she would be the queen, she said “But what if I don't wanna be Queen? It's no fun.”
That’s how a cub should think and talk. Cubs should be thinking about having a carefree life, not giving out orders. [/quote]

With respect, who are you to say what a cub should do? How do you know better than any of us? Every person (and I will argue cub as well) is different. If me and my friend Dan get news we're going to be president, we will react in different ways. If anything, it's more normal to get psyched that you're going to be king. :3

[quote]it is not normal to think about becoming the king all the time. [/quote]
C'mon. How can you make such deep theories and then say things like this? It's a castle built on pillars of salt.



C) [quote]The We Are One song was also a hint. Simba was trying to instill the idea that “We are one family”, but Kiara asked back “am I just one part of some big plan?”[/quote]

No, I'm 99% that this is a reference to every growing child's need to find their place in the world, which is much more concurrent with the rest of the song than, "Simba, am I just part of your giant conspiracy to isolate start a war (which I'm sure would win you Mufasa's approval which you're clearly searching for the entire movie) and then isolate Kovu so I can have a mate?"

D) [quote]He backed himself with the position of Future King, and mustered all the animals to help him to go to the Elephant Graveyard. From this we can see that Simba was no normal lion, but a Machiavellian one. A small cub, under normal circumstances, couldn’t possibly fool the experienced majordomo Zazu. But Simba was so able, he managed the impossible. [/quote]

Again, my only response is c'mon. And he only mustered one animal, his best friend Nala.

[quote]Such a long time was portioned to the scene, the aim was unmistakable: foreshadowing. [/quote]
Nothing foreshadows like a catchy, peppy musical number! =P

[KopsTheTerminator]

My question still remains unanswered.

Honestly, you can twist the plot in any movie and get something like this...

[FlipMode]

[quote="KopsTheTerminator"] Does Simba look like some psychotic, sinister cub to you?[/quote]



^.^

By the way, Mufasa had the ability to read the future, and let all of this happen, he knew his son was evil.

All jokes aside for a moment though, now, while some stories do require deep thinking to get to plot points that were supposed to be there. This is just not one of those films to be doing that with, and in doing so your mind will eventually find things that are in fact not there.

I can give you an example, Poundland. Not relevant, but an example, Poundland is a a shop here in England where every item is £1. Now that includes things like a box of cereal, which in any other major big name shop would be about 80 pence, but because you go in there with the notion that everything is £1 your mind forgets that you could be paying more and assumes it to be cheaper.

Or when people thought they saw the face of the devil during the 9/11 attacks, but it was just the way the smoke happened to take shape.

What I am trying to say is, yes over analysing things and making theories is fun and is what this board is about. But the point is, he is trying to make it sound as if this some kind of unarguable fact, when it is not, hence why they call it a "theory".
Saying things like "We must analyse the stories to find the truths deep within them." is a load of rubbish, like I said it is fun to theorise, but to go into that much detail to try and prove something as fact over fiction, is well... It is just wrong! All so very wrong.

[KopsTheTerminator]

[quote="FlipMode"][quote="KopsTheTerminator"] Does Simba look like some psychotic, sinister cub to you?[/quote]



^.^[/quote]



But yes, I agree with your post. I could honestly get the plot for Care Bears and twist it into a show that supports Satanism if I wanted to lol.

[KopaLeo]

[quote="MurderVictim"]Okay...Wow...

He was absolutely heartbroken when he found his dead body. He cried next to Mufasa after nudging under his massive paw for some last comfort. Does that really say "prince that wanted his father dead"? No. It really doesn't. If the creators wanted us to see Simba in another light, they would have made it more obvious, at least a tad. Sorry, but all this sounds like is twisting meanings around till someone sees what they want to see.[/quote]

To start with, Simba cried before his father’s dead body, and rubbed under his paw. You say it was his true emotion, but what is the truth? Methinks it was intended to show it to Scar. When Scar told him to run away, he didn’t walk away slowly, but ran away quickly. If, according to the shallow interpretation, he didn’t know Scar’s plot, he should have felt guilty, and should have accepted it when Scar faked to comfort him. Simba would not have thought that Scar would send hyenas. But Simba ran away at once, and he escaped in the right route, which meant that he was not unprepared.
Also, Simba saw his father climbing up, and I suppose his eyesight wasn’t that poor that he didn’t see Scar threw him off. There was even a shot showing Mufasa climbing up in Simba’s viewpoint. He saw it all, and he was still pretending, which showed his conspiring mind.