The Lion King (2019)
★★ — The Lion King (2019)
Jon Favreau came to this project off the back of his well-received 2016 Disney venture The Jungle Book, another photorealistic CGI reimagining of a classic animated property, and the commercial logic of repeating that formula with The Lion King was fairly obvious. The original 1994 film, directed by Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff, had itself drawn comparisons to Shakespeare's Hamlet and gone on to become one of the most profitable traditionally animated films ever made. This 2019 version, produced on a reported $260 million budget, deployed a virtual production pipeline so advanced that Favreau and his team essentially filmed inside a computer-generated African environment using VR headsets, a process the production described as "photreal" filmmaking. It opened in July 2019 and went on to gross over $1.6 billion worldwide, making it one of the highest-earning films of that year.
This isn’t a remake, it’s a near-shot-for-shot digital replica of the 1994 classic, rendered in hyper-realistic CGI that’s technically impressive but emotionally dead. Every blade of grass, every ripple in the water, every animal’s fur is rendered with jaw-dropping detail. And yet, for all its visual polish, the film feels utterly soulless. The magic of animation (the expressiveness, the exaggeration, the heart) has been replaced by a slick, lifeless photorealism that drains the life out of everything. The story is unchanged, the script almost identical, the songs still the same beloved tracks. But without the hand-drawn emotion, the musical numbers fall flat. “Circle of Life” lacks awe. “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King” has no bounce. “Hakuna Matata” feels like a chore. The animals don’t emote like characters, they look like animals, which sounds right but kills the storytelling. How do you convey Simba’s guilt, Scar’s venom, or Timon and Pumba’s goofiness when faces can’t smile or frown the way they need to? The voice cast (Donald Glover, Beyoncé, James Earl Jones returning) do what they can, but they’re working against a wall of uncanny visuals and a complete lack of spontaneity. There’s no joy, no warmth, no risk. It’s all so safe, so calculated, so empty. It doesn’t add anything new, doesn’t reinterpret, doesn’t even try to be different. It exists because it can, not because it should. It’s not offensive. It’s not badly made. But it’s a hollow echo of a masterpiece, a technical exercise with no heart. The original was about life, legacy, and feeling. This one is just pixels. Soulless. Unnecessary. A 2-hour-and-a-half screensaver with a soundtrack.
Rating: ★★ | Year: 2019 | Watched: 2025-07-31
Where to watch (UK)
Stream: Disney Plus
Rent: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Sky Store
Buy: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies
Physical: Amazon UK
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