First off, I know those are wildebeest lol. Sorry for the misspeak. Also, I’ve been seeing some comments about how predators are good for ecosystems, and honestly I’m not sure what to tell you. If every group in the film is essentially human, then imagine telling a member of that group, “no that I’m gonna eat you alive, but no, you don’t have a choice in that process.” It’s ridiculous to think of that as a win for the antelope. I’m not saying lions in real life or in this movie are evil, I mean they are carnivores after all. but they’re not helping the creatures they’re eating in this movie. Lions do not eat antelopes because of ethics. they do not care abt the environment or any other pseudo-ethical justification. If lions and antelope were people, lions might still need to eat antelope, but for Mufasa to tell his son all about the beneficence of that action for the antelope would be utter bullshit. Ascribing some moral code to the utterly amoral world of nature and predation is the very pitfall that the lion king fell into. And it's interesting to see that concept repeated so many times here. Okay have fun with the rest of your day! If you want to maybe give me money, here's my patreon lol www.patreon.com/bigjoel
Hyenas are a female led species. Their leaders are female and males are subordinate in their packs. You left out the obvious implications of presenting the hyenas as the 'evil' opposition to the 'natural, good' order. The story has a lot of subversive narratives running through it.
Favourite Lion fact? When a pride is overtaken by a new alfa male, he usually kills the existing young cubs. Partly to not propagate the old leaders genes and partly to make the females ready to mate. So, with two coup d'etats in the film... I'm pretty sure that there was a lot of off screen infanticide going on both when Scar took over and when Simba took it back a year or so later (I'm not sure how fast lions grow) Oh... And by all I've heard about Lions... Simba and Nala are almost certainly at least half-siblings... Yay, incest!
Yeah, the aesthetics really mess it up. Thanks for pointing out why it is an awful choice aside from 'looking wrong'. The bit with the mumbling animals was gold. Favourite Lion fact: Lions are apparently susceptible to catnip. Also, hyena's get a bad rap. Thanks for the cute hyena pics.
I'm not trying to defend the good or bad within the Lion King mythos, but I think you dove a bit too far and have lost sight of some things. Maybe go back and watch it again.
Except that these aren't people, Joel, they're animals. I feel you've stretched a bit here; yes, they're anthropomorphised but that's so we can understand what they're saying and doing on screen. The fact that it was a cartoon, helped us get over that hurdle. It's this kind of stretching that I feel weakens the leftist defense against problematic elements within media. Yes, the Lion King promotes a monarchy but that's playing on the idea that Lions are "Kings of the jungle." It's a stereotype based off a misogynistic saying and sure, by all means, attack _that_ aspect of it, but don't go, "wow, this shit is scary if you arbitrarily make them people." You are right that making this is a realistic, CGI film, highlights the flaws within the original story and how they're breaking the rules of nature; You're a hundred percent right on that, but you keep bringing up the idea that making them people matters and it doesn't. They're sapient so we can understand them, not that they're actually sapient beings eating one another. Edit: I'm not happy with having to put this here but since several have made these assumptions, I need to clarify some things: 1) I, too, am a leftist. I believe in a lot of the same things as Joel but there are times it goes too far and this is one of them. 2) I'm rather bothered that the people who agree with me tend to be right wing in nature; I am not one of you. Please don't use my comment as a "gotcha" moment. 3) Cartoons can be complex, please stop assuming they can't be because "it's a cartoon for children." 3) I know _a lot_ about animals, predators especially and I don't care for being treated as if I don't. Please read all of my comments in this thread before commenting with your own two cents.
And that's what makes the remake of The Lion King so frustrating. It was a "creative" decision to make all of the animals less animated and way more realistic.
Overexplaining is a problem of all Disney remakes. Beauty and the Beast had this bit where the narrator explicitly explains that the curse that changed the servants into furniture also wiped their family's memories of them. Or how in Alladin Jafar kept going on about some other fictional nations and his geopolitical ambitions. It's just the worst. These stories do not benefit from that kind of half-baked worldbuilding. All just to stop cinemasins from saying something dumb. The Lion King was never about the politics; the fairy-tale "just king" story was only there to facilitate Simba's story and growth to responsibility and face a troubled past. Focusing more and more on the politics and world-building in the remake highlights the WORST parts of the original. Absolutely idiotic.
I thought design wise Alladin was good, slightly different from the original for us to be ok but close enough for us to be like "oh yeah yeah das Alladin"
Saron of Akad: **pulls back hood** We have found it, his only weakness. Dennis Prager, dressed like the Emperor: Are you certain that our attempts will be fruitful this time? Saron: I believe so, my lord. **Scene fades to black with foreboding music playing**
Something that strikes me when watching this video is how flat the movie looks. I've heard people say that live action is a bad choice for The Lion King because it means the movie can't have all the vibrant colors of the cartoon. And I agree. But it's even worse than that. Not only are the colors in the live action movie less vibrant than the cartoon, they're less vibrant than REAL LIFE! Cutting from Joel's backyard, with it's vibrant greens and his bright skin and his dark hair, to the blandness of the movie makes me wonder why the movie is so washed out. Joel's backyard looks realistic, and it's still colorful, so why couldn't the movie be that vibrant? Edit: Changing Scar's motivation to trying to get with Sarabi is gay erasure.
To be fair, this codes Scar as a sexual predator and their primary motivations tend to center around power, anger, and sadism rather than attraction. Predators can and do assault outside of their true sexual orientation. In this context, Scar isn't experiencing a true desire for Sarabi. He believes that he "won" her and owns her and he's motivated to assault her as a means of controlling her and smiting the mate that she had been with by choice. I also suspect that they took a hint from the musical where Scar tried to get with Nala. But it was made clearer that he had become increasingly mentally unhinged and was trying to force her to "respect" and "admire" him. That was what compelled Nala to run away. It was better developed and gave more weight to the plot. Here? It just didn't make sense. I think that this version of Scar was a bit more menacing but nowhere near as charismatic or memorable as the original. So he not only left a weaker impression but he was less believable as a slick master manipulator. It's hard to buy that Mufasa hadn't already pegged this Scar as a loose cannon and kept him far away from all of the cubs.
@@Mandelasmind They are still way more saturated than this movie. This movie is way to desaturated to be seen as realistic. I personally actually think it makes everything pretty ugly because it looks so boring.
starkman78 In fact, according to Wikipedia, sexual orientation is rare in non-humans. Homosexual behavior is common, but it’s very rare for an animal to be exclusively homosexual.
The new aesthetic kinda completely ditches the concept of allegory. Photorealistic animals behaving in animal ways is not a good way to communicate allegory to an audience.
Wow, I think this is the most succinct and best explanation of why the photorealistic version sucks. I've heard a lot about lack of facial expressions and such, but somehow everybody missed the allegory aspect
@@spinakker14 My favorite example of this is the shot in Hakuna Matata when Simba grows up. In the original, Simba and his buds walk on a log, heads in the air, eyes shut, nothing but air under the log they walk on (the moon is there to emphasize the lack of solid earth under them). As Simba grows, they are still walking on the same log, still with nothing under them. It clearly communicates that they are ignoring important things at their own peril, and that while they are aging, they haven't actually gone anywhere. They're still on that log. They haven't actually matured. In the remake, Simba and his friends walk normally, looking straight ahead, transitioning between multiple locations as Simba ages (solidly on ground, the moon is only there for aesthetics). If you try to read this imagery, it appears that the three went on some sort of epic adventure, walking all over Africa. Which is not only poor analogy, it is literally not what happened. The new movie fails symbolically on even the most superficial levels. (Sorry for the rant, I just love hating on this movie. It's everything that's wrong with the influx of literalism in modern story-telling and it makes it fascinating.)
theres also a chance that their wasnt an actual allegory in the original, nor the remake. I mean, yeah you can take that the film encourages subjugation and a divine ruler, but that doesnt mean that interpretation is fact. You can think of it as probably what the filmmakers intended but you dont know that is in fact what it was.
@@genericname8727 yeah and if you take that into account... who cares what it says? if its based off some old stuff (we are commonly taught about in school no less) that probably has values that reflect that time, then of course its probably going to have stuff that doesnt align with our current political climate. I mean really, i highly doubt shakepeare wanted to say anything about 21st-century politics when he made hamlet.
Nekoni that seemed incredibly lazy to me. His motives in the original were just fine as he was a jealous brother who wanted to dispose of those in his ways. The foppish attitude imbued by Jeremy Irons’ terrific vocal performance makes him that “love to hate” villain we remember well.
yeah like for what reason they did that... if they wanted some beef between brothers why not use the canon that mufasa was always their dad's favorite?
@@matthewmuir8884 yeah but kovu was actually adopted meaning scar never had an heir, i think its implied zeera is so devoted to him because he took her in and choose her son even if it wasnt his. probably the filmakers only did this so kiara and kovu are not related and also because the message "you are not your father and doesnt have to hold their beliefs" was to radical for disney BUT one can think since scar never married or had a child and zeera never made clear they had a romantic relationship probably he did all this straight rituals out of convention knowing he couldnt be king without a wife and a heir
I didn't watch the remake. Probably never will. But this was what I expected. Just looking at the footage makes me kinda sad. It all feels like a soulless, empty cash grab.
It makes me sad that a good friend of mine who has never watched the original (and even told me that she wasn't interested in it) suddenly watched the Remake (in a cynical perspective I'm saying it's because it was popular, trending and a lot of people on social media talked about it). She liked it and, I mean, good for her that she can enjoy something that I can't, but it kind of makes me angry that her first exposure to this amazing movie was a soulless cash grab that, while it looks more "realistic" and "mature" (for those who think that animation is only for kids), seems to have missed the point of the original movie.
You really aren’t missing anything. My expectations weren’t high for this remake given the original is my favorite Disney movie. The music is terrific (except Beyoncé’s cash-grab single), but the greatness was really captured in the original film
Honestly everyone who has seen the original movie may be biased about the 2019 one. My mom really liked the new one (also because it looks so "realistic"). I mean yes, I may be biased but even if I'm looking at it from a greater distance it just isn't good. The animals look lifeless, the songs don't fit in, everything is awkward. Disney tried making something that is overexaggerated work in real life but it obviously doesn't. It bums me that the main focus is the looks but in my opinion a film shouldn't be mainly abut the looks but about the story it's trying to tell.
"Water is not a human right" -actually the Nestle CEO, a real human being and definitely not a sinister alien blending in among men to plot the downfall of humanity
@@terencecobainNo, they're not close at all. In the order _Carnivora,_ there are two suborders. _Feliformia_ (l. cat-like) and _Caniformia_ (l. dog-like). _Feliformia_ contains _Felidae,_ which you'll recognize as the Cat family. It also contains _Hyaenidae._ Recognize the name? If someone points to a bear _(Ursus_ is a family in _Caniformia)_ and calls it a cat, would you say it's close enough?
An ongoing problem with the Disney remakes? Strip away the magic and mystical, overexplain, and assign explanations to things that don't need them for stupid people. The hyenas deserved better. They talk about them in the remake like they're made-up creatures like orcs, not actual animals who play their own important part in the ecosystem.
A little gratuitous and punitive to dunk on “stupid people” in your Disney critique. Some of us don’t pick up on allegory super well and miss the forest for the trees or how we else you’d put it in flowery language. If you’re gonna paint a target on big media studios, maybe don’t overstep and insult viewers’ intelligence?
Seems to me that if the new movie REALLY wanted to go there, there could have just been some “good hyenas” present in the Pridelands who hadn’t been exiled because they actually practiced moderation and had some respect for sustainability; would have made the differences ideological instead of the vaguely gross “well it’s just in their nature to be greedy and gluttonous and short-sighted, they’re not SMART like we are” vibe.
@@commbir5148 idk man, if you dont get it, you dont get it and that is fine. they dont need to cater to cinemaSins and its audience to make a good movie. questioning the logic of mysticism or soft magic systems is useless and the studio responding by trying to make an excuse by "explaining" it, just makes the situation worse. not every piece of media needs to be realistic because some pedantic or uncaring person complains about it/doesnt understand that (sure, calling them dumb is maybe a bit mean but not really wrong)
When Mufasa first talks about the circle of life, he's teaching respect, not arrogance. Simba challenges that by arguing that respecting the gazelles is unnecessary because they hold no power over the lions, which is an arrogant argument. The whole point of pointing out that the gazelles become the grass is to teach that they do serve a purpose to the ecosystem as a whole, and should be respected by hunting only as much as you need, leaving them room to breed and thrive.. Later when Scar allows the hunting parties to kill as much as they like, he fails to follow this teaching, and nearly loses the gazelles entirely. This doesn't completely invalidate your point about the lions becoming grass as well, but it's at least something we can argue about. It's still logical. The new justification for the hyenas' evil however, is just objectively flawed logic
The movie begins with the hyenas being persecuted/otherized...the circle of life teaches class structure. It’s the mandate of the ruling class, let us rule you give us occasional sacrifice and we will protect you from the barbarians and or fascist lion pretender/hyena coalition. The way the live action movie lingers on the idea the hyenas are foreign/gluttonous/state less and ruled by a despot in scar. Have you ever read Edward Said’s Orientalism? It will blow your mind.
I definitely agree with the environmentalist reading of Mufasa’s speech and I’m glad you mentioned it since Joel didn’t but since The Lion King is an adaptation of Hamlet and Shakespeare often employs the whole “if you overthrow the king/ruling class and thus defy the will of God, bad things will happen” narrative, I think that it’s also good to use class to analyze the movie
"[they] should be respected by hunting only as much as you need" Mufasa never said this in the original. He only said: We can kill and eat them because when we die they basically eat our bodies. At no point in time did he say to minimize eating. It's more like a European saying we can kill natives because in return we give them Chrisitanity. Its a fair trade
@@blarg2429 ive just been reading through the comments, apparently if they are related to anything its weasels. Ive seen some claim that they are related to cats but some saying they arent, but multiple people here are saying weasel.
www.quora.com/Are-hyenas-closer-to-weasels-than-dogs TL;DR (not that it's long): weasels = caniformia (+ dogs, bears, raccoons), hyenas = feliformia (+ cats, mongeese, civets). So it's slightly complicated but hyenas are not as comparable to weasels as they are to several other animal species. Furthermore, hyenas occupy their own family, Hyaenidae.
so I remember even at a young age thinking "What and the antelope just accept that? Like they are just cool with being eaten" And so I have to say I find this criticism on point there. That said I myself filled in the gaps by saying that Mufasa and Simba represent power with restraint, power with checks and balances, power that considers the subjugated, while scar and the hyneas represent power without restraint, the power that executes without thought or care. And the hyenas are banished because they can't accept restraint, they cant accept the social contract. So I think the reason why we accept the original lion king, it isn't asking the audience to decide if there should be power... that is taken as a premise, it is only asking the audience to compare power with restraint, and power without it.
Well it painted the predators as both really nice and unable to hurt a fly, or even ANY prey (like in the Akuna Matata paradise) AND as vicious flesh eaters and eco-ennemies
this video is the exact lenght it took me to finish 3 cobs of corn. thank you for enhancing my corn on the cob experience. On a more serious note, this video is so well made and put together, I esp appreciate your breakdown of how the original TLK transports its message /makes it more acceptable/palpable to the point of not really being noticed outside of a certain framework. I also enjoy your tone of voice, it's very nice to listen to.
"Hyenas are just cute dogs, who love to eat big dinner" Subscribed. Even when I was a little kid I always felt bad that the hyenas were cast out to a land with nothing and would get attacked for daring to set foot into the grass and maybe get some noms. Literal underdogs.
The hyenas were not allowed in because they overhunted. Their numbers were also ridiculously large. Pride Lands is not large enough to support that many predators. If you count the number of herbivores seen in the opening circle of Life scene, they are roughly the same as the number of hyenas seen in the Be Prepared sequence if not more. The number of predators must never exceed the numbers of their prey. The other animals perceived the threat to their livelihood as species when the number of predators increased dramatically when all those hyenas moved in at once and of course they left, leaving predators with nothing at all to eat in their area. However, just to appeal to the sensibilities od modern day audiences, the Lion Guard introduced hyenas willing to make peace and even those who sided with Scar eventually questioned his motives. It clarified once and for all that only some hyenas are problematic.
Same, when I was a child i was proudly with "team Hyena", I found them funny but I honestly felt bad for them because, in the movie, you get to see the dump they live in. Also i really liked Shenzi when i was little, i thought she was cool.
I don't know if I'm looking at the original with rose-tinted glasses, but i felt like every character was visually and vocally distinct. In the modern remake i couldn't tell any of the females lions apart and eventually i just referred to them as Beyoncé number 1 and Beyoncé number 2 arbitrarily as the visual style was the same and the voice acting wasn't distinct either.
Considering how disney can struggle to make human female characters distinct, I was surprised that Nala, Sarabi, and Sarafina had different faces in the original
I can absolutely recognize that the OG Lion King has some dangerous ideology running through it, but I think it’s important to consider what a child watching the movie will actually take away from it. When I watched as a child, I didn’t walk away thinking “subjugating others peoples is good and necessary” hell I basically forgot about Mufasa’s justification entirely. The message I took away (and I would imagine this is the same for most kids) was not to let your past control you and that part of growing up is taking on responsibility. If we look at aesthetics again, the original avoids the more dubious aspects of its ideology by never actually showing Mufasa or Simba kill and eat another animal. (except insects I guess) All of Simba’s interactions with other animals are playful and friendly. Conversely, Scar and the hyenas are shown to be predators constantly through the visual language of the film. Scars claws are ALWAYS OUT. The hyenas try to hunt and eat Simba and Nala. I think the core of my point is that a child is far more likely to remember the visual language of a film than the exposition. Since the visual language of the original is less problematic, it avoids the more troublesome aspects of its ideology. Side point: I guess another problem with the new movie is that it’s primarily being watching by 20-40 year olds who are nostalgic for the original, and are far more likely to pick up on the problematic subtext (although I guess it’s explicit text in the remake now).
Brian Clarkson I don’t think the original was intended to be pro monarchist per say. I think that the whole circle of life thing was just a way to justify the aesthetics they wanted behind Simba and Scar. They definitely didn’t put a whole lot of thought into it.
Growing Wild you’re probably right. And honestly it works perfectly fine because the movie is a coming of age story at its heart not a political drama.
You make a great point, consider the hyenas feeding on the zebra leg Scar gives them, Scar's introduction playing with the mouse, the hyenas being shown snapping at the wildebeest. It is worth pointing out that Nala stalks Pumbaa but that is framed in a very neutral animalistic way, whereas in all the prior examples, Scar and the hyenas explicitly ENJOY torturing animals through predation. It is a perverse pleasure to them, scaring, frightening and attacking others is a gleeful act, not a simply necessary one as Mufasa implies it is to him.
the circle of life thing has a stronger effect of teaching kids about death and growing up (taking responsibility like you said) rather than idolizing bad governmental systems which kids would have no real clue about
@@Alexander-kc8oq To be very precise, the order Carnivora contains two main groups, Feliformia ("cat-like predators", including cats, mongooses, civets, hyenas etc.) and Caniformia ("dog-like predators", including dogs, weasels, badgers, raccoons, bears, seals, etc.).
I think it's similair to super hero movies. There's a desire for literalism in order to elevate the source material, but literalism only serves to highlight the absurdities that should've been left abstracted.
The script rewrite also eliminated basically all the most iconic lines and humor. (E.g. "The king... has returned." Gone. Most of the villain song. Gone. "The monkey's his uncle?" Gone.) Also, the amazing reveal that it's Nala who was chasing Pumba is kind of ruined by the addition of the scene showing her leaving Pride Rock. Basically, the entire soul was sucked out of the script as well as the visuals. I don't understand why they did this.
Don't forget, after Mufasas death, it was sunset. The sun literally set on his time as King. Not only a brilliant visual choice conveying the intensity of the situation, but also thematically appropriate. God the remake sucks
@@yoshinpixels9924 I also hate how they changed the scene when Scar told the hyena's to kill Simba and they were chasing him, it was so intense in the original with him falling into the thorns and it was just lackluster in the remake. Like you said with the sunset, when Simba was running away and the sun was going down it was such a mood. And the hyenas yelling after him and making fun... god this scene sucked so bad in the remake
@@Visteus Oh, I know why the remake was MADE, I just don't understand the heavy script editing. Edits are supposed to make stories/plots/dialogue BETTER. This was just the complete opposite of that. 🤷
Excellent points. I remember watching this in theater and remarking on how the photorealism of the 2019 film brought out the brutality of nature and diminished the anthropomorphic charm of the original 90s characters. I couldn't feel any empathy for these characters. When an animal was killed, it just felt like "Okay, this is how things happen in nature." Perhaps what's most interesting about this is the "Circle of Life" that is talked about in the original film is contradicted by the rational, emotional relationships formed in the animals-a bond which would not exist in this state in nature. In the real world, animals eat and get eaten. I remember internally treating this as a BBC documentary with a dub track, but even _this_ was broken and the "cinematographers" show that snappy zoom-in as Simba was screaming "Nooo!" It broke the immersion of the film (at least, whatever immersion could have been created from this thing).
I'd say that the cartoon gives enough emphasis to the "circle of life" as a way to basically say, "dont be selfish". looking back at the shakespeare that inspired the original, it carries those same themes on the pitfalls of greed. the cartoon is able to overshadow imperialist overtones with messages of benevolence and good will to all, while the new one seems to not be able to do that. its too gritty to do that and not as lighthearted.
exactly ! the underlying imperialism in the original was, as you say, overshadowed by the sheer emotionality, the strongly resonating notes of family, responsibility and friendship. the bleak realism of the remake has no opportunity for meaningful anthropomorphism and loses any characterisation or emotional appeal that it might have had.
@@raventrunite6459 And also overshadowed by the actual message of the film, which is "The past can hurt, but you can either run from it, or learn from it" -- a message which, while still spoken, was weirdly scrubbed from the remake. I got the sense that the creators didn't understand that Hakuna Matata was supposed to be a bad thing that Simba had to overcome in himself.
Yeah wait, carnivores maintain herbivore populations so they don't destroy resources in an ecosystem. And Disney dressed it up to make the concept palatable to children and families. Big Joel... why?
@@Inali097 That doesn't make the process any less brutal and horrific for the animals getting ripped apart limb by limb for their meat. It may be the way nature works and possibly even the only way it could work, but at the end of the day it's still suffering and death for anyone not at the top. Another problem is the animals are anthropomorphized af and nothing about it can be applied to humans who are totally outside the ecosystem.
@@BT-oj1bn it does make it less grusome. Because that isn't what happens. Lions selectively and quickly kill animals to maintain balance. Hyenas often rip their prey limb from limb causing them to die a painful death in shock. Without lions eating, the herbivores would overpopulate, outcompete other species and all slowly starve to death - boom, mass extinction.
@@blakea.wittenberg5685 The latter point of BTs I do agree with, the metaphor of the dominance hierarchy among predators and prey in nature don't find parallels in human society, but you're right with regards to overpopulation. I do think it's weird that the herbivores are portrayed as almost feudal serfs in the Lion King - there's a creepy power dynamic at play as conveyed (fe how do fewer herbivores result in a drought?) but ultimately Big Joel's point is ridiculous this time around. If he wants to argue that the shift toward photorealism represents a shift toward narrative realism, he has to contend with the fact that lions can't nor shouldn't choose to eat grass and bugs in reality
Fun fact: I'm pretty sure that my dislike of the Lion King came from me first seeing it back to back with Bambi, resulting in me imagining Mufasa giving the Circle of Life speech to Bambi about how it's okay he just ate Bambi's mum.
@@littlesnowflakepunk855 human baby cry shares some acoustic similarities with an air raid siren is the first reasonable explanation i've heard in favor of reproducing
Same problem with Beauty and the Beast: did I really need to know Gaston is a war hero, and that’s why the town loves him? No. Or that his wartime experience left him with PTSD? And that’s why he’s s violent maniac? No again. It’s a fairy tale; it’s not like audiences are looking for depth.
That because Disney made those remakes to cater to, as Lindsay Ellis called them, the pedantic fucks of TH-cam with their decades of bad-faith criticism. So, they made it for Mr Cinema Sins and Mrs Lily Orchard who loved to complain about the mystisism on fairy-tales.
Oooh don't get me started on Gaston in the remake. Too late. My biggest issue with that movie is that it made Gaston actually seem like a decent guy and Belle came off as a b*tch. Like when he told Lafou that he liked that she was well read and could be argumentative, and then was genuinely interested in what she was reading. It drove me insane. Gaston is not meant to be deep, he's a narcissistic misogynist and that's all there is to him. And that's all there needs to be. Ok I'm done now.
@@dramamole It completely missedd the point too. The fucking theme was appearance and its effect on people's perceptions. HOW DOES DISNEY NIT GET THat?
“Gaston has PTSD and that’s why he’s a violent maniac.” Good Gad, that sounds like a fucking joke about gritty realism. What’s next? Plankton wants to steal the secret Krabby Patty formula because it’s actually drugs?
I find it hilarious how when Joel juxtaposed live-action Mufasa and Simba, I could barely tell the difference between them. I had to like lean in and look carefully. Whereas with the cartoon if you put Mufasa and adult Simba side-by-side it's pretty obvious who's who at first glance, without having to linger.
@@Cecona Yeah it's quite disturbing to view for most who find out about this. Such a perfect design by God! Actually it's probably not since I'm not convinced that God exists. 😂
Anarchist Xomburg because he made child birth extra painful and dangerous for them by making them have to do it through a pseudopenis. And the females tend to be aggressive and harass the males which tend to be smaller.
The 2019 Lion King does 1 thing right at least, Nala can't give those half-lidded bedroom eyes to Simba that made me question if I was a furry when I was a kid.
The drought really works best as an expression of the old Arthurian/Fisher King myth of "the king's health is the land's health" - if the king is ill (or bad), the land will sicken. Or, similarly, the Chinese notion of the "mandate of heaven" - if a monarch loses it, it is expected that floods, plagues, droughts, etc. will express heaven's displeasure. (As Joel said, keep it mystical. :) )
@Maso Perez no, actually hyenas are closer to cats than to dogs OR weasels. Although they’re even closer to mongooses than to cats, so that might explain your confusion. Weasels are actually closer to dogs and bears than to cats or hyenas.
Sorry fam I think you're mixed up. Hyenas are in the suborder feliforma, making them one of the cat-related carnivores. Weasels are in caniforma, making them more dog-related.
Man, I hate how The Lion King (both versions) depict hyenas, a keystone species, a terrible reputation as either evil scavengers or animals that overhunt.
@@shadeddreamer6864 "The evil scavengers one bothers me even more! Hyenas scavenge less than lions!" They needed bad guys in the movie. Not sure where the mystery is here. It's not a documentary about hyenas. "Ugh, at least the new movie made them matriarchal like irl...?" Shenzi is clearly in charge of the three in the original.
Wow, it’s almost like Disney/ESPN/ABC/etc. mega corporation conglomerate has a vested financial interest in justifying and maintaining the existing power structure. Who would have thought? Good thing they don’t let that bias seep into every creative decision ever expressed through their media though, that would just be so manipulative and self-serving. Almost like scar. Except he’s a bad guy because he has a black mane and stuff and wasn’t divinely appointed by the nature gods, so that totally makes sense 👀
Even if the original's ideology is "problematic", because it's done with artistic flair, there is nothing "real" about it, and so it's more like representations of feelings and ideas than anything. With the original, we are all Simba, and we are all gazelles. With the new one, the realism detracts from that emotional response. Or, you know. Everything bigjoel said already that you probably already know i'm just here for algorithms and that sweet dopamine kick of a like here and there
Ironically, Scar would most likely be king in a real pride. A black mane on a lion is a sign of high testosterone in a male, meaning they're probably stronger than the other males and more desired by females so they're usually dominant in their packs.
This is a year old but I had a similar experience of having to confront some of the conservative ideals within Disney films when I watched the live action Aladdin. I’m like, Jasmine complaining about her life hits a little different when clearly at least a portion of Agraba’s population doesn’t even have access to food and shelter and seemingly lives in a police state.
Big Joel, you make it sound as if there is one message kids will get out of watching the lion king: "the current hierarchy is good and natural, and those that come to disturb it are villains." But watching this movie as a kid, that's not the part of the film I was focused on. The scenes that affected me the most included the one where Simba finally decides to face his past, and the scene where his father tells Simba he is going to die one day. The monkey's words stuck in my head: (talking about the past) "You can either run from it, or learn from it." As a kid's movie, I think the lion king functions more on an individual level and has lessons that apply in everyday life. While the political ideology you explain may be read from the story, I don't think it's the main message and it's not what I took away from the film. That being said, I don't think you're analysis is wrong; it just feels like you're leaving a lot out of the picture. Also I love your videos.
yeah, the takeaway from all disney movies that focus on big monarchies (which basically no one can actually relate to) is the emotional character stuff, lessons about love and family and friends. still, the underlying political ideology, while not the focus is more significant when considered in the context of all the other kid's media (see: disney) that reinforces the status quo. but yeah, definitely not the main lesson for kids, but just kind of a subliminal background force
@SomethingScanning Maybe he's saying that, but I can't see how he's not claiming anything about the lion king as well. I'm just hearing "lion king story bad" throughout this video and I wanted to say why I like it.
I used to be terrified of death as a kid, this movie gave me a lot of peace as a child. The Circle of Life - although obviously silly to an adult - really comforted me and made sense to me when I was young.
Ben Kauffman But he literally said he liked the animated movie, just that it becomes problematic when you start to analyse it, which the live action movie basically forced him to do.
I find it very interesting that the line you speak of was cut from the reboot. It kind of feels as if someone realized the line was a bit at odds with the narrative (Simba never truly gets over his past until he's told he was misinformed about it). But that just makes the reboot seem to double down on a kind of nasty "no second chances for the guilty" message.
Nah, the hyenas are just another overclass, parasitizing off of the workers and seizing control of the local hierarchy by force. Just another type of petty burgeoise.
"But don't we eat the antelope?" "Yes, son, but they are idiots and if we didn't eat them they would overpopulate, destroy the savanna and then starve en masse." True, but even weirder to put in the voice of an anthropomorphized creature.
It's funny how differently we perceive messages. To me, the Lion King has always felt like it meant to teach modesty and moderation. Yes, the lions rule de facto over the prideland, but it always felt accidental, not "systemic". It is not presented as something that can be changed unlike, you know, human society. The point Mufasa was teaching Simba was to not just kill other creatures just because pooower, even though, lions kinda have to actually eat other creatures. I thought as a child that all Mufasa did was instruct other lions and manage internal affairs. Like, the movie asks the question of, hey, you are stuck with a situation, do you give it your best, or do you let your shitty uncle do it for you and, as the movie portrais, make everything worse for everybody. I mean, yeah, I agree that the monarchy allegory is too on the nose to ignore and I'm probably wrong but either way, I can't bring myself to see it that way. Maybe it is *because* it is so on the nose that the whole monarchy itself feels like a symbol for something else.
I think you're picking up on how the animated Lion King feels like more of a PERSONAL story. Like, the monarchy and eco-sytem and animal stuff all just basically feels like a metaphorical way to explore and give stakes to Simba's journey through grief and growing up. Even as a kid, your pick up on the fact that we're not REALLY meant to take the whole "pride rock" and "royal lion family" thing literally. That's not really the point. The point is "the past can hurt but we can learn from it" and "running from your problems doesn't make them go away." But since the remake is really hard to connect to, it loses that personal dimension, and since it's portrayed so "realistically," it loses it's metaphorical, allegorical dimension as well, and so all that's left are the...weird structures that remain.
@Moony Marshes Completely agree, it's yet another example of people overthinking things in order to make them look worse. The hyenas aren't there to tell the audience that racism is good and having Mufasa followed by Simba isn't necessary because divine right of Kings must be good in the real world too. Honestly, considering the amount of things that happen in the movie that don't happen in the real animal kingdom, I struggle to believe that anyone could interpret things so literally unless they're actively trying to interpret the movie in a negative light.
i’m a professional illustrator and almost without fail cringe at the disappointing ineptitude of youtubers trying to talk about art direction and aesthetic, form and content, but you did a great job, really refreshing
When I was old enough to "get it" I associated the mysticism of the original Lion King squarely with the Shakespearean roots of the story. The ghost of Hamlet/Simba's dad, the cosmic implications of monarchic disorder (a HUGE theme in Shakespeare's plays, especially King Lear) as evidenced by all the prey animals leaving Pride Rock when Scar takes over, even the rain coming in when Simba restores order to wash everything clean. I haven't seen the remake but I assume that what's missing is the inherent allegorical fantasy of the story, something that's tough to capture in a realistic portrayal. The suspension of disbelief is just easier with animation, always.
Big Joel: The animation in the Lion King allows us to contemplate the beauty of power. Also Big Joel: At the end of the day, hyenas are just cute dogs that want to eat big dinner
It's also kinda confusing how SImba getting the throne back defeats the hyenas. Presumably they were kept at bay during Mufasa's reign, and were allowed to hunt and overpopulate in Scar's reign. How does SImba becoming king undo the power and population boom? Were the lions always capable of defeating the hyenas and simply didn't because they were too loyal to whoever was the king to go against Scar's orders?
It always seemed to me that the movie implied the hyenas being too stupid and greedy to stand their ground against the lions. They needed a leader like scar
@@jearn11 Yes and no. Ants defend their termite mounds. Hyenas however? Theyre nasty. There is a reason lions are more or less viewed in a good light in our African folktales, and why hyenas are just Terrifying. Something to be feared. Cuz they are.
@@Kri8aris He was obviously joking, but it's not quite a stretch. The movie essentially calls for natural hierarchies and critics have argued that the hyenas have racist undertones. There are enough dots to connect there, really.
Velentziadis I mean, the movie makes you root for anarcho-monarchism, and does a damn good job at it. In the end, the “good guy” you’re rooting for is just another monarch on top of a fundamentally unjust social structure
LegendofLegaia929 uhh the right isn’t about creating natural/racial hierarchies. Not saying some people on the right don’t do that, just saying that’s not what it is about
I think your analysis of the OG Lion King is a bit off. I wouldn't be so quick to treat metaphor as analogy. In other words, the creatures do not cleanly reduce 1:1 to "essentially human." That's just a convenient assumption for interpreting OGLK's thematic universe as Political Power Structureville. Weirdly enough, I think your criticism of the new Lion King is STRONGER if the literal political logic applies more to it than to OGLK. Relatedly, Mufasa's speech isn't particularly convincing on a literal level, but the spirit of it does fit the "predators are part of a balanced ecosystem" thing, which is both true and not identical to "kings are good for kingdoms." Part of what's appealing about OGLK is that it can squeeze distinct ideas like these together in a single aesthetic experience -- with "aesthetic" itself not just meaning "pretty and distracting."
@@moderth95 thanks for the thoughtful reply. I think treating the film as analogy -- any analogy, really -- encourages a type of literal thinking that's foreign to fiction and art more generally, at least when it works. And it looks to me like Big Joel wants to say OGLK works better than the new one. My point was just that metaphor/art is a different beast than analogy/lesson-teaching. So let's pretend you want to say OGLK is pretty good. When its characters look and behave like animals and connect their dynastic drama to the breaking and fixing of a quasi-mystical natural harmony, this stuff is not simply there to mask an incoherent literal political analogy. In other words, the combination of these elements, like in metaphor, creates something new. It's way too easy to just say "shut up" with a reductive explanation. Examples: "Dude they're just animals, so take a chill pill!" "No it's Hamlet cuz that's what I heard so let's just stop thinking!" "No it's Zizek because ideology!" "No it's Monarchy, but dumb because animals!" Certainly any of those options are reasonable as criticisms or "critiques" or whatever of the movie. But if you DON'T think OGLK is that bad, indeed if you want to claim it works as art in contrast to the remake, then you risk having it both ways when you argue they both reduce to silly hierarchical politics. And that's my reading of Big Joel here.
"predators are part of a balanced ecosystem" -> There are balanced ecosystems without apex predators (there's always some insects and microorganisms being eaten). It isn't true that predators are a necessary part of a balanced ecosystem.
@@Fluxquark They don't have to be part of ALL balanced ecosystems for the original statement to hold true. If any balanced ecosystem includes predators then the statement is true. Also, predators that eat insects are still predators.
@@lazerbeam134 Sorry but English doesn't work that way. If I say "engines are part of a working car", nobody would interpret this as "there is at least one working car that has an engine". It means "every working car has an engine".
There's only one thing we can responsibly do. We have to cancel Big Joel for his crimes against nature! How dare he insinuate that hyenas are dogs!? HOW DARE HE CONFLATE GAZELLES AND WILDEBEESTS! HE MUST BE STOPPED!!! >:[
I think he's saying that figuratively, tugging on our heartstrings by comparing the hyenas to man's best friend to say they deserve the same kind of sympathy that the lions get for being big, cute, fluffy kitty cats.
I know your point is that the whole Circle of Life thing falls apart when you consider all the characters to be essentially human. However on a deeper level, I think the film is about order, especially of nature, and adhering to that order (hence Circle of Life, Scar = drought, Simba = prosperity). It's all about dat delicate balance. Also, I kept expecting you to mention all the animals in the jungle who were constantly afraid Simba would eat them. How awkward is that lol. Anyway great video!
Mufasa: "When we die, we turn into grass, and the antelopes eat the grass" Yes Mufasa, but when the antelopes eat your grass self, you do not feel pain. When you eat the antelopes, they do feel pain. And of course it's not like the lions can choose to not eat the antelopes or gazelles or zebras. They're carnivores. It's what they do. If anyone tries to feed a lion tofu they are pissing all over the natural order and that specific lion. So of course you gotta rationalize it as a philosopher lion man. But as humans we can totally poke holes in it. Mufasa isn't evil cuz he has this philosophy, it's just incomplete in a key respect. Perhaps it would've sat better with this type of analysis if he also has a bit where he's like "this is why I teach you to hunt as well as you should--to make sure that you do not inflict any unnecessary pain unto the antelopes that give themselves to you. They are our prey, but they are not our toys." And in fact, we humans recognize this too in hunting. We praise people for clean shots that kill animals instantly. We call things sloppy when we see animals agonizing, and we even have a clear concept of 'putting things out of their misery'. Even we as humans get that.
@SørenCast Z I don't remember the emotion I was feeling when writing this, which to me basically means I can't really connect to what I was writing. Like I *get* and *feel* it, but I can't believe I went into a full rant about the Lion King on a remake video lol.
But in reality, hyenas, and probably lions to a certain extent, eat their prey alive. Nature can be depicted as divine and beautiful in cartoons, but in real life, nature can be absolutely brutal and disgusting. He mentions how the original lion king feels like the animals are more like people than real animals. And like... no shit... the story is a retelling of Hamlet. Everyone should know that. I feel like he and other critics are really only looking for reasons to bash the movie for the sake of bashing. Have they considered that the original movie might show us that the idea of kings and subjects doesn't necessarily work out for humans. (Hamlet is a tragedy, after all). But maybe in nature, hierarchies do kind of make sense? Predators are not the foundation of the food chain, but their place is to keep it in order. The relationship between predator and prey may be brutal, but through it emerges the diversity and beauty of nature. You don't need to think that because it's based on a play about humans, but made about nature instead, that it has something to say about us. Maybe it's just about appreciating nature through a classic story. It's something digestible for kids. Idk if it's anything deeper than that.
Gaia Builder Lmao way to miss the point of the video. He literally compliments the og movie because the animals are like people to him because he then can understand why they would cheer on Simba and criticises the remake for failing to make him feel the same way. And it’s like that because the director was obsessed with making the movie feel like a documentary which is impossible to do with this story because irl nature does not work like in The Lion King, the most obvious thing being that lions are not the ruling class. The fact that the movie looks ugly doesn’t help. Please don’t be stuck in the “thing bad/thing good” mindset, not all criticism works like that. You can point out that The Lion Kings morality and philosophy is weird and still like it, it’s called being critical of the things you like.
@brandon roberts Since people are sharing weird trivia elsewhere in this comments section, I must inform you that the notion of the color blue is a relatively recent invention and that therefore whole generations of people have looked at the sky and not considered it to be that color.
I feel like you're almost intentionally looking past the actual point of the circle of life speech of the original film. It's simply a statement about how abusing resources messes up the entire system, including the life of the abusers. It's an enviromental stance. It would have been more complete if they had added 'without lions, herbivores would flourish too much and fuck with the vegetation', but that goes too far for the demographic the film was made for.
scar at 16:22 looks so invested. the creators were so good at making real lions that they've become sentient and thus, bored with the script and are just chilling
I left this comment on a video a while back that I want to reiterate: There's a bit in the Lion King that really sticks with me, watching this movie years later. As you point out, Simba says "Don't we eat the antelope?" Simba, and the rest of the lions, as members of the ruling class, maintain their power and existence through the death, suffering, and literal consumption of the various prey, who, as we have seen, are creatures bearing sentience, and whom we might interpret to be an analogy to the lower classes. And Mufasa doesn't, like, deny this. Or make excuses for it. He does the opposite. He outright says that it's a good thing. He talks about how there is a natural cycle in life, and that it must be maintained for the good of all. And then Scar comes in, and takes a group which has been cast out from society, and uses them to overthrow an oppressive and murderous power structure. After which, everything goes to shit. Order, society, and the ecosystem are only restored after the previous oppressive power structure is restored. Now, of course in nature, the preservation of the ecosystem is important. Over hunting or a lack of predators are both threats to the ecosystem. And so Scar, by enabling over hunting, is, rather understandably, portrayed as being wrong by the film. But read as an allegory, independent of the framework of the story as occurring in nature, the film is kind of messed up. The film asserts that what we might see as "unnecessary" death and suffering at the hand of oppressive power structures, is in fact, very much justified. That a society in which the ruling class quite literally kill and feed off of the lower class, is justified. Not because "might makes right". Or because the lower classes are somehow "deserving" of this status. But because anything other than this is apparently unsustainable. In a way, the film is kind of like that age old argument for Capitalism: that no matter how many people suffer, no matter how many people die, no matter how many people are oppressed, no matter how many people are exploited, no matter how obviously, inexcusably bad things become, we cannot do anything to change, much less fix, our situation, because, for some reason, this is "the only system that works". PS. One may also interpret the film as saying that attempts at revolution and change will inevitably perpetuate the same injustices of the previous system (again tying back to that idea of "this is the only sustainable option). After all, save for the rectification of the implied ethnic cleansing of the hyenas, most of the injustices of Mufasa's reign persist. What I'm trying to say is that the hyenas are a Leninist Vanguard Party.
But over hunting is also massacring the lower classes, you just switched the power balance so the formerly oppressed group can now oppress and kill as they like. And now they have the added disadvantage that their new leader doesn't care about the ecosystem, the "lower classes" or about maintaining anyone except for himself. While I get how you may interpret Mufasa talking about the Circle of Life as an inherently oppressive ideology, I think it's more like "We need to eat and we also give back that's how nature works, but you mustn't take more than you need and still respect others".
I still firmly believe that they should have just filmed some lions and arranged the clips in a way that vaguely resembles the original. It would have been more realistic and then it would have been live-action too, which seems to be all they cared about anyway.
The reason Simba and mufasa are good is because they only kill the animals that they need to survive whereas scar and the hyenas take everything than can until there's nothing left. The message of the movie is that animals eat each other. That's the circle of life, that's how it is. But don't take more than you need to. Don't be greedy and gluttonous like scar is
The real tragedy is that they could've gone the way of Speed Racer and used CGI to enthusiastically reinforce the themes and tone of the movie. Instead they just did the least creative thing they could think of.
I legitimately loved the speed racer live action bc it leaned into the stupid tropes of the anime and the colors and tone where just A+. And to this day, I still say 'PanKOOken' instead of Pancake.
The thing you said about how weird it was to see the prey animals being happy about a baby lion actually has a lot of merit behind it...in the wild many prey animals will instinctively try and STOMP BABY LIONS TO DEATH if they come across them
"A hyena's belly is never full." Disney endorsing Yeenoghu? Lion King 2019 has more in common with D&D 5th Edition than its source material. Disney pls
Carnivores *have* to eat meat to live though, and judging by how Scar's reign was portrayed, they don't overhunt, thus it's acceptable. It runs on stereotypes, definately. Hyenas aren't inherently evil, just like lions aren't inherently 'kingly', like Scar. They just happen to be in charge here.
*Lesson Of The Day:* Animation isn't a genre. It's a medium that is suitable for EVERYONE. _Whoever invented the phrase, "Animation is ONLY for kids", is definitely going to the ranch._
@@SJNaka101 Oh I know, there is way gorier anime lol!! But in terms of thematic elements, and the ability to profoundly disturb me and force contemplation, Eva takes the cake for me.
I don't think I've ever witnessed anyone claiming that "animation is ONLY for kids". Claiming that some particular animated thing is intended for kids (often correctly, often incorrectly, usually while adult fans of that thing get weirdly touchy and defensive), sure. Unless we're feeling threatened by the opinions of cranky octagenarians who haven't watched an animated movie since the 60s, I don't see why that's a position we need to argue against. The original Lion King absolutely was intended for children though. Which makes it even more important to understand and critique the ideology it presents, of course. I assume the new one was mainly aimed at nostalgic adults.
![[TH] 2024 PMGC League | Survival Stage วันที่ 1 | PUBG MOBILE Global Championship](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/FVFT-PFwU80/mqdefault.jpg)
First off, I know those are wildebeest lol. Sorry for the misspeak.
Also, I’ve been seeing some comments about how predators are good for ecosystems, and honestly I’m not sure what to tell you. If every group in the film is essentially human, then imagine telling a member of that group, “no that I’m gonna eat you alive, but no, you don’t have a choice in that process.” It’s ridiculous to think of that as a win for the antelope. I’m not saying lions in real life or in this movie are evil, I mean they are carnivores after all. but they’re not helping the creatures they’re eating in this movie. Lions do not eat antelopes because of ethics. they do not care abt the environment or any other pseudo-ethical justification. If lions and antelope were people, lions might still need to eat antelope, but for Mufasa to tell his son all about the beneficence of that action for the antelope would be utter bullshit. Ascribing some moral code to the utterly amoral world of nature and predation is the very pitfall that the lion king fell into. And it's interesting to see that concept repeated so many times here.
Okay have fun with the rest of your day! If you want to maybe give me money, here's my patreon lol www.patreon.com/bigjoel
Hyenas are a female led species. Their leaders are female and males are subordinate in their packs. You left out the obvious implications of presenting the hyenas as the 'evil' opposition to the 'natural, good' order. The story has a lot of subversive narratives running through it.
Favourite Lion fact?
When a pride is overtaken by a new alfa male, he usually kills the existing young cubs. Partly to not propagate the old leaders genes and partly to make the females ready to mate.
So, with two coup d'etats in the film... I'm pretty sure that there was a lot of off screen infanticide going on both when Scar took over and when Simba took it back a year or so later (I'm not sure how fast lions grow)
Oh... And by all I've heard about Lions... Simba and Nala are almost certainly at least half-siblings... Yay, incest!
Yeah, the aesthetics really mess it up. Thanks for pointing out why it is an awful choice aside from 'looking wrong'. The bit with the mumbling animals was gold.
Favourite Lion fact: Lions are apparently susceptible to catnip.
Also, hyena's get a bad rap. Thanks for the cute hyena pics.
I'm not trying to defend the good or bad within the Lion King mythos, but I think you dove a bit too far and have lost sight of some things. Maybe go back and watch it again.
Except that these aren't people, Joel, they're animals. I feel you've stretched a bit here; yes, they're anthropomorphised but that's so we can understand what they're saying and doing on screen. The fact that it was a cartoon, helped us get over that hurdle. It's this kind of stretching that I feel weakens the leftist defense against problematic elements within media.
Yes, the Lion King promotes a monarchy but that's playing on the idea that Lions are "Kings of the jungle." It's a stereotype based off a misogynistic saying and sure, by all means, attack _that_ aspect of it, but don't go, "wow, this shit is scary if you arbitrarily make them people."
You are right that making this is a realistic, CGI film, highlights the flaws within the original story and how they're breaking the rules of nature; You're a hundred percent right on that, but you keep bringing up the idea that making them people matters and it doesn't. They're sapient so we can understand them, not that they're actually sapient beings eating one another.
Edit: I'm not happy with having to put this here but since several have made these assumptions, I need to clarify some things:
1) I, too, am a leftist. I believe in a lot of the same things as Joel but there are times it goes too far and this is one of them.
2) I'm rather bothered that the people who agree with me tend to be right wing in nature; I am not one of you. Please don't use my comment as a "gotcha" moment.
3) Cartoons can be complex, please stop assuming they can't be because "it's a cartoon for children."
3) I know _a lot_ about animals, predators especially and I don't care for being treated as if I don't. Please read all of my comments in this thread before commenting with your own two cents.
"But we eat the gazelle?" "Yes but we also help the gazelle through trickle down economics"
Think of all the jobs of "Prey" we create. Definitely deserves a tax write-off.
@@TheSpreymando And a yearly bonus
your comment deserves way more likes
I was surprised that this connection was not made in the video.
That made me laugh lmao. Thanks for that
Aslan from Narnia had more facial expressions... And he was realistically animated back in the 2000's!
It's part of the reason I prefer Mowgli over Disney's remake
Yeah but Aslan was partially stylized so he could have more facial animations.
And that's what makes the remake of The Lion King so frustrating. It was a "creative" decision to make all of the animals less animated and way more realistic.
Can we add Aslan from the BBC version too? It was puppetry.
Amen to that. 😔
Overexplaining is a problem of all Disney remakes. Beauty and the Beast had this bit where the narrator explicitly explains that the curse that changed the servants into furniture also wiped their family's memories of them. Or how in Alladin Jafar kept going on about some other fictional nations and his geopolitical ambitions. It's just the worst. These stories do not benefit from that kind of half-baked worldbuilding. All just to stop cinemasins from saying something dumb.
The Lion King was never about the politics; the fairy-tale "just king" story was only there to facilitate Simba's story and growth to responsibility and face a troubled past. Focusing more and more on the politics and world-building in the remake highlights the WORST parts of the original. Absolutely idiotic.
CinemaSins is ANTieducational for film criticism.
Overanalyzing things is kind of the point of this channel
I thought design wise Alladin was good, slightly different from the original for us to be ok but close enough for us to be like "oh yeah yeah das Alladin"
@@sethleoric2598 Just what the point of making a film that's "oh yeah yeah das Alladin" if we already have an Aladin movie???
@@eliaspeter7689 I don't know, i did like that film more than the other films though
“The lion king objectively slaps, it slaps my entire bod. If anything could convert me to the far right. It’s this”
-Big Joel, 2019
I always come back to this vídeo just to hear him say that.
GOAT children's movie. Mufasa's death have me permanent ptsd
What a quote
it's such an endearing thing to say
Saron of Akad: **pulls back hood** We have found it, his only weakness.
Dennis Prager, dressed like the Emperor: Are you certain that our attempts will be fruitful this time?
Saron: I believe so, my lord.
**Scene fades to black with foreboding music playing**
Something that strikes me when watching this video is how flat the movie looks. I've heard people say that live action is a bad choice for The Lion King because it means the movie can't have all the vibrant colors of the cartoon. And I agree. But it's even worse than that. Not only are the colors in the live action movie less vibrant than the cartoon, they're less vibrant than REAL LIFE! Cutting from Joel's backyard, with it's vibrant greens and his bright skin and his dark hair, to the blandness of the movie makes me wonder why the movie is so washed out. Joel's backyard looks realistic, and it's still colorful, so why couldn't the movie be that vibrant?
Edit: Changing Scar's motivation to trying to get with Sarabi is gay erasure.
To be fair, this codes Scar as a sexual predator and their primary motivations tend to center around power, anger, and sadism rather than attraction. Predators can and do assault outside of their true sexual orientation. In this context, Scar isn't experiencing a true desire for Sarabi. He believes that he "won" her and owns her and he's motivated to assault her as a means of controlling her and smiting the mate that she had been with by choice.
I also suspect that they took a hint from the musical where Scar tried to get with Nala. But it was made clearer that he had become increasingly mentally unhinged and was trying to force her to "respect" and "admire" him. That was what compelled Nala to run away. It was better developed and gave more weight to the plot. Here? It just didn't make sense.
I think that this version of Scar was a bit more menacing but nowhere near as charismatic or memorable as the original. So he not only left a weaker impression but he was less believable as a slick master manipulator. It's hard to buy that Mufasa hadn't already pegged this Scar as a loose cannon and kept him far away from all of the cubs.
Bro real grasslands are not bright and colorful
@@satireknight it was hinted at according to many folks who analyze the film
@@Mandelasmind They are still way more saturated than this movie. This movie is way to desaturated to be seen as realistic. I personally actually think it makes everything pretty ugly because it looks so boring.
starkman78 In fact, according to Wikipedia, sexual orientation is rare in non-humans. Homosexual behavior is common, but it’s very rare for an animal to be exclusively homosexual.
“But dad don’t we pay the workers minimum wage?”
“Yes Simba, but trickle down economics”
Praise the holy power of trickle down economics!
BRUH 😂😂😂
03:04 "The Lion King objectively slaps my whole bod"
Well, that's a way to say you like something
Thank you. I thought it was that, but needed the translation to be sure
@@verager2493 Same here.
I can't believe Mufasa is canceled now
Dude did you see when Danny DeVito told Mufasa on a Twitter DM to "retire bitch"?
@@DifferentLOL Never contra-points!
Mufasa never did anything and I'm getting tired of this drama #mufasagang4life
Oh, it's you.
@@LSSTmusic Yes, it is I!
"Because a Disney's belly is never full. Now, other movies will eat AFTER endless cash grabs.
And they don't leave much behind."
The new aesthetic kinda completely ditches the concept of allegory. Photorealistic animals behaving in animal ways is not a good way to communicate allegory to an audience.
Wow, I think this is the most succinct and best explanation of why the photorealistic version sucks. I've heard a lot about lack of facial expressions and such, but somehow everybody missed the allegory aspect
@@spinakker14 My favorite example of this is the shot in Hakuna Matata when Simba grows up.
In the original, Simba and his buds walk on a log, heads in the air, eyes shut, nothing but air under the log they walk on (the moon is there to emphasize the lack of solid earth under them). As Simba grows, they are still walking on the same log, still with nothing under them. It clearly communicates that they are ignoring important things at their own peril, and that while they are aging, they haven't actually gone anywhere. They're still on that log. They haven't actually matured.
In the remake, Simba and his friends walk normally, looking straight ahead, transitioning between multiple locations as Simba ages (solidly on ground, the moon is only there for aesthetics). If you try to read this imagery, it appears that the three went on some sort of epic adventure, walking all over Africa. Which is not only poor analogy, it is literally not what happened.
The new movie fails symbolically on even the most superficial levels.
(Sorry for the rant, I just love hating on this movie. It's everything that's wrong with the influx of literalism in modern story-telling and it makes it fascinating.)
@@YourFaceisPretty
Holy shit!! I hadn't noticed that!!
Ugh I'm really slow with stuff like that
theres also a chance that their wasnt an actual allegory in the original, nor the remake. I mean, yeah you can take that the film encourages subjugation and a divine ruler, but that doesnt mean that interpretation is fact. You can think of it as probably what the filmmakers intended but you dont know that is in fact what it was.
@@genericname8727 yeah and if you take that into account... who cares what it says? if its based off some old stuff (we are commonly taught about in school no less) that probably has values that reflect that time, then of course its probably going to have stuff that doesnt align with our current political climate. I mean really, i highly doubt shakepeare wanted to say anything about 21st-century politics when he made hamlet.
"Hyenas are just cute dogs who love to eat big dinner" - Big Joel 2019
big din-din eating puppers
Not technically correct, but also entirely true.
"it slaps my whole bod" -big Joel
@Ounocat I thought their closest relative was the mongoose?
Female hyenas have pseudo-penises
I though the ‘Scar seeking a queen’ subplot was just to calm any rumors that he could be gay
Nekoni that seemed incredibly lazy to me. His motives in the original were just fine as he was a jealous brother who wanted to dispose of those in his ways. The foppish attitude imbued by Jeremy Irons’ terrific vocal performance makes him that “love to hate” villain we remember well.
Didn't the sequel already address that by having its main villain, Zira, be a former concubine of Scar?
We all know Scar looks foreign, weak, and with very female moves (I just had to quote it)
yeah like for what reason they did that... if they wanted some beef between brothers why not use the canon that mufasa was always their dad's favorite?
@@matthewmuir8884 yeah but kovu was actually adopted meaning scar never had an heir, i think its implied zeera is so devoted to him because he took her in and choose her son even if it wasnt his. probably the filmakers only did this so kiara and kovu are not related and also because the message "you are not your father and doesnt have to hold their beliefs" was to radical for disney BUT one can think since scar never married or had a child and zeera never made clear they had a romantic relationship probably he did all this straight rituals out of convention knowing he couldnt be king without a wife and a heir
I didn't watch the remake. Probably never will. But this was what I expected. Just looking at the footage makes me kinda sad. It all feels like a soulless, empty cash grab.
As someone who's seen Lion King '19, that's because that's exactly what it is.
It makes me sad that a good friend of mine who has never watched the original (and even told me that she wasn't interested in it) suddenly watched the Remake (in a cynical perspective I'm saying it's because it was popular, trending and a lot of people on social media talked about it). She liked it and, I mean, good for her that she can enjoy something that I can't, but it kind of makes me angry that her first exposure to this amazing movie was a soulless cash grab that, while it looks more "realistic" and "mature" (for those who think that animation is only for kids), seems to have missed the point of the original movie.
Fräulein Zuckerguss no one seems to respect 2d animation.
You really aren’t missing anything. My expectations weren’t high for this remake given the original is my favorite Disney movie. The music is terrific (except Beyoncé’s cash-grab single), but the greatness was really captured in the original film
Honestly everyone who has seen the original movie may be biased about the 2019 one. My mom really liked the new one (also because it looks so "realistic"). I mean yes, I may be biased but even if I'm looking at it from a greater distance it just isn't good. The animals look lifeless, the songs don't fit in, everything is awkward. Disney tried making something that is overexaggerated work in real life but it obviously doesn't. It bums me that the main focus is the looks but in my opinion a film shouldn't be mainly abut the looks but about the story it's trying to tell.
I can’t wait until disney owns the rights basic human needs like water and food. All hail the mouse
"Water is not a human right" -actually the Nestle CEO, a real human being and definitely not a sinister alien blending in among men to plot the downfall of humanity
TheArchsage74 when I found that out I literally spit out my water, gosh the irony
But the CEOs will turn to grass when they die, so we're all cared for in the circle of life.
*LOYALTY TO DISNEY. LOYALTY TO THE BRAND. LOYALTY IS SALVATION. LOYALTY IS LIFE*
All you have to do is enter this simple 63-digit code. Easy-peasy!
"Hyenas are just cute dogs that need to eat big dinner" is possibly one of the best things I've ever heard
Also wrong. Hyena aren't dogs.
@@830toAwesomeClose enough
As someone who doesn't kin but if I did, I'd be a hyena -- SO true!!!
@@terencecobainNo, they're not close at all. In the order _Carnivora,_ there are two suborders. _Feliformia_ (l. cat-like) and _Caniformia_ (l. dog-like). _Feliformia_ contains _Felidae,_ which you'll recognize as the Cat family. It also contains _Hyaenidae._ Recognize the name? If someone points to a bear _(Ursus_ is a family in _Caniformia)_ and calls it a cat, would you say it's close enough?
@@None-Trick_Pony But if you saw one, would you or would you not say good boy? Thats all that truly matter here.
An ongoing problem with the Disney remakes? Strip away the magic and mystical, overexplain, and assign explanations to things that don't need them for stupid people.
The hyenas deserved better. They talk about them in the remake like they're made-up creatures like orcs, not actual animals who play their own important part in the ecosystem.
Now I feel dumbed down after watching this movie.
And that's the problem.
A little gratuitous and punitive to dunk on “stupid people” in your Disney critique. Some of us don’t pick up on allegory super well and miss the forest for the trees or how we else you’d put it in flowery language. If you’re gonna paint a target on big media studios, maybe don’t overstep and insult viewers’ intelligence?
Seems to me that if the new movie REALLY wanted to go there, there could have just been some “good hyenas” present in the Pridelands who hadn’t been exiled because they actually practiced moderation and had some respect for sustainability; would have made the differences ideological instead of the vaguely gross “well it’s just in their nature to be greedy and gluttonous and short-sighted, they’re not SMART like we are” vibe.
@@commbir5148 idk man, if you dont get it, you dont get it and that is fine. they dont need to cater to cinemaSins and its audience to make a good movie. questioning the logic of mysticism or soft magic systems is useless and the studio responding by trying to make an excuse by "explaining" it, just makes the situation worse. not every piece of media needs to be realistic because some pedantic or uncaring person complains about it/doesnt understand that (sure, calling them dumb is maybe a bit mean but not really wrong)
Joel in the wilderness
Erik Graham
And here we see a Big Joel in its natural habitat.
When Mufasa first talks about the circle of life, he's teaching respect, not arrogance. Simba challenges that by arguing that respecting the gazelles is unnecessary because they hold no power over the lions, which is an arrogant argument. The whole point of pointing out that the gazelles become the grass is to teach that they do serve a purpose to the ecosystem as a whole, and should be respected by hunting only as much as you need, leaving them room to breed and thrive.. Later when Scar allows the hunting parties to kill as much as they like, he fails to follow this teaching, and nearly loses the gazelles entirely. This doesn't completely invalidate your point about the lions becoming grass as well, but it's at least something we can argue about. It's still logical. The new justification for the hyenas' evil however, is just objectively flawed logic
The movie begins with the hyenas being persecuted/otherized...the circle of life teaches class structure. It’s the mandate of the ruling class, let us rule you give us occasional sacrifice and we will protect you from the barbarians and or fascist lion pretender/hyena coalition. The way the live action movie lingers on the idea the hyenas are foreign/gluttonous/state less and ruled by a despot in scar. Have you ever read Edward Said’s Orientalism? It will blow your mind.
I definitely agree with the environmentalist reading of Mufasa’s speech and I’m glad you mentioned it since Joel didn’t but since The Lion King is an adaptation of Hamlet and Shakespeare often employs the whole “if you overthrow the king/ruling class and thus defy the will of God, bad things will happen” narrative, I think that it’s also good to use class to analyze the movie
Exactly, it’s all about the balance in the ecosystem and scar messes that up
Absolutely agreed. That’s always what I thought.
"[they] should be respected by hunting only as much as you need" Mufasa never said this in the original. He only said: We can kill and eat them because when we die they basically eat our bodies.
At no point in time did he say to minimize eating.
It's more like a European saying we can kill natives because in return we give them Chrisitanity. Its a fair trade
Mufasa over here trying to justify Anarcho-Monarchism
*A N M O N*
Every man is a king!
@@ajpoopfucker Huey Long liked that: th-cam.com/video/RzRmAEE7Kfk/w-d-xo.html
I am an anarcho statist
Hi buddy
"Hyenas are less aesthetically pleasing than lions"
Citation needed.
Hyenas are big weasels.
@@Yipper64 no u.
Seriously though that's incorrect.
@@blarg2429 ive just been reading through the comments, apparently if they are related to anything its weasels. Ive seen some claim that they are related to cats but some saying they arent, but multiple people here are saying weasel.
www.quora.com/Are-hyenas-closer-to-weasels-than-dogs
TL;DR (not that it's long): weasels = caniformia (+ dogs, bears, raccoons), hyenas = feliformia (+ cats, mongeese, civets). So it's slightly complicated but hyenas are not as comparable to weasels as they are to several other animal species. Furthermore, hyenas occupy their own family, Hyaenidae.
Citations are not needed for things that are common knowledge.
so I remember even at a young age thinking "What and the antelope just accept that? Like they are just cool with being eaten" And so I have to say I find this criticism on point there. That said I myself filled in the gaps by saying that Mufasa and Simba represent power with restraint, power with checks and balances, power that considers the subjugated, while scar and the hyneas represent power without restraint, the power that executes without thought or care. And the hyenas are banished because they can't accept restraint, they cant accept the social contract.
So I think the reason why we accept the original lion king, it isn't asking the audience to decide if there should be power... that is taken as a premise, it is only asking the audience to compare power with restraint, and power without it.
I bet in the world of Zootopia, The Lion King is like one of those racist old cartoons that's honestly kind of horrifying to look at nowadays.
@brandon roberts small cats dressed as bunnies exclaiming that they breed just to produce more food for the ruling class
@@GibusWearingMann I wonder what would be the thoughts of the animals from Zootopia after they watch "Cats don't dance".
Lion King kinda seems like Zootopia's prehistoric times.
"It is like writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true." - Leodore Lionheart
Well it painted the predators as both really nice and unable to hurt a fly, or even ANY prey (like in the Akuna Matata paradise) AND as vicious flesh eaters and eco-ennemies
The remake doesn't have Mr. Bean so that makes it instantly worse.
That's not how you spell Blackadder
@@Lionkingview Or Johnny English.
Well said Mr. Speedwagon
Nice comment Speedwagon.
Lionkingview thats not how you spell Toby?
this video is the exact lenght it took me to finish 3 cobs of corn. thank you for enhancing my corn on the cob experience.
On a more serious note, this video is so well made and put together, I esp appreciate your breakdown of how the original TLK transports its message /makes it more acceptable/palpable to the point of not really being noticed outside of a certain framework. I also enjoy your tone of voice, it's very nice to listen to.
Another quote that I can’t even man:
“It slaps...
... it slaps my entire bod.”
slap. slap your entire bod. then, only then, you'll understand
@@d4v0r_x what am I supposed to understand? ?
@@emilson8191 How Big Joel feels after watching The Lion King.
but how can it slap?!??
It was the part of the video I related to rhe most.
"Hyenas are just cute dogs, who love to eat big dinner" Subscribed. Even when I was a little kid I always felt bad that the hyenas were cast out to a land with nothing and would get attacked for daring to set foot into the grass and maybe get some noms. Literal underdogs.
The hyenas were not allowed in because they overhunted. Their numbers were also ridiculously large. Pride Lands is not large enough to support that many predators. If you count the number of herbivores seen in the opening circle of Life scene, they are roughly the same as the number of hyenas seen in the Be Prepared sequence if not more. The number of predators must never exceed the numbers of their prey. The other animals perceived the threat to their livelihood as species when the number of predators increased dramatically when all those hyenas moved in at once and of course they left, leaving predators with nothing at all to eat in their area. However, just to appeal to the sensibilities od modern day audiences, the Lion Guard introduced
hyenas willing to make peace and even those who sided with Scar eventually questioned his motives. It clarified once and for all that only some hyenas are problematic.
Same, when I was a child i was proudly with "team Hyena", I found them funny but I honestly felt bad for them because, in the movie, you get to see the dump they live in.
Also i really liked Shenzi when i was little, i thought she was cool.
I hate to be that kid but... Hyenas are not members of the canine family!
I don't know if I'm looking at the original with rose-tinted glasses, but i felt like every character was visually and vocally distinct. In the modern remake i couldn't tell any of the females lions apart and eventually i just referred to them as Beyoncé number 1 and Beyoncé number 2 arbitrarily as the visual style was the same and the voice acting wasn't distinct either.
Considering how disney can struggle to make human female characters distinct, I was surprised that Nala, Sarabi, and Sarafina had different faces in the original
"If there was any film that could radicalize me to the far right, it would be this one."
The GREATEST backhanded compliment of 2019.
I can absolutely recognize that the OG Lion King has some dangerous ideology running through it, but I think it’s important to consider what a child watching the movie will actually take away from it.
When I watched as a child, I didn’t walk away thinking “subjugating others peoples is good and necessary” hell I basically forgot about Mufasa’s justification entirely. The message I took away (and I would imagine this is the same for most kids) was not to let your past control you and that part of growing up is taking on responsibility.
If we look at aesthetics again, the original avoids the more dubious aspects of its ideology by never actually showing Mufasa or Simba kill and eat another animal. (except insects I guess) All of Simba’s interactions with other animals are playful and friendly. Conversely, Scar and the hyenas are shown to be predators constantly through the visual language of the film. Scars claws are ALWAYS OUT. The hyenas try to hunt and eat Simba and Nala.
I think the core of my point is that a child is far more likely to remember the visual language of a film than the exposition. Since the visual language of the original is less problematic, it avoids the more troublesome aspects of its ideology.
Side point: I guess another problem with the new movie is that it’s primarily being watching by 20-40 year olds who are nostalgic for the original, and are far more likely to pick up on the problematic subtext (although I guess it’s explicit text in the remake now).
Brian Clarkson I don’t think the original was intended to be pro monarchist per say. I think that the whole circle of life thing was just a way to justify the aesthetics they wanted behind Simba and Scar. They definitely didn’t put a whole lot of thought into it.
Growing Wild you’re probably right. And honestly it works perfectly fine because the movie is a coming of age story at its heart not a political drama.
Brian Clarkson Exactly. While it’s not perfect, it doesn’t hurt the story much, if at all.
You make a great point, consider the hyenas feeding on the zebra leg Scar gives them, Scar's introduction playing with the mouse, the hyenas being shown snapping at the wildebeest. It is worth pointing out that Nala stalks Pumbaa but that is framed in a very neutral animalistic way, whereas in all the prior examples, Scar and the hyenas explicitly ENJOY torturing animals through predation. It is a perverse pleasure to them, scaring, frightening and attacking others is a gleeful act, not a simply necessary one as Mufasa implies it is to him.
the circle of life thing has a stronger effect of teaching kids about death and growing up (taking responsibility like you said) rather than idolizing bad governmental systems which kids would have no real clue about
"Hyenas are just cute dogs who like to eat big dinner." They're good dogs Brent.
Funny, that hyenas biologically are actually closer to cats, than to dogs.
They're cats
@@crinsombone5380 Well not exactly. But they´re clsoer to cats than dogs I think
@@crinsombone5380 They're in the same family as badgers and weasels iirc, which puts them closer to cats.
@@Alexander-kc8oq To be very precise, the order Carnivora contains two main groups, Feliformia ("cat-like predators", including cats, mongooses, civets, hyenas etc.) and Caniformia ("dog-like predators", including dogs, weasels, badgers, raccoons, bears, seals, etc.).
I think it's similair to super hero movies. There's a desire for literalism in order to elevate the source material, but literalism only serves to highlight the absurdities that should've been left abstracted.
perfectly said
Along with every equating Realism to Grimdark, but even just a realistic super hero story is so wrong because you see how absurd it really is
Idk, serieses like Gotham managed to portray almost the entire Batman cast in a convincing light despite being as over the top as the originals.
The script rewrite also eliminated basically all the most iconic lines and humor.
(E.g. "The king... has returned." Gone. Most of the villain song. Gone. "The monkey's his uncle?" Gone.) Also, the amazing reveal that it's Nala who was chasing Pumba is kind of ruined by the addition of the scene showing her leaving Pride Rock.
Basically, the entire soul was sucked out of the script as well as the visuals. I don't understand why they did this.
Simple. the Mouse wants money
I thought I was crazy because I didn't remember Nala leaving ! Phew...
Don't forget, after Mufasas death, it was sunset. The sun literally set on his time as King. Not only a brilliant visual choice conveying the intensity of the situation, but also thematically appropriate. God the remake sucks
@@yoshinpixels9924 I also hate how they changed the scene when Scar told the hyena's to kill Simba and they were chasing him, it was so intense in the original with him falling into the thorns and it was just lackluster in the remake. Like you said with the sunset, when Simba was running away and the sun was going down it was such a mood. And the hyenas yelling after him and making fun... god this scene sucked so bad in the remake
@@Visteus Oh, I know why the remake was MADE, I just don't understand the heavy script editing. Edits are supposed to make stories/plots/dialogue BETTER. This was just the complete opposite of that. 🤷
Excellent points. I remember watching this in theater and remarking on how the photorealism of the 2019 film brought out the brutality of nature and diminished the anthropomorphic charm of the original 90s characters.
I couldn't feel any empathy for these characters. When an animal was killed, it just felt like "Okay, this is how things happen in nature." Perhaps what's most interesting about this is the "Circle of Life" that is talked about in the original film is contradicted by the rational, emotional relationships formed in the animals-a bond which would not exist in this state in nature. In the real world, animals eat and get eaten.
I remember internally treating this as a BBC documentary with a dub track, but even _this_ was broken and the "cinematographers" show that snappy zoom-in as Simba was screaming "Nooo!" It broke the immersion of the film (at least, whatever immersion could have been created from this thing).
I thought you were holding a stick of deodorant instead of a mic for longer than I'd like to admit.
gotta stay fresh
Wow thanks now I can't stop unseeing it.
Grunkle Stan:"Your microphones a turkey baster Toby."
I'd say that the cartoon gives enough emphasis to the "circle of life" as a way to basically say, "dont be selfish". looking back at the shakespeare that inspired the original, it carries those same themes on the pitfalls of greed. the cartoon is able to overshadow imperialist overtones with messages of benevolence and good will to all, while the new one seems to not be able to do that. its too gritty to do that and not as lighthearted.
exactly ! the underlying imperialism in the original was, as you say, overshadowed by the sheer emotionality, the strongly resonating notes of family, responsibility and friendship. the bleak realism of the remake has no opportunity for meaningful anthropomorphism and loses any characterisation or emotional appeal that it might have had.
@@raventrunite6459 And also overshadowed by the actual message of the film, which is "The past can hurt, but you can either run from it, or learn from it" -- a message which, while still spoken, was weirdly scrubbed from the remake. I got the sense that the creators didn't understand that Hakuna Matata was supposed to be a bad thing that Simba had to overcome in himself.
18:20 I can’t tell which one is Mufasa or Simba and that’s indicative of why this remake fails
A+ film criticism, C- in taxonomy Joel
see me after class
See you after class for a C-? What kind of blue ribbon for everyone school are you running?
Yeah wait, carnivores maintain herbivore populations so they don't destroy resources in an ecosystem. And Disney dressed it up to make the concept palatable to children and families. Big Joel... why?
@@Inali097 That doesn't make the process any less brutal and horrific for the animals getting ripped apart limb by limb for their meat. It may be the way nature works and possibly even the only way it could work, but at the end of the day it's still suffering and death for anyone not at the top. Another problem is the animals are anthropomorphized af and nothing about it can be applied to humans who are totally outside the ecosystem.
@@BT-oj1bn it does make it less grusome. Because that isn't what happens. Lions selectively and quickly kill animals to maintain balance. Hyenas often rip their prey limb from limb causing them to die a painful death in shock. Without lions eating, the herbivores would overpopulate, outcompete other species and all slowly starve to death - boom, mass extinction.
@@blakea.wittenberg5685 The latter point of BTs I do agree with, the metaphor of the dominance hierarchy among predators and prey in nature don't find parallels in human society, but you're right with regards to overpopulation. I do think it's weird that the herbivores are portrayed as almost feudal serfs in the Lion King - there's a creepy power dynamic at play as conveyed (fe how do fewer herbivores result in a drought?) but ultimately Big Joel's point is ridiculous this time around. If he wants to argue that the shift toward photorealism represents a shift toward narrative realism, he has to contend with the fact that lions can't nor shouldn't choose to eat grass and bugs in reality
Fun fact: I'm pretty sure that my dislike of the Lion King came from me first seeing it back to back with Bambi, resulting in me imagining Mufasa giving the Circle of Life speech to Bambi about how it's okay he just ate Bambi's mum.
oof, talk about priming
This is 2 years too late, but didn't a Human kill Bambi's mom? Lions were nowhere in that film's universe
@@scytheslash it was more me imagining Mufasa giving the speech *if* he had killed Bambi's mum
Real animals are more expressive than the cgi in this movie
Live-action Lion King would’ve been more tolerable if it was dubbed entirely with Big Joel mumbling animal noises
It wasn't live action
Sounds like a good Patreon goal.
"mmm-muh-mu-mum"
Lion fact 1: some lioness are born with manes
Lion fact 2: a human baby's cry shares some acoustic similarities with a lion's roar.
Weird flex, but ok
a human baby's cry also "shares some acoustic similarities" with a fucking air raid siren, that phrase literally means nothing
@@littlesnowflakepunk855 I forgot edit the comment to finish the fact. I will do so now
@@littlesnowflakepunk855 I forgot why thos fact was important my b.
@@littlesnowflakepunk855 human baby cry shares some acoustic similarities with an air raid siren is the first reasonable explanation i've heard in favor of reproducing
Same problem with Beauty and the Beast: did I really need to know Gaston is a war hero, and that’s why the town loves him? No.
Or that his wartime experience left him with PTSD? And that’s why he’s s violent maniac? No again.
It’s a fairy tale; it’s not like audiences are looking for depth.
That because Disney made those remakes to cater to, as Lindsay Ellis called them, the pedantic fucks of TH-cam with their decades of bad-faith criticism.
So, they made it for Mr Cinema Sins and Mrs Lily Orchard who loved to complain about the mystisism on fairy-tales.
Cinemasins are :v
Oooh don't get me started on Gaston in the remake. Too late. My biggest issue with that movie is that it made Gaston actually seem like a decent guy and Belle came off as a b*tch. Like when he told Lafou that he liked that she was well read and could be argumentative, and then was genuinely interested in what she was reading. It drove me insane. Gaston is not meant to be deep, he's a narcissistic misogynist and that's all there is to him. And that's all there needs to be. Ok I'm done now.
@@dramamole It completely missedd the point too.
The fucking theme was appearance and its effect on people's perceptions.
HOW DOES DISNEY NIT GET THat?
“Gaston has PTSD and that’s why he’s a violent maniac.”
Good Gad, that sounds like a fucking joke about gritty realism.
What’s next? Plankton wants to steal the secret Krabby Patty formula because it’s actually drugs?
Conclusion: grass is just dead lions, STEP ON THEM
And wolves. And bears. Hell, pretty much any other large apex predator at this point... 🙄
@@Kaikaifilu1994 i mean, everyone's bodies turn to grass not just apex predators
...my point still stands, though.
@@Kaikaifilu1994 yeah
Mark Brackney the point of trying to ruin a decent joke?
I find it hilarious how when Joel juxtaposed live-action Mufasa and Simba, I could barely tell the difference between them. I had to like lean in and look carefully. Whereas with the cartoon if you put Mufasa and adult Simba side-by-side it's pretty obvious who's who at first glance, without having to linger.
It could be interpreted that Scar wanting Sarabi is a reference to Hamlet since the evil uncle in there actually marries Hamlet's mother
Biologically, hyenas aren't related to dogs, or cats, and exist as their own family the Hyaenidae.
Sam Foster females give birth through their giant clitoris which can actually be larger than a male’s penis.
@@Cecona Yeah it's quite disturbing to view for most who find out about this. Such a perfect design by God! Actually it's probably not since I'm not convinced that God exists. 😂
Kaylem Kerr if god did exist he must hate hyenas lol
Anarchist Xomburg because he made child birth extra painful and dangerous for them by making them have to do it through a pseudopenis. And the females tend to be aggressive and harass the males which tend to be smaller.
Hyenas are related to every animal
The 2019 Lion King does 1 thing right at least, Nala can't give those half-lidded bedroom eyes to Simba that made me question if I was a furry when I was a kid.
I see that as a bad change, lol.
@@ChiefMedicPururu (fur)Suit yourself, then
It was a fun sly nod to grown-ups back then and opens your eyes as you grow up 😉
If you have to ask yourself that, the answer is probably yes
@@LucyLioness100 My mom calls that the "Come hither" look
The drought really works best as an expression of the old Arthurian/Fisher King myth of "the king's health is the land's health" - if the king is ill (or bad), the land will sicken. Or, similarly, the Chinese notion of the "mandate of heaven" - if a monarch loses it, it is expected that floods, plagues, droughts, etc. will express heaven's displeasure. (As Joel said, keep it mystical. :) )
Fun fact: Hyenas are closer related to weasels than dogs or cats.
That's a point in the favour btw, I love the weasel family.
@Maso Perez no, actually hyenas are closer to cats than to dogs OR weasels. Although they’re even closer to mongooses than to cats, so that might explain your confusion. Weasels are actually closer to dogs and bears than to cats or hyenas.
but they still love to eat big dinner right?
please tell me they still love to eat big dinner
@Hero of the Beach oh yes they do. A hyena’s belly is never full
Sorry fam I think you're mixed up. Hyenas are in the suborder feliforma, making them one of the cat-related carnivores. Weasels are in caniforma, making them more dog-related.
@@simonj3413 oh shit, I must have missed remembered my factoid, sorry bud.
"I'm not an alien."
That sounds like something an alien would say.
Satyr Ghost “I’m not an alien”
Me: YOU LIE!!! YOU LIEEEEE!!!!!! LIEEEEEEESSS!!!!!
Man, I hate how The Lion King (both versions) depict hyenas, a keystone species, a terrible reputation as either evil scavengers or animals that overhunt.
The evil scavengers one bothers me even more! Hyenas scavenge less than lions!
Ugh, at least the new movie made them matriarchal like irl...?
yeah but they're cool villains
@@shadeddreamer6864 Spotted hyenas scavenge less. Striped and especially brown hyenas scavenge.
@@Moony1568 spotted are the kind in lion king m8
@@shadeddreamer6864 "The evil scavengers one bothers me even more! Hyenas scavenge less than lions!"
They needed bad guys in the movie. Not sure where the mystery is here. It's not a documentary about hyenas.
"Ugh, at least the new movie made them matriarchal like irl...?"
Shenzi is clearly in charge of the three in the original.
how to criticize the original lion king's ideology without seeming like it
@HankyChan He still has a career because some people are willing to forgive decades-old stupid controversies.
th-cam.com/video/EbUkino-a8k/w-d-xo.html
Wow, it’s almost like Disney/ESPN/ABC/etc. mega corporation conglomerate has a vested financial interest in justifying and maintaining the existing power structure. Who would have thought? Good thing they don’t let that bias seep into every creative decision ever expressed through their media though, that would just be so manipulative and self-serving. Almost like scar. Except he’s a bad guy because he has a black mane and stuff and wasn’t divinely appointed by the nature gods, so that totally makes sense 👀
@sinwithagrin "real" advocates 🙄
Hey Peter I love your videos
Even if the original's ideology is "problematic", because it's done with artistic flair, there is nothing "real" about it, and so it's more like representations of feelings and ideas than anything. With the original, we are all Simba, and we are all gazelles. With the new one, the realism detracts from that emotional response.
Or, you know. Everything bigjoel said already that you probably already know i'm just here for algorithms and that sweet dopamine kick of a like here and there
Why do Mufasa or Simba deserve to be king? Hum, I dunno, HAVE YOU SEEN THEIR GORGEOUS MANES?!
because nepotism, apparently
I'm a basic girl
I see a Conan PFP, I reply
and that lush,,,,,,,*white*,,,,,,,,,fur? c'mon
Actually according to the lion high-archy. The lion with darker mane is supposed get the ladies, instead of a male lion with a bright mane.
Ironically, Scar would most likely be king in a real pride. A black mane on a lion is a sign of high testosterone in a male, meaning they're probably stronger than the other males and more desired by females so they're usually dominant in their packs.
This is a year old but I had a similar experience of having to confront some of the conservative ideals within Disney films when I watched the live action Aladdin. I’m like, Jasmine complaining about her life hits a little different when clearly at least a portion of Agraba’s population doesn’t even have access to food and shelter and seemingly lives in a police state.
Big Joel, you make it sound as if there is one message kids will get out of watching the lion king: "the current hierarchy is good and natural, and those that come to disturb it are villains." But watching this movie as a kid, that's not the part of the film I was focused on. The scenes that affected me the most included the one where Simba finally decides to face his past, and the scene where his father tells Simba he is going to die one day. The monkey's words stuck in my head: (talking about the past) "You can either run from it, or learn from it." As a kid's movie, I think the lion king functions more on an individual level and has lessons that apply in everyday life. While the political ideology you explain may be read from the story, I don't think it's the main message and it's not what I took away from the film.
That being said, I don't think you're analysis is wrong; it just feels like you're leaving a lot out of the picture. Also I love your videos.
yeah, the takeaway from all disney movies that focus on big monarchies (which basically no one can actually relate to) is the emotional character stuff, lessons about love and family and friends. still, the underlying political ideology, while not the focus is more significant when considered in the context of all the other kid's media (see: disney) that reinforces the status quo. but yeah, definitely not the main lesson for kids, but just kind of a subliminal background force
@SomethingScanning Maybe he's saying that, but I can't see how he's not claiming anything about the lion king as well. I'm just hearing "lion king story bad" throughout this video and I wanted to say why I like it.
I used to be terrified of death as a kid, this movie gave me a lot of peace as a child. The Circle of Life - although obviously silly to an adult - really comforted me and made sense to me when I was young.
Ben Kauffman But he literally said he liked the animated movie, just that it becomes problematic when you start to analyse it, which the live action movie basically forced him to do.
I find it very interesting that the line you speak of was cut from the reboot. It kind of feels as if someone realized the line was a bit at odds with the narrative (Simba never truly gets over his past until he's told he was misinformed about it). But that just makes the reboot seem to double down on a kind of nasty "no second chances for the guilty" message.
The hyenas are the proletariat and needed to overthrow the lions without Scar's leadership.
Actually those would be the hervivores, The Hyenas are the Oligarchs
Nah, the hyenas are just another overclass, parasitizing off of the workers and seizing control of the local hierarchy by force. Just another type of petty burgeoise.
Hyenas are the merchant guilds trying to displace the feudal lords.
The hyenas are SJWs on college campuses /s
The Hyenas are a rival ruling or oligarchic class competing for the lions for resources and power.
"But don't we eat the antelope?" "Yes, son, but they are idiots and if we didn't eat them they would overpopulate, destroy the savanna and then starve en masse."
True, but even weirder to put in the voice of an anthropomorphized creature.
Wow... Big Joel is out in nature in this video!
The outside world looks so pretty from this angle
It's funny how differently we perceive messages. To me, the Lion King has always felt like it meant to teach modesty and moderation. Yes, the lions rule de facto over the prideland, but it always felt accidental, not "systemic". It is not presented as something that can be changed unlike, you know, human society. The point Mufasa was teaching Simba was to not just kill other creatures just because pooower, even though, lions kinda have to actually eat other creatures. I thought as a child that all Mufasa did was instruct other lions and manage internal affairs. Like, the movie asks the question of, hey, you are stuck with a situation, do you give it your best, or do you let your shitty uncle do it for you and, as the movie portrais, make everything worse for everybody. I mean, yeah, I agree that the monarchy allegory is too on the nose to ignore and I'm probably wrong but either way, I can't bring myself to see it that way. Maybe it is *because* it is so on the nose that the whole monarchy itself feels like a symbol for something else.
I think you're picking up on how the animated Lion King feels like more of a PERSONAL story.
Like, the monarchy and eco-sytem and animal stuff all just basically feels like a metaphorical way to explore and give stakes to Simba's journey through grief and growing up. Even as a kid, your pick up on the fact that we're not REALLY meant to take the whole "pride rock" and "royal lion family" thing literally. That's not really the point. The point is "the past can hurt but we can learn from it" and "running from your problems doesn't make them go away." But since the remake is really hard to connect to, it loses that personal dimension, and since it's portrayed so "realistically," it loses it's metaphorical, allegorical dimension as well, and so all that's left are the...weird structures that remain.
@@fightscrimewhilesleeping4024 Well put.
So twilight basically
@Moony Marshes Completely agree, it's yet another example of people overthinking things in order to make them look worse. The hyenas aren't there to tell the audience that racism is good and having Mufasa followed by Simba isn't necessary because divine right of Kings must be good in the real world too. Honestly, considering the amount of things that happen in the movie that don't happen in the real animal kingdom, I struggle to believe that anyone could interpret things so literally unless they're actively trying to interpret the movie in a negative light.
(Žižek voice) this is PURE IDEOLOGY
"The lion king objectively slaps. It slaps my entire bod" hearing that in such a serious tone absolutely broke me lmao
"I'm not an alien though"... we're onto you 'Big Joel'.
“I am a normal human man with the usual assortment of orifices and appendages”
Black Panther was a better "realistic" version of The Lion King, than the "realistic" version of The Lion King.
okay yEs
"I da kang" " Nah nigga im da kang" Lion king and Black panther
I e actually watched black panther about 100 times, no seriously that many, and I have NEVER made that connection til now....Killmonger IS scar!!!!!
Lorelei Catherine damn 100 times is too much
Roberto Yoshida I have a problem 😂😂 i just really love it, glaring flaws and all!
i’m a professional illustrator and almost without fail cringe at the disappointing ineptitude of youtubers trying to talk about art direction and aesthetic, form and content, but you did a great job, really refreshing
Big Joel slaps my entire bod.
I see so he was a lying king 🤔
Ah yes hmm 🤔🤔🤔
Jhené Aiko said it
Jesus 😩
When I was old enough to "get it" I associated the mysticism of the original Lion King squarely with the Shakespearean roots of the story. The ghost of Hamlet/Simba's dad, the cosmic implications of monarchic disorder (a HUGE theme in Shakespeare's plays, especially King Lear) as evidenced by all the prey animals leaving Pride Rock when Scar takes over, even the rain coming in when Simba restores order to wash everything clean. I haven't seen the remake but I assume that what's missing is the inherent allegorical fantasy of the story, something that's tough to capture in a realistic portrayal. The suspension of disbelief is just easier with animation, always.
clearly the solution is for CGI lions to be placed an a clearly artificial stage like a stage play.
Who put this halfling bard on my screen and why am I subscribed now?
Halfling bard, huh? I suppose you could call that a "half-pipe".
Big Joel: The animation in the Lion King allows us to contemplate the beauty of power.
Also Big Joel: At the end of the day, hyenas are just cute dogs that want to eat big dinner
16:20 Oh, they had to not-gay uncle Scar too? That's just adding insult.
even animals get a case of the not-gays nowadays. In the world of pandemics, no one is safe from its influence!
But didn't the sequel already address this by making its main villain, Zira, a former concubine of Scar?
It's not an excuse, but the Broadway musical did it first. I suppose Disney didn't have to include it in the remake, though.
It's also kinda confusing how SImba getting the throne back defeats the hyenas. Presumably they were kept at bay during Mufasa's reign, and were allowed to hunt and overpopulate in Scar's reign. How does SImba becoming king undo the power and population boom? Were the lions always capable of defeating the hyenas and simply didn't because they were too loyal to whoever was the king to go against Scar's orders?
Also. Hyenas are far more terrifying than lions. Enough hyenas can chase away a bunch of lions.
Basically.
They're still screwed.
Well, yeah. Enough ants can chase away a bunch of lions.
It always seemed to me that the movie implied the hyenas being too stupid and greedy to stand their ground against the lions. They needed a leader like scar
@@jearn11 Yes and no. Ants defend their termite mounds.
Hyenas however? Theyre nasty. There is a reason lions are more or less viewed in a good light in our African folktales, and why hyenas are just
Terrifying. Something to be feared. Cuz they are.
well theres also the fact that scar threw the hyenas under the bus to save his own skin, so i doubt they would stay loyal after that.
Big Joel's review of The Lion King: "If any movie could radicalize me to the far right, it would be this one" ...
Am I the only one that finds this nonsensical?
@@Kri8aris No. No you are not. I kinda laughed out loud and raised an eyebrow tbh.
@@Kri8aris He was obviously joking, but it's not quite a stretch. The movie essentially calls for natural hierarchies and critics have argued that the hyenas have racist undertones. There are enough dots to connect there, really.
Velentziadis I mean, the movie makes you root for anarcho-monarchism, and does a damn good job at it. In the end, the “good guy” you’re rooting for is just another monarch on top of a fundamentally unjust social structure
LegendofLegaia929 uhh the right isn’t about creating natural/racial hierarchies. Not saying some people on the right don’t do that, just saying that’s not what it is about
Mufasa's speech is basically enlightened absolutism. We lions rule everything but we must respect everyone! Sure...
I mean do you want the lions to go vegan or something?
@@damiantirado9616 do u know what a metaphor is
8:57 fun fact: hyenas arent at all related to canines and are in fact closer genetically to felines (though they arent felines either ofc)
Hyenas are hyenas. Simple as that.
The closest animal to hyenas is the mongoose. lolwut
Hyenas are feline software running on canine hardware 🤷♀️
I think your analysis of the OG Lion King is a bit off. I wouldn't be so quick to treat metaphor as analogy. In other words, the creatures do not cleanly reduce 1:1 to "essentially human." That's just a convenient assumption for interpreting OGLK's thematic universe as Political Power Structureville.
Weirdly enough, I think your criticism of the new Lion King is STRONGER if the literal political logic applies more to it than to OGLK.
Relatedly, Mufasa's speech isn't particularly convincing on a literal level, but the spirit of it does fit the "predators are part of a balanced ecosystem" thing, which is both true and not identical to "kings are good for kingdoms." Part of what's appealing about OGLK is that it can squeeze distinct ideas like these together in a single aesthetic experience -- with "aesthetic" itself not just meaning "pretty and distracting."
gorbonic
Just a reminder, lion King is hamlet but with lions.
@@moderth95 thanks for the thoughtful reply. I think treating the film as analogy -- any analogy, really -- encourages a type of literal thinking that's foreign to fiction and art more generally, at least when it works. And it looks to me like Big Joel wants to say OGLK works better than the new one. My point was just that metaphor/art is a different beast than analogy/lesson-teaching.
So let's pretend you want to say OGLK is pretty good. When its characters look and behave like animals and connect their dynastic drama to the breaking and fixing of a quasi-mystical natural harmony, this stuff is not simply there to mask an incoherent literal political analogy.
In other words, the combination of these elements, like in metaphor, creates something new. It's way too easy to just say "shut up" with a reductive explanation. Examples: "Dude they're just animals, so take a chill pill!" "No it's Hamlet cuz that's what I heard so let's just stop thinking!" "No it's Zizek because ideology!" "No it's Monarchy, but dumb because animals!"
Certainly any of those options are reasonable as criticisms or "critiques" or whatever of the movie. But if you DON'T think OGLK is that bad, indeed if you want to claim it works as art in contrast to the remake, then you risk having it both ways when you argue they both reduce to silly hierarchical politics. And that's my reading of Big Joel here.
"predators are part of a balanced ecosystem" -> There are balanced ecosystems without apex predators (there's always some insects and microorganisms being eaten). It isn't true that predators are a necessary part of a balanced ecosystem.
@@Fluxquark They don't have to be part of ALL balanced ecosystems for the original statement to hold true. If any balanced ecosystem includes predators then the statement is true. Also, predators that eat insects are still predators.
@@lazerbeam134 Sorry but English doesn't work that way. If I say "engines are part of a working car", nobody would interpret this as "there is at least one working car that has an engine". It means "every working car has an engine".
"Long ago, the Circle of Life existed in harmony. Then, everything changed when the Hyena Nation attacked."
i'm very upset at you over this, calling Hyenas dogs
Yeah, they're a member of feliformia!
They are good boys
He also called the wildebeests gazelles...Joel needs a new zoology book
There's only one thing we can responsibly do. We have to cancel Big Joel for his crimes against nature! How dare he insinuate that hyenas are dogs!? HOW DARE HE CONFLATE GAZELLES AND WILDEBEESTS! HE MUST BE STOPPED!!! >:[
I think he's saying that figuratively, tugging on our heartstrings by comparing the hyenas to man's best friend to say they deserve the same kind of sympathy that the lions get for being big, cute, fluffy kitty cats.
This movie should be just a post on 9gag titled"Someone made a realistic version of The Lion King and it'll blow your mind"
I know your point is that the whole Circle of Life thing falls apart when you consider all the characters to be essentially human. However on a deeper level, I think the film is about order, especially of nature, and adhering to that order (hence Circle of Life, Scar = drought, Simba = prosperity). It's all about dat delicate balance.
Also, I kept expecting you to mention all the animals in the jungle who were constantly afraid Simba would eat them. How awkward is that lol.
Anyway great video!
The fact that the live action remake made a bazigillion dollars sometimes makes me really sad
“Live” “action” 😂
Mufasa: "When we die, we turn into grass, and the antelopes eat the grass"
Yes Mufasa, but when the antelopes eat your grass self, you do not feel pain.
When you eat the antelopes, they do feel pain.
And of course it's not like the lions can choose to not eat the antelopes or gazelles or zebras. They're carnivores. It's what they do. If anyone tries to feed a lion tofu they are pissing all over the natural order and that specific lion. So of course you gotta rationalize it as a philosopher lion man.
But as humans we can totally poke holes in it. Mufasa isn't evil cuz he has this philosophy, it's just incomplete in a key respect. Perhaps it would've sat better with this type of analysis if he also has a bit where he's like "this is why I teach you to hunt as well as you should--to make sure that you do not inflict any unnecessary pain unto the antelopes that give themselves to you. They are our prey, but they are not our toys."
And in fact, we humans recognize this too in hunting. We praise people for clean shots that kill animals instantly. We call things sloppy when we see animals agonizing, and we even have a clear concept of 'putting things out of their misery'. Even we as humans get that.
@SørenCast Z I don't remember the emotion I was feeling when writing this, which to me basically means I can't really connect to what I was writing. Like I *get* and *feel* it, but I can't believe I went into a full rant about the Lion King on a remake video lol.
@@juanpablorobayo9891 Sometimes it's fun just to follow an offbeat train of thought ^^
Not like Lions can live off Tofu, not a lot of veggie burgers in central Africa.
No excuse to eat your own subjects tho.
But in reality, hyenas, and probably lions to a certain extent, eat their prey alive.
Nature can be depicted as divine and beautiful in cartoons, but in real life, nature can be absolutely brutal and disgusting.
He mentions how the original lion king feels like the animals are more like people than real animals. And like... no shit... the story is a retelling of Hamlet. Everyone should know that.
I feel like he and other critics are really only looking for reasons to bash the movie for the sake of bashing.
Have they considered that the original movie might show us that the idea of kings and subjects doesn't necessarily work out for humans. (Hamlet is a tragedy, after all). But maybe in nature, hierarchies do kind of make sense?
Predators are not the foundation of the food chain, but their place is to keep it in order.
The relationship between predator and prey may be brutal, but through it emerges the diversity and beauty of nature.
You don't need to think that because it's based on a play about humans, but made about nature instead, that it has something to say about us.
Maybe it's just about appreciating nature through a classic story.
It's something digestible for kids. Idk if it's anything deeper than that.
Gaia Builder Lmao way to miss the point of the video. He literally compliments the og movie because the animals are like people to him because he then can understand why they would cheer on Simba and criticises the remake for failing to make him feel the same way. And it’s like that because the director was obsessed with making the movie feel like a documentary which is impossible to do with this story because irl nature does not work like in The Lion King, the most obvious thing being that lions are not the ruling class. The fact that the movie looks ugly doesn’t help.
Please don’t be stuck in the “thing bad/thing good” mindset, not all criticism works like that. You can point out that The Lion Kings morality and philosophy is weird and still like it, it’s called being critical of the things you like.
Shakespeare adaptation is based around monarchic worldview. Wow. I haven't been this surprised since finding that rain makes things wet.
@brandon roberts Since people are sharing weird trivia elsewhere in this comments section, I must inform you that the notion of the color blue is a relatively recent invention and that therefore whole generations of people have looked at the sky and not considered it to be that color.
Exactly
the only reason I watched this movie was John Oliver, after all the memes comparing him to zazoo Disney swooped in and took advantage of that
I feel like you're almost intentionally looking past the actual point of the circle of life speech of the original film. It's simply a statement about how abusing resources messes up the entire system, including the life of the abusers. It's an enviromental stance.
It would have been more complete if they had added 'without lions, herbivores would flourish too much and fuck with the vegetation', but that goes too far for the demographic the film was made for.
scar at 16:22 looks so invested. the creators were so good at making real lions that they've become sentient and thus, bored with the script and are just chilling
Are we going to get a Big Joel director's cut of him dubbing the entire movie?
I would join patreon for this
"Rum, ruuh, rudda, rum, ruh, ruh"
Hey my favorite line!
I left this comment on a video a while back that I want to reiterate:
There's a bit in the Lion King that really sticks with me, watching this movie years later. As you point out, Simba says "Don't we eat the antelope?" Simba, and the rest of the lions, as members of the ruling class, maintain their power and existence through the death, suffering, and literal consumption of the various prey, who, as we have seen, are creatures bearing sentience, and whom we might interpret to be an analogy to the lower classes. And Mufasa doesn't, like, deny this. Or make excuses for it. He does the opposite. He outright says that it's a good thing. He talks about how there is a natural cycle in life, and that it must be maintained for the good of all. And then Scar comes in, and takes a group which has been cast out from society, and uses them to overthrow an oppressive and murderous power structure. After which, everything goes to shit. Order, society, and the ecosystem are only restored after the previous oppressive power structure is restored. Now, of course in nature, the preservation of the ecosystem is important. Over hunting or a lack of predators are both threats to the ecosystem. And so Scar, by enabling over hunting, is, rather understandably, portrayed as being wrong by the film.
But read as an allegory, independent of the framework of the story as occurring in nature, the film is kind of messed up. The film asserts that what we might see as "unnecessary" death and suffering at the hand of oppressive power structures, is in fact, very much justified. That a society in which the ruling class quite literally kill and feed off of the lower class, is justified. Not because "might makes right". Or because the lower classes are somehow "deserving" of this status. But because anything other than this is apparently unsustainable.
In a way, the film is kind of like that age old argument for Capitalism: that no matter how many people suffer, no matter how many people die, no matter how many people are oppressed, no matter how many people are exploited, no matter how obviously, inexcusably bad things become, we cannot do anything to change, much less fix, our situation, because, for some reason, this is "the only system that works".
PS. One may also interpret the film as saying that attempts at revolution and change will inevitably perpetuate the same injustices of the previous system (again tying back to that idea of "this is the only sustainable option). After all, save for the rectification of the implied ethnic cleansing of the hyenas, most of the injustices of Mufasa's reign persist.
What I'm trying to say is that the hyenas are a Leninist Vanguard Party.
U really overthinking this🤣🤣focus on ground reality issues of our society
@@Someone-hl5gr That is focusing on the "ground reality issues of our society".
@@Nicolai0Nerland no that's focusing on a film that most of the victims of these problems wouldn't even HV the money to see
But over hunting is also massacring the lower classes, you just switched the power balance so the formerly oppressed group can now oppress and kill as they like. And now they have the added disadvantage that their new leader doesn't care about the ecosystem, the "lower classes" or about maintaining anyone except for himself. While I get how you may interpret Mufasa talking about the Circle of Life as an inherently oppressive ideology, I think it's more like "We need to eat and we also give back that's how nature works, but you mustn't take more than you need and still respect others".
I still firmly believe that they should have just filmed some lions and arranged the clips in a way that vaguely resembles the original. It would have been more realistic and then it would have been live-action too, which seems to be all they cared about anyway.
Disney WOULD throw a lion into a gazelle stampede to make money.
That's honestly an interesting take. Like I'd pirate it at least.
"If any movie could radicalize me to the far right, it would be this one."
Couldn't agree more.
The reason Simba and mufasa are good is because they only kill the animals that they need to survive whereas scar and the hyenas take everything than can until there's nothing left.
The message of the movie is that animals eat each other. That's the circle of life, that's how it is. But don't take more than you need to. Don't be greedy and gluttonous like scar is
Has Scar ever been depicted as gluttonous?
Yeah he's always scrawny like a junkie
@@bri1085 gluttonous in the sense of power
@@frauleinzuckerguss1906 why not say power hungry or megalomaniac
@@bri1085 I'm not the OP, so idk
Those are wildebeest stampeding in Mufasa's death scene. Not gazelles.
Major important details
Josh-oo, the Shape-Shitting Master of Dogshit
Looks like a lot of stampeding grass to me.
I always found it quite odd that Mufasa said that he'd turn to grass but died in a place devoid of life with no chance of becoming grass
He is still going to be eaten though. Just more directly.
4:12 i am CRYING I THOUGHT THAT WAS FROM THE MOVIE FOR A SEC
The real tragedy is that they could've gone the way of Speed Racer and used CGI to enthusiastically reinforce the themes and tone of the movie. Instead they just did the least creative thing they could think of.
A speed racer style would have been awesome
I legitimately loved the speed racer live action bc it leaned into the stupid tropes of the anime and the colors and tone where just A+. And to this day, I still say 'PanKOOken' instead of Pancake.
He isn't "lying." He's "lion." You missed a good pun there, joelypolyoly... 😤😤😤💪🏻💪🏻✊🏻💯💯
The thing you said about how weird it was to see the prey animals being happy about a baby lion actually has a lot of merit behind it...in the wild many prey animals will instinctively try and STOMP BABY LIONS TO DEATH if they come across them
"A hyena's belly is never full."
Disney endorsing Yeenoghu? Lion King 2019 has more in common with D&D 5th Edition than its source material. Disney pls
Daughter Of Frankenstein Ah yes, a man of fine taste in hyena men
You too are cultured I see
Carnivores *have* to eat meat to live though, and judging by how Scar's reign was portrayed, they don't overhunt, thus it's acceptable.
It runs on stereotypes, definately. Hyenas aren't inherently evil, just like lions aren't inherently 'kingly', like Scar. They just happen to be in charge here.
*Lesson Of The Day:* Animation isn't a genre. It's a medium that is suitable for EVERYONE.
_Whoever invented the phrase, "Animation is ONLY for kids", is definitely going to the ranch._
Whoever invented that phrase should watch Neon Genesis lmfao
@@RemixedVoice lol and Eva is actually pretty tame in terms of violent anime
@@SJNaka101 Oh I know, there is way gorier anime lol!! But in terms of thematic elements, and the ability to profoundly disturb me and force contemplation, Eva takes the cake for me.
I don't think I've ever witnessed anyone claiming that "animation is ONLY for kids". Claiming that some particular animated thing is intended for kids (often correctly, often incorrectly, usually while adult fans of that thing get weirdly touchy and defensive), sure. Unless we're feeling threatened by the opinions of cranky octagenarians who haven't watched an animated movie since the 60s, I don't see why that's a position we need to argue against.
The original Lion King absolutely was intended for children though. Which makes it even more important to understand and critique the ideology it presents, of course. I assume the new one was mainly aimed at nostalgic adults.
Mr. Friendship ram ranch?