Beating a dead Lion — The advancement of Technology and the death of Ideas
I recently watched a video posted on the Industrial Light & Magic You Tube channel detailing their work with Jon Favreau in implementing brand new Virtual Set technology in the production of the 1st season of The Mandalorian. It was illuminating insight on a new and fascinating way of making movies. This tech is being used as a replacement for green screen, as an updated iteration of rear projections and, to an extent, matte paintings.
ILM and Epic Games combined the power of the Unreal video-game engine, real-time environment render and video wall technology to project any backdrop (either filmed on location elsewhere or entirely digital) on a 360-degree, virtual set made of LED screens that, thanks to some magic I can barely understand, can be filmed without incurring in the moiré effect, that weird pattern you usually get when filming a screen. The result is a mixture of digital wizardry and practical lighting, with real environments shot in the comfort of a closed set that actor can move in and react to. I think the difference is noticeable: the light and the details of the world bounce off the characters’ armour in realistic ways, not to mention that performances are way more believable now that the actors can see their surroundings.
Unlike most CGI-heavy productions, Favreau and ILM made the environments “live” and interact-able. Like this Nerdist article explains, the camera picks up the actors in the physical space and the virtual, real-time background at the same time. And the backgrounds can be ready for projection 24 hours after finalization. It’s an amazing tool for this kind of production and can only improve as time goes on.
Learning about all this, I was in awe. It’s incredible what technology can achieve nowadays, and the way it has been used to boost creativity, shorten production cycles and open new doors for big budget storytelling.
It also reminded me how much I love Jon Favreau. A fine actor, a great director, a talented writer and producer (the man basically kick-started the whole Marvel Cinematic Universe) and above all else, a huge lovable nerd. He’s an amazing storyteller with a knack for pushing the boundaries, a quality highlighted by his more recent directorial efforts under Disney. He has accomplished so much in his long career; he’s really only missing the Ultimate Fighting Champion title (a FRIENDS reference I hope I don’t have to explain). And even then, it was all fictional.
The Mandalorian has proved Favreau can do a stellar job with the Star Wars franchise. I am sure a lot of people are expecting him to be put at the helm of Lucasfilm’s when Kathleen Kennedy’s contract expires. He has produced the least controversial piece of Star Wars Media since Disney took over and he clearly understands and loves this universe. I’m not forgetting about Dave Filoni of course, another amazing creative force whose inputs I’m sure helped immensely with the Mandalorian’s success. This new series is proof that Star Wars has the potential to grow beyond the “Skywalker Saga” and tell new stories set in the expansive Extended Universe created through the years in books, comics and video-games. Wait, am I just ranting about Star Wars again? This one was supposed to be about other stuff. Let’s start over.
OK, so. Jon Favreau. The one and only. I want to talk about him today, and the Hollywood machine he’s part of. A machine that has traded ideas for visual spectacle. A machine where a multinational mass media conglomerate can take old properties and re-purpose them three to four times in a year, without anyone batting an eye. A machine that takes talented creatives and makes them churn out product after product after product, until any artistic intention is forever lost. This is the machine where this guy operates and the reason why, in 2019, he managed to make one of my favourite things of the year, and one of my least favourite things of all time.
The Lion King (2019) is a creatively bankrupt cash-grab, an ill-advised remake of an “un-remakeable” film, re-hashed and re-told in the worst way possible, a laughable attempt at recapturing the magic for a new generation (that would be better off watching the original). It’s an empty shell of a movie that spectacularly fails to understand what makes the original what it is and that shamelessly cloys at our nostalgia with the pretence of showing off ground-breaking technology. It’s an embarrassment and I hate it and it made 1,7 billion dollars. So, I am the asshole, I guess.
What makes things worse is that The Lion King is absolutely stunning to look at. Favreau used the virtual cinematography technology he mastered in the underrated Jungle Book remake to an even greater degree. The photo-realistic computer-generated animation is something we’ve never seen before, at least not used to this extent and effect. Favreau’s intention was to combine this ground-breaking technology with an updated story inspired by the Broadway adaptation of the original film that gives more screen time to important characters like Nala and Sarabi, who were pretty much side-lined in the 1994 film. So far, so good: if you are going to tell a story again, you better find things to explore that were not originally as prominent.
When the movie was first announced, I was looking forward to it. Sure, surpassing the original was impossible, if only for the nostalgia I feel just thinking about it, but I liked Favreau, I enjoyed Jungle Book and I was curious to see some of the iconic imagery revisited with state-of-the-art CGI. I was mildly optimistic, until more articles came out detailing how Favreau was aiming to develop his own take on the film with “the spectacle of a BBC wildlife documentary”. That’s when I started to feel like a lion on hot bricks. He wanted to use this technology to create a life-like rendition of the classic cartoon characters. I couldn’t wrap my head around this: Pixar, a subsidiary of Disney, had already shown you can implement cartoonish character designs into realistic natural environments (even though The Good Dinosaur was arguably a step too far, with the two design choices relentlessly clashing with one another); so why go the realistic route, when the subject matter of the film you are re-making is so inherently cartoonish?
Hamlet with lions. An emotional, deeply metaphorical tale about life, death, duty, honour and our place in the world, with singing meerkats and dancing giraffes. Now brought to you with photo-realistic animals that can barely emote, sing, or dance, with a more straightforward plot that turns the vaguer aspects of the story in reasonable plot points. Also, the animals have no genitals, because PG-13.
The technology employed is undeniably impressive: we have reached a point where it’s possible to render a realistic 3D environment, place a digital camera within it, and move it around like it was real, change lenses, manipulate aperture, exposure, aspect ratio and so on. It’s mind boggling, and it’s real.
From a business point of view, remaking The Lion King was a no-brainer for Disney. Of course they’d want to capitalize once again on the success of their most famous and acclaimed animated film, especially after having already remade most of the greatest hits of the Disney Renaissance. In fact, Disney is really rushing to the finish line with this operation: in 2019 alone, they released Dumbo, Aladdin, The Lion King and Lady and the Tramp (this last one as a Disney+ exclusive); they’ve made live-action sequels to Mary Poppins and Winnie the Pooh; Mulan is behind the corner and they’ve already announced live-action remakes of The Little Mermaid, Pinocchio, Snow White and the Hunchback of Notre Dame, just to name a few.
Turning the original animation into a more realistic, “adult” take of the tale was also a straightforward decision, since all the other remakes made up until that point followed that formula. Moreover, Disney had already tested the technology they intended to use for this film on the less risky Jungle Book remake: the film had been mostly a success and got good reviews, paving the way for more ambitious projects made with those tools. All the pieces were in place for a safe re-imagining of a beloved classic that would have conquered the box-office. And that’s exactly what happened, to the surprise of literally no one.
This enterprise has for Disney more than one purpose. On one hand, they are guaranteed to make a lot of money on at least half of these remakes, enough to justify the investment. On the other hand, they are clearly using this as an excuse to “clean up” their older films of any controversial material. This way, the racist crows are gone in Dumbo; the stereotypical Siamese cats have been replaced in Lady and the Tramp; LeFou is now (kind of) gay in the new Beauty and the Beast, and so on. I am not saying these changes are a bad thing (some of them are straight up necessary for a modern remake), but it does feel like nothing more than a cynical purging of their more contentious work that comes across quite disingenuous. Almost as if these films are there only so that Disney can say: “See? We fixed it in the new one.”
I am not going to start arguing the commercial value of a Lion King remake in 2019. It is clear people at Disney have cleverly planned this out, and the results speak for themselves. This blog deals with what movies are about and is less interested in the stuff they are made of. It was obvious this film would be a hit, and Disney did what they had to, making a ridiculous amount of money in the process. But why does this movie piss me off so much?
The reason is twofold. Firstly, I hate seeing such incredible technology used to tell a 20-year-old story in a much less effective way. Secondly, this is not the right film for this kind of realistic-CGI-treatment, and it was only made this way to justify its existence when compared to the original. It all comes down to artistic intention, and this remake didn’t have any.
The Lion King is about animals who sing, dance and occasionally backstab each other for power. It’s a cartoon for kids, and I know how much some people hate that word but that’s what it is, and that’s OK. The Lion King has a simple yet incredibly profound story that anyone can enjoy, and its most memorable moments are so powerful because they are animated. Animation allows otherwise emotionless animals to convey sadness, joy, mischief, hunger and so on in ways that are immediately readable for anyone, and incredibly effective. Pick any still from the original film and you’ll be able to tell with accuracy what the character is feeling in that moment.
Now, try and do that with the new film. I’ll save you time: you can’t.
It’s just a bunch of lions who can’t really move their mouths because it would clash with the realism of the scene. They can’t dance, they can’t joke around. Rafiki can’t carry his stick, Timon can’t dance the Hula and Scar can’t sing about his plan to kill his brother surrounded by green mist and goose-stepping hyenas (for better or worse). It would not be believable in this setting and the film suffers for these limitations.
All the great moments from the original are slavishly presented again with this new, shiny coat of paint, and yet they are missing all the energy, momentum and emotion of the original: Simba is totally unlikable in this version, and we barely feel the death of Mufasa. Scar’s new voice actor (the amazing Chiwetel Ejiofor) is not the right fit for lines wrote with Jeremy Irons in mind (and barely changed for this new version). Moreover, the same process of “purification of content” I mentioned earlier couldn’t allow for Scar to be an effeminate lion; like that character trait is there just to mock all effeminate people, and not to contrast the villain against the idealized, Alpha male figure of Mufasa. The problem arises when you realize they replaced this character trait with absolutely nothing, making Scar into a generic evil guy who wants power (and has the hots for the head lioness because God forbid he’s actually gay, like many people joked about in the past). The hyenas are now more flashed out (one of the better changes to the original story), but the way the film tries to rationalize their role in Pride Lands’ sudden desertification is laughable and superfluous: the original didn’t bother with realism, while the remake’s obsession with it raises more questions about the Savana’s status quo than it can ever answer.
Animation is not a genre. It’s a medium. And The Lion King was designed to be told using that medium. You could argue the new Lion King is also animated, but the realistic CGI of these lions can’t compete with the hand-drawn charm of the original, and that is by design. This version sometime feels like a documentary with a fandub layered on top and it’s hilarious and heartbreaking all at the same time.
It’s not just nostalgia. The original is far from perfect, especially today, with some outdated concepts and the ever-looming presence of Kimba the White Lion, the Japanese series Disney ripped off without telling anyone. But it’s remembered fondly for a reason: it’s an amazing work of art, a pure cinematic experience with one of the best soundtracks of all time. A true Disney classic.
So why remake it? Why give us that experience again, only worse? Why lengthen some moments of the story with the sole goal of reaching a two-hour runtime, more befitting of a 2019 release? Because money, of course. Because of the guaranteed box office return and nothing else. Because Disney is a complex machine and for every Wrinkle in Time that bombs spectacularly, they need a film like Lion King to keep the gears turning. It’s a safe, understandable choice, but a bad one. A depressing one.
That amazing technology could have been used to tell new stories, new incredible adventures that we could only dream of putting on screen back in the day. Instead, we get this: a realistic Lion King. A safe, obvious decision. A decision that, like the animals in the film, hasn’t got any balls.