Quarantine Control #36: The Lion That Made Us

It’s been around nine months since the Covid-19 pandemic started in most of the world, and it’s insane to think that the public still needs advice on what they should and shouldn’t do, especially in the United States. It’s only partly the fault of the normal people, many of whom, for instance, traveled for the Thanksgiving holiday despite experts warning against it and might do so again for the Christmas holiday in a mere two weeks. But it’s mostly the fault of governments around the country, especially the federal government, which could have contained this if they really want to. The strategy now is to get as many people sick as possible, which is having expectedly bonkers results.

We’re in hell. Watch and play some entertainment to get your mind off of this for as long as possible. We did.

 

Geoffrey Barnes

The Lion King (2019)
Source: Disney+
Episodes: 1 movie (with — yup — a sequel coming)

There was no way I couldn’t have known about the reaction to the CG (or “live-action,” as Disney likes to call it) remake of The Lion King following its release in theaters last year. It was tough for anyone who remembers the original 1994 animated film fondly to appreciate the new animation, given the more realistic type of CG used in order to have a certain audience that thinks cartoons and cartoon styles are to “kiddy” to take it seriously. Other comparatively minor changes made to the film also divided the fanbase clean in half, even if some, like the new voice actors, were necessary.

The Dumbo remake was boring, but I enjoyed the Aladdin remake enough to think that perhaps this one wouldn’t be too bad. Fortunately, it’s not. Unfortunately, it still comes up short.

The Lion King remake, it should be noted, isn’t lacking compared to the original due to a lack of effort. In fact, it’s evident that plenty of work was put into making this remake as impressive as could be. The movie nails the feel of the majestic lands of Africa it takes place in, which a team clearly dedicated plenty of time to. It shows in how a good portion of the movie’s runtime is spent panning over the lands to establish scenes and locations, far longer compared to the original movie. The CG models for all the characters are also well made, the clear reason why Disney wanted to tout this as live-action.

Nearly all the voices were recast for this version thanks to the 25-year gap, and they’re mostly good. Donald Glover nearly matches the performance of Matthew Broderick as Simba, and Billy Eichner and Seth Rogen turned in exceptional performances as Timon and Pumbaa. They’re not all winners, however. No one should downplay Beyonce’s musical talent, shown through her performances within this movie and a slew of others. But her performance as Nala shows that her voice acting leaves much to be desired. It broke my heart to realize how James Earl Jones’ performance as Mufasa, the only actor to reprise the role from the animated film thanks to his voice irreplaceable, is weaker compared to his original performance entirely because of his age. He was nearly 90 when he reprised the role here, and his voice just isn’t as powerful as it used to be.

Of the three Disney remakes from last year that I’ve now watched, The Lion King remake is the most identical to the original. That’s somewhat of a good thing considering the very bad changes Dumbo received, but the Aladdin remake received several good additions that helped it step out of the original movie’s shadow. This makes the remake less worth watching compared to Aladdin, though the lack of changes ironically makes the film worthwhile entertainment.

For as much as the remake tries to reach the emotional heights of the original, it can’t, and the animation is the biggest factor preventing that. The realistic CG models lack the expressiveness of their animated counterparts, which makes memorable emotionally-charged scenes from the original a little more awkward this time around. Mufasa’s death and cub Simba’s subsequent reaction is one of the key scenes that doesn’t reach the height of the original thanks to Simba’s comparatively stilted reaction. There are other changes for the worse, like the infamous (and kind of comical) example of Can You Feel the Love Tonight? taking place during the day. I’m not saying the animation isn’t quality, but the animation choices hold the movie back.

Despite the criticism I have, Disney figured out what moviegoers wanted with this film. It made far more money in theaters than the original, a success on par with the Frozen films despite the critiques from professional critics and vocal fans. It’s not entirely underserved thanks to the movie still being entertaining to watch, but that’s thanks to the movie sticking to the same story beats as the original. They’d be crazy not to make a sequel. I’m betting the follow-up won’t a remake of any sequels to the original film, namely The Lion King II: Simba’s Pride and especially The Lion King 1 ½, so creating an original story with this style will be an even more daunting challenge compared to the remake.

 

Joseph Daniels

When it comes to content being created in a COVID-19 world, although I’m seeing scripted shows appearing on platforms such as Disney+ and Netflix, I’ve also become more aware of documentary-style content.  Whether or not it would’ve been made anyway, virus or not, I don’t know.  Shows like High Score seem like they had enough time and money behind them that they would’ve come out anyway.

This week’s recommendation to readers who are quarantined (you’re all still doing quarantine… right?) almost feels like the kind of content you make when you want to make something, but production is hard to do because of COVID restrictions…

The Movies That Made Us (2019)
Source: Netflix
Episodes: 4

…except that it came out before the pandemic.  The Movies That Made Us is a relatively short series that looks into the production of four different films, almost like the behind the scenes extras on a DVD.  It really feels like it’s lower effort content designed to be made within social distancing restrictions, so the fact that it was made in 2019 is astonishing to me.  I kept on thinking, during the Die Hard episode, that this really does feel like “Netflix is getting desperate” content they’re releasing to pad out their schedule, but it really isn’t.

In fact, if you look up lists of what they’re releasing this month, they still have a lot of new and original content being made.  Granted, much of it is animated – now is probably one of the best times to be a showrunner for an animated series – but Netflix is definitely not hurting for content.

The unfortunate downside to a series like this is that not every episode is going to be interesting to everyone.  I’m probably not going to watch the Dirty Dancing episode since I’ve never watched the movie, but I enjoyed finding out just how harrowing it was trying to make a coherent movie out of Die Hard (it turned out that they were winging it for most of the production… and that may or may not be why the other films in the franchise have been such a mess).  I also enjoyed finding out how Home Alone was made and that it almost didn’t get made at all because the original distributor funding it didn’t think it was low budget enough.  And then, despite the panning it got from Siskel & Ebert, it went on to be a very successful film, so I really hope Warner Brothers never lived it down.

I also must say, it’s quaint hearing about Home Alone becoming one of the highest grossing films of all time after bringing in $286 million in North America and $477 million worldwide, then thinking about all the recent movies that made over a billion dollars, like Captain Marvel (so much for “get woke, go broke”).

Incidentally, this year is the first year since 2008 where no film made over a billion dollars at the box office, and you have to go as far back as 2000 to get a year where movies performed at the same level of success they did this year.

Anyway, two more episodes were released this year, focusing on a couple classic Christmas films, but whereas they’re listed as episodes five and six on Wikipedia, they’re given a separate listing on Netflix:

The Holiday Movies That Made Us (2020)
Source: Netflix
Episodes: 2

Both of these shows were spun off from a documentary series called The Toys That Made Us, which debuted in 2017, of which there are 12 episodes available.  So yeah, this sort of content has existed for years, but I haven’t really taken notice until now.  Funny what happens during a pandemic.

 

It’s a very rough time for the world, especially the US, but at least there’s a vaccine for Covid-19 on the way. Still, it will take a while for everyone to get the necessary dosages, which means Quarantine Control will be sticking around for a while. But at least an end is in sight for one particular disaster.