The Lion King

A movie that never justifies its existence. I have a lot of respect for what John Favreau did with The Jungle Book. He managed to do something that every remake should aim for, but usually fails to do: improve upon its original. This, however, is the exact same movie. There was zero effort put into improving things, or even do anything different, for that matter. And to some degree, I get it: the original is almost sacred to some people, and they’ll act autistically if you change too much. There’s also an upside to that, which some critics don’t pick up on: if a story works in 1994, it still works in 2019. But you could at the very least try some different shot compositions, or different music cues, or anything to not make this movie completely creatively hollow. Yes, it looks just like a Discovery documentary. At the same time, the realism strips the expressiveness of the animals away, so those things cancel each other out. There’s just no reason to watch this over the original. 5.5/10

It doesn't have the same magic the original had. It looks impressive but felt slightly off with the realism look. The music wasn't as good but there were still some music cues that gave me chills. I'm glad a new generation is getting this and I had a ok time but I will probably never revisit this one.