Genre: Live Action Animation (is that a thing?)
Premise: (from IMDB) After the murder of his father, a young lion prince flees his kingdom only to learn the true meaning of responsibility and bravery.
About: The Lion King is the new king of the Disney Live Animation Remakes as it raked in 185 million dollars over its first weekend (Beauty and the Beast is second with 174 million). Jon Favreau directed this photo-realistic remake which stars Donald Glover, Beyonce, James Earl Jones, Seth Rogen, and Billy Eichner.
Writer: Jeff Nathanson (story by Brenda Chapman – characters by Irene Mecchi, Jonathan Roberts, and Linda Woolverton).
Details: 1 hour and 58 minutes long
So the new Lion King movie isn’t getting the best reviews. And I’m saying to myself, whykunna matata? The CGI real-life animation looks flawless. The trailers make the movie look beautiful. They sent out a clip of the famous opening of the film ahead of time, which turned out to be a shot-for-shot remake. That tells me Favreau isn’t going to mess with the story. The Seth Rogen Billy Eichner casting of Pumbaa and Timon is beyond inspired. Every behind-the-scenes clip of them working is great. So what’s going on here?
I think I know.
The Lion King is like the Star Wars of animated films. It’s not only a perfect movie. But it’s a movie that people hold so dearly to their heart, they can’t see it any other way than how it was. Remaking the film “live action,” is like stepping on an entire generation’s dreams.
However, I was never a huge Lion King guy. Don’t get me wrong. I liked it. But I only saw it one time 20 years ago. So I hold no biases or preconceived notions about how things are supposed to be. Honestly, the only moment I truly remember was that opening. So I’m not going to be angrily pointing out that Pumbaa and Timon were in a waterfall during the original performance of Hakuna Matata, and now they’re in a field.
What I’m most excited about with this film is to finally watch it through screenwriting eyes. Because when I originally saw it, I didn’t know anything about screenwriting. So all of that manipulation the screenwriter did to me to make me enjoy his story – I was finally going to figure out how he did it. Cause let’s face it – this is one of the greatest cinematic meals ever served and it will be great to finally find out what was in the recipe.
I’m assuming you know the story of The Lion King. But in order to properly discuss the screenplay, here are the highlights. 2019’s Lion King starts with baby Simba lion being announced as the next king. This makes Scar, the brother of current lion king, Mufasa, angry, as it means he’ll never inherit the throne. Unless, of course, he kills both Mufasa and Simba.
He manages to kill Mufasa, but Simba is more elusive, running far away and eventually meeting up with warthog, Pumbaa and meekrat, Timon. These two only care about the here and now. They just want to have fun. And they teach Simba to do just that. Cut to several years later and Simba is all grown up, none the wiser that back home, Scar has employed a group of rabid hyenas to rule the land, which has been decimated under his reign.
Eventually, Simba’s childhood friend, Nala, escapes the clutches of that reign, heads out into the countryside, and finds Simba, who she’s shocked is still alive. She explains to Simba how terrible things are back at the kingdom, and asks him to come back and take his rightful throne. After living a totally chill-out lifestyle for the last few years, though, Simba doesn’t think he has it in him to defeat Scar. But Nala eventually convinces him it’s his duty and off they go.
This was an oddly structured screenplay.
It had an enormous first act. At least it felt it like it did. There’s a downside to long first acts and there’s an upside. The downside is that it can feel like the story isn’t getting started. Which leads readers and audiences to become impatient. They want to reach that second act starting point where the hero goes off on their adventure.
The upside is that you spend more time getting to know the characters. The more the audience knows the characters, the more they’ll care, and the more invested they’ll be throughout the second and third acts.
My guess is a couple of things happened here. Jon Favreau loves long first acts. He’s said as much in interviews. Also, you don’t need to worry about keeping a reader invested early on with a script like this. The first time people see the story will be in theaters (not on paper). By then, you already have them. I mean, who’s going to walk out 20 minutes into a movie after they’ve paid 70 bucks for their family to be there? So long first acts are something you don’t really need to worry about in this situation.
The biggest surprise about The Lion King was the light second act. The second act is supposed to be the act of struggle, of conflict. But Simba doesn’t experience any of that in The Lion King. He’s just sort of hanging out with his buddies, singing and having fun. It’s a very relaxed life for Simba, which is the opposite of what usually happens in a movie. For example, when Anna goes after Elsa in Frozen, she encounters all sorts of obstacles trying to get her and bring her back home.
So I wondered how they were doing that and keeping the movie entertaining. I realized they did it in two ways. The first was they would occasionally cut back to Scar’s rule and show how bad it was getting. At one point he tells Sarabi, Mufasa’s widow, that if she doesn’t marry him, the hyenas will eat before the lions. So now all the lions are starving. This keeps some level of conflict in the movie, even if it’s away from the main character.
The other way is through music. And this is where things can get confusing for screenwriters because they can rightfully argue that the main character isn’t doing much throughout the second act. He’s very inactive. And, hey Mr. Professor Screenwriter Man, didn’t you tell us that our main characters needed to be active for a script to be good?
Well, here’s the thing. Everything goes out the window when a movie has a “BEST EVER” of something. You can argue that there’s zero story in When Harry Met Sally. It’s just a bunch of static scenes of people talking. Well, yeah, but it contains THE BEST EVER ROMANTIC COMEDY DIALOGUE in movie history. When you have a “best ever” in a film, all that film’s weaknesses can be overlooked because we don’t see them. And Lion King has the best ever music in an animated film. So even though Simba and his pals aren’t doing much, we’re getting these iconic musical numbers to sing along to. So we don’t notice it as much as we would in a non-musical movie.
I will say this. By making the first act so long, it ensured that the second act would be shorter. Therefore, the lack of conflict in the second act wasn’t as pronounced as it would have been had the act been twenty minutes longer.
Another thing I wanted to bring up was plot point paradoxes because there are times in a script when you get to these plot points where you have two opposing forces working against each other and you basically have to fudge the plot to move forward.
This occurs in The Lion King after Mufasa’s death when Scar approaches Simba. This is a much trickier moment than the casual viewer realizes. Simba has to live for the story to go on. But Scar would 100% kill him. We’ve already established he’ll kill his bloodline to get the throne. So if we’re talking about reality and character consistency here, Scar would slaughter Simba right now.
But then there’s no movie. That’s the paradox. So what do you do? You have to fudge it. So what Scar says to Simba is “run away and never come back.” Then, the second Simba starts running, Scar tells the hyenas to “kill him.” This is your fence-straddling moment. It allows Simba to get away so the story can continue, and it keeps your character consistent since Scar “technically” tried to kill him.
I liked 2019’s The Lion King. It didn’t capture the magic of the first film. However, of the Disney live animation remakes, this is definitely my favorite.
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: The first act can be thought of as the “getting to know everybody who will be in this story” act. It’s where you set everyone up. As long as you keep all of these character set-ups entertaining, you can theoretically stretch the first act out as long as you want. The Lion King 2019 incorporates a “Mini-journey” in its first act to ensure it stays entertaining. In it, Simba and Nala go explore a graveyard, where they encounter a pack of hungry hyenas. We’re setting up the characters AND we’re being entertained. If you make the mistake of only doing the first one (the setting up part) expect the reader to get bored quickly!
