My Review of "The Lion King (1994)"

The Lion King (1994) is a movie that was huge in pop culture when it first came out. It's actually still holds a small relevancy to the cultural zeitgeist of today after all these years. At the time, I never really got into Disney movies. It was one of the movies that changed my ideas of Disney movies. This was also shoveled down our throats everywhere we went back in the day. I'm surprised I still had an itch to watch this. I decided to take a chance and see how well it stands the test of time.

The movie starts off with a beautiful montage of the beautiful landscapes and animals of Africa. The colors are mesmerizing and so is the artwork. This is cascaded with the wonderful music playing in the background. It's very much developing it's character and brand as we're watching this movie. We then see the lion pride and we soon discover that this is in fact royalty in this wilderness area.

We get introduced to Mufasa, the king of the animals there. Him and his wife Sarabi have just born a new kitten named Simba. They're about to Share their wonderful news to the animal kingdom. It's a huge ceremony and all of the animals seem to want to take part in this joyous occasion. Everything goes really well and then we skip to the next scene where we learn of a new character named Scar.

Scar is Mufasa's brother and he's pretty sad that he's not the king. He is even more depressed because next in line for the throne is Simba. Scar is not even in any sort of contention. In order for him to become the king he has to do some dastardly schemes. This guy is constantly scheming and meddling. He's joined a coalition with a pack of hyenas. Their plan is to kill the royal line so that Scar can become the king.

Eventually this stuff kind of happens and Simba is banished. They've scared Simba so bad that he's not willing to come back home for a long period of time. Simba has to do some soul searching to figure out who he is and learn what he has to do in his life.

For the most part this is a very entertaining movie but there are a few things that had me thinking funny things. One of the weird things that came to my mind was why would the animals freely come to become food for these lions. It was kind of a wild idea where the animals would kindly avail themselves to be eaten when Mufasa was king but they'd run away when Scar was king. I thought this was funny but understandably ignored throughout the movie.

They also had interesting themes in this movie. Some of them feel a little dated by today's standards. The concept of obligation and responsibility is kind of out the door nowadays. This was an understandable thing back in the day but today in North America people have shunned away from this ideology. Today, I think people would abdicate the throne if they felt too stressed to go back. I'm not sure how many people would go back to fight back. The climate of today has changed drastically from what it is back then. This is why I'm not sure that kids today could totally gravitate to these concepts when things have changed so much.

Overall, I still had a great time with this movie. The music and visuals were stunning and are still stunning today. They definitely stand the test of time and people of my generation will definitely have a great time with this movie. Though I'm not sure that the themes of this movie will continue to hold true to the ideals of today. I still have to give this movie an 8.5 because it is quite entertaining and I know a lot of people can still be entertained by it.