Main Aspects of the The Lion King - Movie Review Example

The Lion King- Film Critique English of the July 4, The Lion King- Film Critique Stage I: Analysis The Lion King is a 1994 animated musical released by Walt Disney. It is indeed a fact that The Lion King happened to be one of the utterly successful animated movie of the 90s. The movie revolves around the story of a young lion prince, how he comes of age and learns about his role in the overall circle of life that enveloped and defined the world around him. Since Bambi, The Lion King happened to be the very first full length Disney movie that relied on non human characters. A great deal of the voice acting work in the movie The Lion King was done by an array of celebrated and accomplished actors like James Earl Jones, Nathan Lane, Jeremy Irons, Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Matthew Broderick, Rowan Atkinson and Whoopi Goldberg. Going by the fact that The Lion King happened to be an immensely successful musical, it had songs directed by Elton John and lyrics drafted by Tim Rice. It is indeed true that The Lion King not only happened to be an astoundingly moving animation musical, but it did also have a great impact on both the young and mature viewers when it got released. The plot of The Lion King unravels in the pride lands of Africa where a lion rules over all the animals that lie within his domain. A the very start of the movie a young lion prince is shown to be born in these pride lands that makes his vicious uncle Scar second in line to the throne. To get over this hurdle, the vicious uncle Scar cracks a plot with the hyenas to kill the lion king Mufasa and his new born son Simba so as to usurp the throne and make himself the king of the pride lands. Eventually Scar does succeed in killing the king and making himself the king. Scar makes Simba believe that it was he who was responsible for the painful death of his father Mufasa. Thereby Simba decides to flee the pride lands, burdened by shame and guilt. Consequently Scar is shown to rule the pride lands with an iron fist. In the mean time the young prince Simba grows up and evolves far beyond the pride lands, growing up in an atmosphere marked by care freeness and bliss, running his life by the philosophy, “avoid worries in your life.” However, the gory past of the young prince eventually comes to haunt him and he is made to decide as to live a life marked by ignominy and shame, or to take his fate in his hands and claim his rightful place in the long deserted pride lands (Zornado, 2001). The ultimate psychological challenge before the young prince Simba is as to whether he will continue to stay an outcast or whether he will eventually choose to face his fears and return back to the pride lands to avenge the fateful death of his father. After spending many years in exile, the young prince Simba is convinced by some of his close friends to go back home to demolish the cruel usurper Scar and become the rightful king, thereby completing the circle of life. There is no denying the fact that the plot has an utterly powerful psychological appeal that makes the story so riveting and engrossing. The plot does have an interesting protagonist pitted against a vicious and cruel antagonist, an age old thematic alignment that has not only proved to be engrossing since times immemorial, but does signify the typical battle between the good and the evil. The relationship between Simba and Scar is marked by much conflict that is more of psychological and emotive origins, which eventually culminates into a contest marked by much physicality and action. Scar does come out as a worthy villain, very much capable of committing acts marked by cruelty and criminality. The plot does have a potent element of intrigue that relies for its success on the ignorance and gullibility of Simba, the protagonist. This makes the overall story indeed gripping and interesting. The plot is defined by a marked unity of action, as it is contrived by a well ordered and almost completes structure of actions. It would not be wrong to assert that the movie The Lion King did evince some of the most impressive and astounding animation from Disney. The animation in the movie did have just the right blend of exaggeration, making the characters do come out as being so lifelike and convincing. The dark mane of the usurper uncle Scar did make him look so vicious and diabolical while the benign and soft animation features in the portrayal of Simba did make him come out as being utterly lovable and adorable. The ultimate challenge before the animators was to contrive just the right animation features so as to be able to impact, influence and navigate the emotions of the audience. No doubt they did turn out to be utterly successful in their endeavor. The staging was indeed remarkable, defined by scenes, which did attract the audiences’ attention and were able to focus the audiences’ attention on specific aspects of action, before the actual action did take place. The animators were able to exploit the element of anticipation with much astuteness and mastery (Olson, 1999, p. 147). For instance one simply cannot help praising the way the animators did use the pauses in the overall editing to make the important action eventually stand out in a plot that otherwise went so smooth and fluid. The action sequences in the overall movie were well sequenced by the editing team and each and every action does convey to the audience as to what they could expect to happen in the next frame. No wonder, the secondary action in the animation movie The Lion King does support and bolster the main action in an appropriate and impressive manner. The animators did use the secondary action in the movie to accentuate the requisite feelings and emotions in the audiences. However, the noteworthy factor was that the secondary action in the animation was not very loud and it no way sidelined or obfuscated the main action. Again for any animation movie to be convincing, it is important that it ascribes to the right amount of balance. Almost most of the primary and secondary characters in The Lion King were mounted in poses that not only looked actual, real and convincing, but they also added to the immense animation coefficient of the movie. The editors and animators did rely on the accurate and astute sense of timing in The Lion King to make the action reverberate with believability and veracity and to make it titillate and stimulate the expectations and fears of the audiences. There were many messages in the movie that could not be conveyed through pictures. However, the worth of the animation and editing team lie in the fact that they were able to use the element of timing to convey the difficult to convey sentiments and emotions. The animation team did evince a good understanding of rhythm that did allow it to exploit well the element of timing in this all time great animation movie. The music in the animation movie The Lion King was the real icing on the cake that did allow the audiences to draw out the associations between varied aspects of action and thematic elements in the movie (Harrison, 2011, p. 150). The music and songs in the movie The Lion King did play a pivotal role in bringing out the psychological elements in the movie and did allow the animators to express the ideas and emotions that could not be otherwise expressed merely with the use of animation. It would not be wrong to say that music happened to be the salient element that contributed to the immense box office success of The Lion King. It is utterly true that The Lion King did catch the fancy of the young movie watchers, especially with its exciting characters and addictive musical numbers. No wonder The Lion King merchandise did turn out to be a huge success with the young movie goers, with children evincing a strong predilection for buying The Lion King Merchandise like apparels, play sets, lunch boxes, pencil sets, color books, and collectibles. The Lion King ended up becoming a brand of its own vending out an array of merchandise and collectables. It is a fact that The Lion King happened to be a trailblazer animated musical that does evince the eventual power and success that a well contrived animation movie could exercise on the box office. It happened to be an animation musical that relied on great music, a moving storyline and some of the best animation sequences to eke out a strong fan following. The Lion King eventually ended up becoming a brand that not only registered a remarkable box office success, but also turned out to be a viable merchandize line. Stage II: Reflection It is indeed true that the movies not only stand to be a viable mode of entertainment, but they also happen to be a potent art form and means of reflecting on and influencing the larger society. Thereby the eventual relevance of criticizing a movie does lie in recognizing the great impact and influence that the movies do command in the larger society. Attempting a critique of a movie is not merely about analyzing its power as a source of entertainment, but also about analyzing the varied social, thematic and cultural facets that a movie does possess, by the dint of being a work of art. Many a times the themes, ideas and emotions being conveyed by a movie do not happen to be directly obvious (Fox, 2001, p. 175). A movie does communicate with and interact with the audiences at varied levels and through multiple layers of meaning (Fox, 2001). The varied technical aspects of cinema like direction, editing, script writing, photography and music do happen to be the means for packing the salient themes and ideas inherent in a plot into a multi faceted and multi layered work of art. Thereby the fun in appreciating cinema is about being able to evince the maturity to interact with these multiple layers of meaning and content in a movie so as to be able to appreciate its real gravity, worth and beauty. The awareness of the theory and criticism associated with cinema has not only made me a more mature movie critique, but has also enhanced my capacity for appreciating the layers of meanings, themes and emotions inherent in any movie. The art of cinema appreciation has made me a culturally more versatile person and has utterly refined and enlightened the way I view each and every movie. References Fox, R.F. (2001). Mediaspeak. Westport, CT: Praeger. Harrison, T. (2011). Music of the 1990s. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood. Olson, S.R. (1999). Hollywood Planet. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Zornado, J.L. (2001). Inventing the Child. New York: Garland. Read More