The Lion King (2019)

(Disney+ Streaming, December 2020) Live-action or animated? Useless or interesting? A marvel or a disgrace? A step forward or backward? Yes to all of that. Another entry in Disney’s continued hall of recycled shame, the 2019 version of The Lion King applies the “live action” treatment to the 1994 film in looks only: nearly the entire film is computer-animated, albeit with the intention of making it look as real as possible. From a narrative standpoint, though, it’s practically the same thing: The film lifts the entire narrative structure from the original, tweaking a few things around for polish but still adding thirty more minutes to the original running time. Capable voice actors give recognizable performances, but none of this erases the impression of having seen it all already. Directed by Jon Favreau as a version of The Jungle Book on steroids, I suppose that The Lion King is a new high-water mark in computer animation: now so good that it feels as if most of the film is live-action. I also suppose that it’s a new step toward the self-cannibalization of movies into a hollow shell of themselves. But the film made billions, so away merrily into the shell we go. If you can’t feel my enthusiasm, it’s because I haven’t got any.