Film Preview: The Lion King (2019)

Page Revisions:

(November 25, 2018) Original
(April 14, 2019) New Trailer (#2) / New Poster (#2)
(July 14, 2019) New Posters (#3-#21)

Release Date:

June 19, 2019

Synopsis:

From IMDb: “CGI and live-action re-imagining of the 1994 Disney classic.”

Poster Rating: B / B / C / C- / D (11) / C+ / C- / B- / B / C / C-

SEE ALL POSTERS BELOW
Review: (#1) For Disney, economy of design means few details with superb impact and this is probably one of the best such designs they’ve done as a teaser.

(#2) More colorful and expressive than the prior design, it doesn’t feel nearly as exciting as it should.

(#3) Everything the light touches. It’s as unexciting as it is dominated by warm yellows and oranges. (#4) There’s not much to this design except a father and a son and while that’s an inherent part of the film’s narrative thrust, it’s not an inviting design for a poster. (#5-#15) This series of character posters is colorful, but dull with simple images of each characters and backgrounds that are forgettable and lacking in distinctiveness. (#16) It’s a nice landscape and a lot of details, but it feels a bit lifeless. (#17) Another father-son design that has a lifeless white background to give it its lack of embellishment. (#18) One of the more interesting designs for this film, the vacant space is unimportant in this watercolor design that has a lot of symbolic impact. (#19) This watercolor arc is interesting and detailed. The white background is mildly distracting, but it helps accentuate the fluid colors on display. (#20) The circle of life as we’ve always expected it to be, but without the magic or majesty of the original. (#21) Perhaps a dry, barren desert isn’t the right symbolic representation for this film.

Trailer Rating: A / B+

SEE ALL TRAILERS BELOW
Review: (#1) While it doesn’t show the first full musical number the way the original film did in 1992, it does just enough right and hits part of the song towards the end to make this a most enticing trailer. Fans of the original film should be immediately interested and the fact that they kept James Earl Jones as Mustafa is a welcome choice. This trailer certainly suggests that it could be Disney’s biggest animated remake to date.

(#2) Without the “Circle of Life” theme playing over the trailer, it loses a small amount of impact, though the film itself looks much more beautiful in these latest glimpses.

Oscar Prospects:

The Disney Animated Remakes have not been having a lot of success at the Oscars. Although they’ve piled up several tech nominations, the major categories have been out of reach. I doubt this film will surpass that, but it should make a play in several below the line categories.