Disney's $250 Million 'Lion King' Remake Is Getting Stampeded By Critics!

Everything the light touches… is a mediocre review.
No, critics just can’t feel the love tonight for Disney‘s big budget “live action” The Lion King remake. As of this writing the new version is a huge critical miss for Disney at just 58% on Rotten Tomatoes, with an average critic rating of only 6.25. That means even most critics who liked it didn’t like it that much. OUCH.
So what’s the problem?
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After combing through the reviews it seems to us the perfect photorealistic CG was brilliantly done — but ultimately a terrible idea. Because now instead of emotional characters with goals and wants, you have… actual lions and elephants. With celeb voices that don’t look like they’re coming from them.
So they spent $250 million to basically make a version of Lion King that looks like Homeward Bound? Oops.
See what critics have to say about it in our review roundup (below)!

David Ehrlich, Indiewire: “With the possible exception of 2015’s “Cinderella,” which was touched with just enough magic to feel like a new wrinkle on an old fairy tale, all of Disney’s live-action rehashes have been faint echoes of their animated predecessors. But “The Lion King” isn’t an echo, it’s a stain. This zombified digital clone of the studio’s first original cartoon feature is the Disney equivalent of Gus Van Sant’s “Psycho.””
Mara Reinstein, Us Weekly: “…despite the technology advances since 1994, these characters can no longer emote or expressively belt out the numbers. How telling that only “The Circle of Life” is chill-inducing, as it’s a shot-by-the-shot reprisal and none of the characters actually sing it.”
Bilge Ebiri, Vulture: “…the characters in some cases have been rendered with such realism that they have lost all human expression on their faces. Maybe that’s the idea — to not anthropomorphize them too much and to stay grounded in zoological authenticity. But they’re still talking, and singing, only now their faces are inexpressive; it’s a weird disconnect.”
Meagan Navarro, Consequence of Sound: “Animals in the wild aren’t able to express love, grief, anger, and fear through discernible facial expressions in the same way a cartoon can. The heavy lifting for the emotional pull of the story then falls solely on the shoulders of the voice cast and the score. But the mismatch between the feeling the actor is conveying in their performance against the impassive countenance of a lion can be jarring.”
K. Austin Collins, Vanity Fair: “More than one person in your life is going to liken the photorealistic look of this movie to that of a video game cut scene — those scripted interstitial sequences that make video games feel more movie-like. They will not be entirely wrong.”
William Bibbiani, The Wrap: “…this new version of “The Lion King” isn’t realism; it’s literalism. This is what it would actually look like if the events in a Disney animated movie happened in real life. Sometimes it’s fascinating, frequently it’s ludicrous, and sometimes — like when an incredibly realistic animal dies on-screen in front of you while its only child mourns him — it’s borderline grotesque.”