Very few children of the 90‘s will be disappointed by The Lion King rerelease. Some may even notice the odd 3D tweak in the animation, and a few will be left wondering what is the point.
Money, of course. The Lion King made nearly $900 million at the box office when it was first released in 1994, making it Disney’s most successful film and the highest grossing traditionally animated feature film of all time. Try to find someone who hasn’t yet seen it and, with 1.5 billion sales and rentals of it on DVD and video, you’ll find your work cut out for you. And don’t worry, a 3D blueray release is on its way.
Amid widespread criticism of 3D’s contribution to the film-going experience, Lion King director Rob Minkoff believes that his Disney colleagues’ rerelease is an Avatar-like exception to flout these concerns. He admitted in a recent interview with Movie Muser blog that 3D, when not done right, can be disappointing. However, when browsing the latest box office figures, it is hard to believe that he would even care.
At best the Lion King’s new 3D element is unnecessary and slight, at worst it’s kind of distracting. The pain-staking process of marrying 3D with hand drawn animation may have been a financial success for Disney, but the effects are underwhelming in terms of entertainment. By all means, get out there and see it. No one could argue that the opening Circle of Life sequence and the tragedy of Mufasa’s death are not emotionally charged scenes to enjoy on the big screen. However, if you have the opportunity to save on a couple of quid for 3D glasses, then you won’t be missing out on much, and if you’re taking kids, it won’t be the demensionalisation of Mufasa that leaves them grinning from ear to ear.
Matt Bochenski of British film magazine Little White Lies, for me, sums up the problem with the 3D boom perfectly: film-makers are trying “to poke us in the eye rather than pierce us in the heart”.
Meanwhile, I’m joining Mark Kermode, in “the 2D fightback”. Perhaps 3D’s noisiest critic, he claims that the new technology is “phoney-baloney gimmickry” and that 3D glasses result in a 30% colour loss. Watch ‘How to enjoy a 3D movie’, and you will find a short presentation from Kermode, showing the anti-3D masses how to alter their glasses to reverse the effects of 3D (replace the left lens with a second right one, or vice versa, so that both are the same.) I’m working on mine right now.
It won’t stop with the Lion King. Love it or loathe it, or indeed remain indifferent, 3D has well and truly found its way into today’s cinema listings, allowing for not just guts-over-substance horrors like Piranha 3D, but also reworked versions of our old favourites. One of the original Lion King producers, Don Hahn, recently told film blog HeyYouGuys that Disney has been considering 3D technology since The Princess and the Frog back in 2009. He gushed that Peter Pan would be his favourite Disney film to see in 3D, and admitted that work had already been done on Beauty and the Beast, while Alladin is also being considered.
Until those make it to the cinema, hakuna matata and hang on to your specs.
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