Fans SLAM Disney’s Lion King Live Action: This Isn’t Really A Live Action Movie

“How is it a ‘live action’ remake if 99.9% is CGI?” An exasperated fan tweets.

3 August 2019 by Fachana Techamaneewat

The official logo of Disney Company — Photo by missbond

When Disney’s Lion King live action director, Jon Favreau, tweeted that only 1 out of a total of 1490 rendered shots in the live action was actually real, well, fans were less than impressed.

First of all, check out Jon’s tweet below:

So, it looks like only one shot out of the entire Lion King’s live action was real, and the rest were either CGI or animated.

And understandably, some of The Lion King’s fans weren’t happy.

Why? And what exactly is a ‘live action’?

Well, a live action is defined by Cambridge as: “involving real people or animals, not models, or images that are drawn, or produced by computer.”

So it makes sense when fans didn’t think one shot was quite enough.

Check out these fans’ less than amused tweets below:

So, what’s the big deal? Does it matter if Disney’s Lion King live action is mainly CGI?

Well, it’s not a big deal that it’s mostly animation or CGI. But perhaps it shouldn’t have been called a ‘live action’.

We should give props to the director, though, since Jon actually knew that. In an interview with Slash Film, Jon stated that it was neither ‘live action’ or ‘animated’:

“Well, it’s difficult because it’s neither, really. Because there’s no real animals and there’s no real cameras. […] Everything is coming through the hands of artists. But to say it’s animated I think is misleading.”

It turns out Jon was never trying to hide the fact that it wasn’t live action. He’d also told Jimmy on Jimmy Kimmel Live:

“People sometimes refer to it as live action because, hopefully, it looks like a live-action film.”

Either way, Disney produced the Lion King’s movie as a live action, and it was even handed over to Disney’s President of Production, the person in charge of Disney’s live actions. Their works include Maleficent (2014), Cinderella (2015), Beauty and the Beast (2017), Aladdin (2019), etc.

It’s even speculated by IndieWire that Disney “will likely compete as [a live action] at 2020 Oscars” and “skip an awards campaign for animation”.

But we don’t think it’s affecting Disney all that much. After all, Disney’s Lion King live action raked in a jaw-dropping $962.7 million in global takings only in its second week of international release.

Either way, what are your thoughts? Do you agree with the title?

Or do you think they should’ve dropped the ‘live action’ from Disney’s The Lion King?

Fachana Techamaneewat is a news writer at Exclusive Hollywood and is responsible for researching and writing news articles while providing story updates wherever necessary.

Fun fact: On the weekends, she’s an avid writer for practically anything. Her current obsession is the Umbrella Academy, and as of now, is writing a book.

post