There’s been some contention amongst film fans recently regarding Disney claiming the upcoming Lion King is a “live-action” remake considering most of its characters and settings are CGI creations. After the first trailer dropped, many noticed that if anything, the digital animation in the newer movie fails to capture the dynamism of the original, and a new batch of posters released last week only reinforced that thought.
Each one-sheet focused on a close up of singular photo-realistic character, and while some at least looked cute, like the lion cubs Simba and Nala, others just served as grotesque reminders that warthogs and red-billed hornbills aren’t as cuddly as we’d like to imagine. Even still, the fact that most of the images look like cropped stock photos straight from Shutterstock didn’t quell any detractors’ concerns.
Dropping the character one-sheets at the end of the week not only gave critics plenty of free time to mock the images. but create hilariously biting posters of their own as well.
Inspired by the new Lion King posters to do some other disney characters lmk what you think. pic.twitter.com/1xeKGd7tTV
— Joseph Gribbin (@JoeGribbs) May 31, 2019
Those new Lion King posters look like Zoobooks covers pic.twitter.com/EvDMMSZPUN
— LifelineTheHedgehog (@HedgieLifeline) May 31, 2019
Wish they could've did something similar to this for the Lion King posters.
I'll have to agree with everyone, they look so generic with no sense of character expressions. While these guys show it. pic.twitter.com/eWK5xXRXc7
— ?AstralWingz? (@Zhane_Star) May 31, 2019
At a cost of well over $100 million dollars, Disney and "The Lion King" may have successfully reproduced the level of realism the producers of "Meerkat Manor" achieved by putting a camera on the ground. Mazel tov.
— Daniel Fienberg (@TheFienPrint) May 30, 2019
If your characters can be replaced with stock image photos, you did your character posters wrong. Also probably your movie! #TheLionKing pic.twitter.com/jwt6Kl2KkJ
— Blank Check Podcast (@blankcheckpod) May 30, 2019
The good news, for Disney at least, is that The Lion King remake is expected to have an elephant-sized impact at the box office. There are even rumblings that it has the potential to rival Avengers: Endgame’s massive haul, which makes sense considering the 1994 animated classic has become somewhat of a cultural milestone for kids of the ‘90s. Plus, it has an emotionally resonant story that anyone in the whole family could enjoy, from small children to the oldest of curmudgeons. Even Seth Rogen, Pumbaa himself, said the film made him cry.
So, try to forget about those clunky posters and have those tissues handy, as The Lion King hits theaters on July 19th.,
