No CROWN for "The Lion King"
THE KEY CONCEPT: The hyper-realistic CGI remake of Disney's "The Lion King" is lacking one essential ingredient - highly expressive faces! |
Figure 1: A still from the 2019 CGI remake of "The Lion King." Mufasa is definitely King of the Jungle, proud and expressionless, beside his expressionless offspring, Simba.
The freshly-minted, hyper-realist reissue of "The Lion King" is a magnificent piece of CGI artistry. From the sweeping African landscapes, to the herds of fabulous savanna beasts, to the charming bits of business with little bugs, Lion King 2019 is a tableau of mastery. Congratulations to the teams of character designers, animators, riggers, compositors and everyone else whose talent came together to create this visual masterpiece.
HOWEVER, AS A FACIAL EXPRESSION EXPERT...
I have a beef. Some of you may remember that a few years ago I went over to London to do some training for the studio that was in the process of creating the new live-action Lion King 2019. I was told that the director, Jon Favreau, was 100% committed to avoiding human expressions on his photo-realist animal faces, as was the case with his earlier CGI remake of "The Jungle Book" movie. At the time, I wrote a series of blogs (links at bottom) discussing why that was such a bad idea (animals that speak and sing, but don’t emote?) and I also made my case to a few animation folks working on the movie. Not surprisingly, my comments had no notable effect on the final film.
Now that Lion King 2019 is out, a great many of the reviewers are equally put off by the Uncanny combination of completely realistic animals that talk and sing with frozen faces (“stuffed trophies,” as one reviewer writes). For many, it’s decisive in diminishing the success of the movie which they describe as a strange marriage of wildlife documentary and animated feature film. Like, me, they miss the engaging anthropomorphism of the highly stylized animals in Lion King 1994. It is significant that Lion King 2019 is the FIRST completely photo-realist, feature-length, CGI movie with NO real-world input at all. With such terrific technological and artistic resources at hand, why not push the boundaries of realism?
I have a beef. Some of you may remember that a few years ago I went over to London to do some training for the studio that was in the process of creating the new live-action Lion King 2019. I was told that the director, Jon Favreau, was 100% committed to avoiding human expressions on his photo-realist animal faces, as was the case with his earlier CGI remake of "The Jungle Book" movie. At the time, I wrote a series of blogs (links at bottom) discussing why that was such a bad idea (animals that speak and sing, but don’t emote?) and I also made my case to a few animation folks working on the movie. Not surprisingly, my comments had no notable effect on the final film.
Now that Lion King 2019 is out, a great many of the reviewers are equally put off by the Uncanny combination of completely realistic animals that talk and sing with frozen faces (“stuffed trophies,” as one reviewer writes). For many, it’s decisive in diminishing the success of the movie which they describe as a strange marriage of wildlife documentary and animated feature film. Like, me, they miss the engaging anthropomorphism of the highly stylized animals in Lion King 1994. It is significant that Lion King 2019 is the FIRST completely photo-realist, feature-length, CGI movie with NO real-world input at all. With such terrific technological and artistic resources at hand, why not push the boundaries of realism?
ART HISTORY PROVES MY POINT
The most common objection to applying human expressions to literal animal faces is that it will make them look "cartoony," stereotypical and exaggerated. I counter that examples from art history show otherwise. In Figures 2 to 4, the angry lion faces painted by Baroque master Peter Paul Rubens were imaginary as the artist had never seen them in the wild. He created his fearsome beasts as angry humans with lion features. Neither his contemporaries, nor following generations, had the slightest problem with Rubens' depiction, which has no correlation to actual angry lions, and the word "cartoony" certainly never crossed anyone's mind. Numerous other examples from historic art used the same tactic, including Leonardo da Vinci's drawing of a battle scene with highly humanoid, angry and frightened horses (Figure 5) and Rubens' painting of "Daniel in the Lions Den" (Figures 7 to 11) with expressive lion faces that are the antithesis of the lion's faces in Lion King 2.
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Figures 2, 3 & 4. This violent "Lion Hunt, painted by Peter Paul Rubens shows two lions fighting for their lives as they are attacked by humans on horseback. Do their angry facial expressions look convincing to you?
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Figure 5. This detail from a preparatory study for Leonardo da Vinci's lost painting depicts four men riding raging war horses in "The Battle of Anghiari" (1505). Figure 6. This is a real photo of a real horse that is about to be killed in a dramatized battle scene, from the BBC "War and Peace" television series. Which horse gives you a greater sense of fear in the face of death?
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Figures 7, 8, 9, 10 & 11. In his painting, "Daniel in the Lions Den," Rubens imagines the most ferocious beast of the jungle in various poses, ranging from sleepy to murderous rage. Daniel is definitely terrified; each lion gives us a different reading of their interest in his fate. Do you consider these facial expressions "cartoony?"
WHICH WAY WILL THE WIND BLOW?
This is a fascinating time for animation with so many technical innovations being tried for the first time. Up until Lion King 2019, no one had attempted a "talking" animal feature with CGI-only realism. If this strategy inspires similar efforts, especially since this film has already surpassed $1B in revenues, it still leaves the unanswered question: would audiences accept realistic CGI animals with human-like facial expressions in a full-length feature? What would be the advantage over much more stylized animal characters, as has been the standard up until now in movies like "Ice Age" and "Zootopia?"
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 | Figures 12 to 16: The visible sclera (eye white), is a unique feature of the human expressive vocabulary. In Lion King 1994, the animators take full advantage of the ability of the eye whites to make a character look more anxious, angry, amused, or demented. In Lion King 2019, playing by the natural history book, the realistic animal eyes are limited by lack of exposed sclera. |
IT'S STILL A GREAT STORY, BUT...
I'm sure your kids will enjoy the film with its grand visuals and talking jungle beasts. But here's a sampler of complaints about the lack of facial expressions from professional film reviewers:
VANITY FAIR: “It’s a lesson: in what makes voice acting resonate, for starters, and in the strangeness of hearing animals emote vocally when their faces are pretty much limited to moving mouths and blinking eyes—no eyebrow action, no subtlety, no liveliness. It’s a lesson in why we value animation in the first place.”
SLATE: “The director has said in an interview that he hopes viewers will benefit from the “emotional architecture” laid down by the earlier film; this comes vanishingly close to saying he hopes the fond memories in viewers’ minds will fill in the blanks left by his hypernaturalistic protagonists’ inexpressive faces.”
NEW YORK TIMES: “There is a lot of professionalism but not much heart. It may be that the realism of the animals makes it hard to connect with them as characters, undermining the inspired anthropomorphism that has been the most enduring source of Disney magic.”
TIME OUT NEW YORK: “This new Lion King is an invader of the real world, it’s characters akin to stuffed trophies mounted on the wall. They’re lifelike yes, but somehow not alive”.
SLANT MAGAZINE: “The characters’ faces are also less pliable, less anthropomorphized—their demeanor harder to read—than in the traditional animation format of the original film. This isn’t necessarily a hindrance to crafting an affecting story (see Chris Noonan’s "Babe"), but the closeness with which Favreau hews to the original film means that the moments crafted for the earlier medium don’t quite land in this one. Scar isn’t nearly so menacing when he’s simply a gaunt lion with a scar, and Nala and Simba’s reunion isn’t as meaningful when their features can’t soften in humanlike fashion when they recognize each other. The Lion King invites—indeed, attempts to feed off of—reference to the original but consistently pales in comparison.”
BEST OF BOTH WORLDS?
Watching a behind-the-scenes video of the expressive voice-over actors for Lion King 2019 shows us how much personality could have been pumped into the film's deadpan, hyper-realist animal characters (see Figures 17 to 21). By contrast, the skillfully-expressive stylized cats in Lion King 1994 (see Figures 22 to 26) lend their charm through their anthropomorphic qualities. I look forward to seeing a break-through CGI film that marries the best qualities of both artistic visions. Will it take another 25 years?
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Figures 17 to 21. (top row) The movie posters for the CGI animal characters in Lion King 2019 make it clear that this movie is all about fidelity to naturalism. Figures 22 to 26. (bottom row) These films clips from the original cartoon version of Lion King 1994 show each lion character as a distinct and lively personality.
MORE ABOUT EMOTING ANIMALS
I stand by the critics regarding my disappointment in Favreau's decision to stick with naturalistic animal faces in Lion King 2019. Written especially for character designers, animators and riggers, please check out my past posts on this topic.
CREDITS: Figures 1, 16 to 21: Stills from "The Lion King" (2019), a CGI/live action remake of Disney's traditionally- animated 1994 film of the same name, directed and produced by Jon Favreau, with screenplay written by Jeff Nathanson, and produced by Walt Disney Pictures; Figures 2, 3 & 4. Painting, including details, by Peter Paul Rubens, "The Lion Hunt"(1621) in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich; Figure 5. Drawing study by Leonardo da Vinci for "The Battle of Anghiari (1505) a lost painting believed to still be hidden beneath a later fresco in the Salone dei Cinquecento (Hall of the Five Hundred) in the Palazzo Vechio, Florence; Figure 6. Photo of horse named "Little Rook" in "War and Peace" 20-episode television dramatization (1972) of the Leo Tolstoy novel of the same name; Figures 12 to 16 & 22 to 26. Stills from "The Lion King" (1994), an animated musical film directed by Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff, produced by Don Hahn and Walt Disney Feature Animation, released by Walt Disney Pictures, with screenplay credited to Irene Mecchi, Jonathan Roberts and Linda Woolverton.
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