#tlk2019

All the original (so no "Morning Report") songs did make it into the film, plus one original song which happens when Simba and Nala are running back to the Pride Lands to challenge Scar. Though "Be Prepared" is hardly a song, and it sucks ass.

Speaking of Scar and "Be Prepared," Scar's line delivery and character acting was just plain bad. I don't know if I was comparing it too hard to the original, but he dragged out every line and whenever he lied to Simba it felt really half-assed coming from Scar. I don't know much about Chiwetel Ejiofor's other roles, but regardless I think we was a poor fit for Scar. It almost seemed like he was bored with the role.

I don't know what happened with James Earl Jones, but his line delivery as Mufasa was a lot less impactful and emotional in this version.

In terms of positive voice acting, Zazu, Timon, and Pumbaa were all entertaining. They all at least had several pretty damn funny lines that weren't in the original (Timon lets Pumbaa say "farted" during Hakuna Matata and they make a meta joke about it). Donald Glover also made a nice Simba. I feel like I would have enjoyed Florence Kasumba as Shenzi more if they actually bothered to give her proper screentime.

Notable changes: 

-Scar does not already work with the hyenas, he starts working with them after Simba and Nala wander into the Elephant graveyard and fail to kill them. He already knew it was their territory and purposefully encouraged Simba to go, he just hadn't conspired with the hyenas before doing so. This does not effect the rest of the film, which I think seemed like a waste (especially with Shenzi's character, who was seemingly set up to take a bigger leadership role, but never did and is tossed aside for the rest of the film). 

-Nala leaves before Simba to go back to pride rock. 

-Simba, Timon, and Pumbaa have a number of nameless animal friends that hang around them in several scenes (and even eventually come to Pride Rock).

-Timon and Pumbaa sing "Be Our Guest" instead of do the hula to distract the hyenas, which I think was a good decision.

-They cut out one of my FAVORITE pieces of dialogue from the original. This. In fact, Rafiki doesn't even have a stick until the very end of the film, where he brings it out to beat the hyenas with it.

There really was a lot of issues with conveying emotion in this film. Just like I feared, it was really hard for them to put emotions on these animals. There were some tiny curling lips to convey smiles but it really wasn't much. Mufasa's death scene was not emotional at all. (I felt really bad because @poketin and I were trying to hold in laughter when Simba screamed after Mufasa was pushed off the cliff, because it just showed a tiny lion screaming with motion blur, and we could NOT take it seriously.)

I couldn't tell if I was looking at Nala or Simba when they were cubs and it only showed one of them in a single shot. Same goes for any of the adult lionesses. I also couldn't tell who was who during the final battle between Simba and Scar during a lot of the action scenes.

The actions a lot of the characters did felt lousy in comparison to the old film. There wasn't a lot of energy present for a lot of it, notable when Simba and Nala are wrestling as cubs and Nala keeps pinning Simba. "Pinned ya!" No you didn't??? You just slowly rolled him over on his back? You're not even on top of him.

The hyenas looked awful. Why were all their faces bald?

Rafiki also looked really weird and I feel like they didn't even bother to look at actual mandrills as reference. His anatomy is just SUPER off and they didn't even give him a butt. He had a butt in the old version, is it really that much of an issue to slap on some blue skin?

Pumbaa straight up changes species in his "when I was a young warthog" flashback. More like "when I was a young wild boar even though they aren't native to sub-Saharan Africa," because that's what they used instead. Is it really that hard to just google search what a baby warthog looks like?? Was it not "cute" enough? Or did they REALLY just use that fake "baby warthog" image that was going around for a split second without double checking it? I don't get it.

I know why they did it, but hyper realistic animals walking around with 0 genitalia is so funny to me.