Streaming some Silent Hill 4 on Twitch right now: www.Twitch.tv/AdumPlaze

I took a class at Disney World last year learning to draw Simba, halfway through the artist said “we add eyebrows to our animal characters to make them more expressive…can you imagine if we made The Lion King with realistic animals that couldn’t emote or express? that would be crazy!” the saltiness from hand-drawn animators is unmatched

I feel awful for the artists who spent years of their lives making photorealistic landscapes and sets only for Disney to pretend like it was live action.

Imagine being an actual nature photographer, laying in a bush for weeks to perfectly capture amazing pictures of animals in their habitats, and then hearing “the skies are too pretty, nobody gets that lucky”

Zazu in the remake is "oh it's Jon Oliver" Zazu in the original is "That's Rowan Atkinson?!?"

"A delayed Lion King 2019 review is eventually good, but a rushed Lion King 2019 review is forever bad" - Shigeru Miyamoto

"I like keeping my skies simple because it's so rare to catch a beautiful sky." Probably the most anti-Hollywood, un-Hollywood idea in the history of industry-killing ideas. Stanley Kubrick: "I see 'realistic' every day of my life. When I go to the cinema, I'd like to experience something unique."

the fact that the "realistic live action" seems to never show them expressing fear/sadness/etc via their ears laid back is so crazy to me. like the #1 most common cat emote

Whenever I hear Jon say, “It’s like his lightsaber” it makes me want to punch a hole into the fabric of space and time.

Absolutely obsessed with the fact that Surf’s Up did the “ground breaking camera movements” first. Surf’s Up fucking rules.

Scar singing a villain song to his army of hyenas is so unrealistic so it was a better idea to have him do slam poetry about beeper repair in a horribly lit cave instead

"No father realistically loves his son" had me dying😂

"The human emotion in how the rocks tumble down" is one of the craziest things I've ever heard

Scar's such a good manipulator that he manipulated Jon Favreau into believing his plan was about the roar.

"Kids don't like 2D animations, you know what they love? Documentaries." Jon at some point

i’m actually so angry at the clips of people saying animation has ‘come so far’, animation is losing what makes it animation

“I was too busy focusing on the fur glow and the dirt colored dirt” was a perfect summary for this entire movie

The lack of ear movement is horrendous. Scared cats, inquisitive cats, relaxed, etc. It's a major way that you can tell how a cat feels.

So, I’m blind, and I watch movies with audio descriptions. After watching this review, I thought I’d check out the movie, mostly for the obvious mixing of new and old James Earl Jones lines. Now, most audio descriptions for animated movies or shows begin with “In a cartoon” or “In animation.” If not, it’s assumed it’s live-action. The first words in the audio description for The Lion King 2019 are, “Live-action.” Even actual live-action movies don’t say they are, so somebody at Disney specifically had that word added to the description. They actually straight up lied!

One year in and I can’t wait for the sequel.

“Oh no, fascism is bad! So we cannot use fascism imagery alongside our VILLAINS, because fascism is bad, and we cannot have our BAD GUYS associated with FASCISM, because FASCISM IS BAD.” - Disney, for some reason.

Human emotions according to Jon Favreau: -Happy -Sad -How the fur glow

Hearing John saying "people moved on from the old way of animation" is so fucking condescending. No, people DIDN'T move from 2D animation, corporate executives just assume we did and went on with what's more trendy, that doesn't mean we don't want to see it again and that's why most people agree this movie sucks ass

Remembering that Disney actually did a pretty realistic lion in the past that had clear relatable facial emotions 14 YEARS before this film is f**king hilarious

“No no, animation is bad and is for babies, and live action is good. The characters can’t be emotionally expressive because that would make this seem like a kids movie. Anyways, the kids are gonna love this movie”

If you can believe it, removing Zazu’s first line gets worse. In the original, it had a payoff. Right after the stampede, Scar goes down to mock Simba. There’s no external reason why he can’t just have his hyena’s kill him then and there, but instead he mocks him and let’s him run. Why? Because it’s been established that Scar plays with his food! This allows Simba to escape and becomes his downfall. Meaning, not only is Zazu’s first line a great introduction to both characters and their dynamic, but it was INTEGRAL TO THE PLOT AND CHARACTER OF SCAR, AND THEY REMOVED IT! HOW DOES IT KEEP GETTING WORSE!

"Nothing in real life looks beautiful. I live in Los Angeles" is such an effective summation of this entire film holy shit

“I’m so glad that Jon Favreau cured sexism” dude I’m gonna go feral when part 2 drops, this is the Old Testament of video essays😭

Adum saying "This tree looks like shit. This bush looks like shit. This looks like shit. This bush looks like shit." Lives free rent in my head.

"We had to remake it for the new generation." Is there some reason kids can't just watch the original?

The fact that I didn't know Zazu was voiced by Rowan Atkinson is a perfect testament to your point about his skill as a voice actor.

Listening to Jon talk about this film almost makes my soul leave my body with how cynical and jaded he is, thinking of milenials like we're so dumb. 'Just check these boxes, just paint by these numbers and we're all set'.

What’s funny about the Teens React clips is that according to former Fine Bros child actors who are now grown up, the kids would often avoid saying anything negative about what they were reacting to for sponsored videos like this because otherwise their clips would get cut out of the final product every time. Guarantee there were teens on that recording day who had something negative to say about the trailer who either didn’t speak their minds or got cut out.

This movie is like one big "fuck you" for the whole art of animation. And it's from the best known animation studio in the entire world.

Jon wanted to make a realistic movie about lions but here's my question... why can't I see their balls then? If it's supposed to be realistic JON.

The reason that YMS hasn’t made a part two is that in real life, it’s unrealistic for people to make a second part to something

I'm surprised YMS/Adam didn't note the one big deviation and problem with the Stampede sequence, even past the music cues shifting or being changed for no reason. In the original sequence, Mufasa and Simba never actually talk to one another. They're not able to. The remake basically cuts down and merges two scenes together, while giving them dialogue that did not exist originally. In the 1994 film, Mufasa never reaches the tree that Simba's hanging onto, he gets knocked down and it's where Simba almost dies for it, and has to be caught out of the air. In the remake, they have Mufasa reach the tree, talk to Simba, and then get knocked down, while the tree goes with it. Before transitioning to the scene where Mufasa "vanishes" and then reappears to pick him up and get him to safety. And they completely halt the action for dialogue. Completely missed the point of the original film's framing of that scene. There was no dialogue said for a reason and that is because the music and the animation worked together to convey every emotion you needed to know without dialogue. But in the remake, they straight up did not want to have any of these characters emote in a human way. All you need do is look at the few seconds of Mufasa running through the stampede, to when he gets knocked down and looks up to Simba. There are multiple different expressions and emotions being conveyed that just completely nail the sense of panic, dread, and desperation that this dad is feeling seeing his kid in a literal life-threatening situation. And even the way it happens is beyond human. Mufasa tunnels on just reaching Simba quickly, and gets sideswiped for it. You can feel how much he cares by how much he stops caring for his own wellbeing, without a word being said. Not only do the expressions just hit the nail on the head, but narratively, this is the first time you'd ever see Mufasa get hurt. He's never in a morbidly dangerous situation before this. The hyenas were nothing to him, and Scar immediately shrinks down when challenged by him. He was always the king of the plot. He literally felt invincible. The movie's first half framed Mufasa from the perspective of how a kid sees their parents when they're young. They think they're the kings of the castle and unbeatable. And ideally, it'd only be when you're older than you'd understand that's not the case, and by then, a lot more of the dialogue and how it's said makes more sense, like the kings of the past sequence. It's a small, tiny sequence, but it's a character and tone builder. From an audience's perspective solely, you see your favorite character sort of get physically deconstructed, and you see them responding to a situation in a new way. From a plot and character perspective in universe, it's great new development, but it just makes more sense than there'd be nothing said at that moment. It makes more sense to me that Mufasa as a character would want to get his kid the fuck out of dodge compared to him almost laxly trying to goad him to follow in a hilariously pressured situation. If he jumped into a squad of three hyenas without a second thought and was panicked over that, a stampede of hundreds of giant animals descending on Simba would easily warrant a similar if not worse response. But lastly, even past all of that, it removes one giant connection that was incidental, but cool in the 1994 original. Mufasa's last talk with Simba was when he was explaining the kings of the past to him. They never had a talk past that. The next time they "do" is when Simba sees Mufasa's spirit in the clouds at night. It's almost a bookend to this major traumatic moment in the film. Everything between these two scenes was the lead up to, the initial fallout of, and the revisiting of Mufasa's death, and how Simba responded to it. It began with the kings of the past and ended some 10-15 years later in the film's timeline with a very similar talk with a literal king of the past. Almost everything relating to these two nighttime scenes and everything in between them is what spurns on the final act of the film. And in some way, I think it was more poignant that Simba never did get to say goodbye to Mufasa, and it keeps their dialogue to those bookend sequences. It also fits to say within the 1994 film, Mufasa's motif doesn't play in a major capacity after his death until you see him in the clouds. It doesn't play during the stampede. But they completely overdo it in the new film. So you don't go from kings of the past's use of it, which was almost whimsical, so the use of it during the later "look harder" scene, which was almost melancholic. You go from kings of the past's use, to a random use of it during the stampede scene, to "look harder". They did not understand how to use the theme, or why its resurgence later in the 1994 film was such a big deal. And it should go without saying that using it during the stampede is almost a slap in the face for what the scene represents. It all boils down to just not understanding that animation is meant to be unrealistic while subsequently not using that to your advantage. To just let facial expressions and music guide your scene over pointless dialogue. It's meant to be expressive and stylized. And it carries scenes a lot more than some corporate hacks seem to understand. Not just with color but with getting something animalistic to emote in a human way without coming off as weird or uncanny. It also boils further into seemingly not understanding that dialogue isn't random. There is a reason they didn't talk there in the original stampede. A very obvious reason. There's a reason the original had more of a focus on facial animation, and music, and sound design. There's a reason certain motifs did NOT get used for specific sequences. It's a total shocker that the number of written words and sentences in the script shot up, and the focus on everything else went down. A total shocker.

I love that John refused to allow Rafiki to carry a stick (because baboons don't do that), but Scar being ambitious enough to plot and plan a stampede to kill his brother and nephew in order to take over a monarchy is still okay. Lions don't do that either, John.

You know a review is going to be legendary when it's both longer than the movie itself, and also taking longer to make than the movie itself. Congrats Adum on completing Part 1!

I really forgot as a kid just how anxious this scene made me, anxious for Simba because you KNOW that voice as a kid, the voice when you've done something bad and you know you did and there's no way out of punishment. And no matter what punishment, the disappointment in that voice is the scariest part, because of the anticipation. 1:28:50 this really was such a masterpiece.

"but he kept it hidden. Its like his lightsaber" God that makes me fucking cringe.

One thing I want to point out about "I Just Can't Wait To Be King" is how important it is in the original that the animals aren't realistic. As the song progresses, the animals all get cartoonier looking, with the elephants getting fatter and redder, the giraffes getting more angular patterns and thinner necks, etc. Simba's childish behavior is literally warping the world around him, leading up to the moment where the animals do the most outlandish thing-making a tower to hold Simba and Nala above them all-_and it all falls apart._ The movie is literally using surrealism to foreshadow what will happen if Simba doesn't take responsibility for his actions as a king, which is something you literally cannot do if you're so pressed for "Realism" that you refuse to even make the sky memorable in the opening scene of the fucking movie.

Proof that the remake is souless - - - My wife is a teacher and she told the 1st graders they were going to watch the Lion King, the animated one. A bunch of kids were upset, since they saw the 2019 in theatres and didn't like it. So why should they like the animated? 95% had never seen it. By the end of the animated movie, the kids were in awe. Several had tears in their eyes, they all loved it! The 90s movies hold up, keep giving kids the chance to feel that wonder and awe again.

As someone who loves Hyenas as an animal, Keegan Michael Key telling Eric Andre to sleep somewhere else isn't realistic because Hyenas love to dog pile each other for body warmth. What's the matter Jon? I thought this movie was supposed to be realistic? Where's the Hyena pile?

"Be Prepared" is literally the best song from the original movie and they fucking took it out. Amazing.

"Nothing looks beautiful in real life, I live in Los Angeles." Pretty applicable statement to the entire movie industry as a whole.

The fact that Simba noticing the wildebeest is a fully CGI still shot while in 1994 they HAND ANIMATED a dolly zoom makes me wanna scream

Another proof that the originals hold up? My Dad's 60 years old, he watched the remake on Plus... I knew it was going to be a trainwreck, so I didn't watch it with him. I should have. I wish I did. We would have been shit-talking the disaster the whole time. But what surprised me was as soon as it was over, he didn't go to something else. He put on the original. a 60 year old man who obsesses over zombie media cleansed his palate with the original. He was THAT betrayed by Disney that to this day he ACTIVELY refuses to watch anymore LARs from Disney. Fuckin' love this man.

"He couldn't paint cause it'd ruin the allusion of him being real Mandrill, it'd be anthropomorphic" He can talk!!

After this I can't stop taking note of pretty skies on nice sunny days and going "Wow what an unrealistic, beautiful sky, too bad John Favreau has never seen one," which happens almost every time I go out driving

Even Jeremy Irons saying "whippersnapper" is way better than anything the 2019 Scar said in the movie.

“lol i’m not autistic” my comfort video:

everyone calling it live action is literally so insulting to animators. its insane. hundreds of people spent so much time making those models, painting them, rigging them, animating and rendering them, just for people to say "omg its real life its live action!!" like dude what

Animals talking and singing musical numbers: "This is fine." Sky too pretty and munkee with stick: "Suspension of disbelief *ruined."*

“We gave Rafiki his stick for the fight, he kept it hidden, it’s like his lightsaber hehe” bruh I’m dead 💀

It was so epic Girl Boss of Shenzi to be manipulated by a crazy old man because he said Beep. I’m so glad they empowered her to be even dumber in this movie, what a feminist icon

✨️ JON ✨️

it is a travesty how they've depicted the African Savanna. One of our most stunning biomes and they made it look so lifeless and washed out. The original film on the other hand translated the quiet beauty of the Savanna perfectly, especially with the opening sunrise edit: with every enraged _"J O H N"_ i ascend

"Should we repaint the Mona Lisa simply because we have better paints?" Just because the technology is better does not mean that the end product is better by default

Even after 2 years, I STILL come back to watch this video. Seriously one of my favorite videos on this app. I love the detail and passion put into this and the Kimba video, plus the editing videos about the lion king from the YMS Highlights channel.

Not only is this a great critique of the movie, but a great way to teach filmmaking techniques. Honestly some wonderful work.

Jon Favreau is like that one teenager who made a reddit post about how unrealistic movies are and it got 100 upvotes and now it's gone to his head

"To prove how not-nazis we are, we're going to remove a song that compares them to hyenas and makes them look evil and stupid."

Can't wait for Adam to talk about how Timon and Pumba basically bully Simba and treat him like an outcast in the 2019 version. They are so insufferable.

Legit cried when Scar said "beep." Really touched my heart.

The plants are so damn lifeless. Such a tragedy. African flora is absolutely fucking incredible and they butchered it

Watching you slowly make this over a few years just to see a 3 hour video called "part 1" is something only you would do Adam. Never change!

I remember hating this remake when it came out, but I had no idea how much the director just blatantly admitted to some of the biggest issues. He's straight up saying that they intentionally made their expressions so bland... why?! You make really good points about the lack of color theory and lighting to help with communicating emotion. This movie feels utterly soulless

John thinking animals have "no emotion in the face" is so stupid. One differentiating feature of mammals when compared to other vertebrates is that they have facial muscles, not just ones to open the mouth but ALL OVER the face.

Hearing the director talk is mind-boggling because he doesn't even attempt to sound like an artist. He sounds like the epitome of unimaginative corporatism and has no shame about it.

Lions can only be awake for like... 3-4 hours a day, so if John wanted this to be realistic he should've just compiled a lot of shots of them sleeping and laying around.

Listening to Jon Favreau talk about this movie is one of the most frustrating things imaginable because of the absolutely insane creative choices he tries to justify. "Too lucky for real photography"?! "Limiting the amount of facial expressions"?! What is he on about? Thank you for calling out his bullshit, this is one of my all time most hated movies ever made

"It's like his lightsaber." In Star Wars movies, do we ever see a character who wields a lightsaber, use it only in the last 10 minutes?

God, Favreu just straight-up explaining "Yeah we really wanted to make an ugly cash-grab and here's how we made it ugly and here's how we made it a cash-grab" is madness inducing.

I have a little nephew and niece (8-9 years old) and neither of them knew jack about the lion king, so I did an experiment. I watched the realistic garbage one with my 9 year old niece and the original cartoon one with my 8 year old nephew. My nephew LOVED the cartoon, and for the following days he was singing can't wait to be king, doing pumba's voice and drawing lions and stuff. My niece on the other hand didn't even remember the movie, not a single song and I SHIT YOU NOT, she thought we were watching a boring weird Animal Planet documentary. Her words own "so they made them realistic but they can speak English?". enough said. kids can be extremely cynical.

It still makes me shake my head when I hear that woman say "This isn't animation" when it is literally animation.

Man this video reminds me why YMS is truly one of the GOATs of film reviews. The complete thoroughness of how he dismantled this movie was glorious.

With how clearly aged James Earl Jones's voice is now, it seems like a better role fit for him would've been Rafiki, which I think would've been great from a meta perspective on how he still gets to mentor Simba

So Jon Favreau thinks that Rafiki walking around with a stick is too unrealistic but thinks it’s realistic for Rafiki to baptise a baby lion with a red plant root. Wow Jon.

Scar sounded more concerned for Simba's life during the stampead scene than Mufassa.

What's weird is that John Oliver has actually done some voice acting before The Lion King. He voiced Wax Sherlock Homes in Gravity Falls, and he actually sounded like a posh British man, and nothing like how he sounds on his show. Considering that, plus how he mainly seems to see his role in the movie as a giant mistake whenever he brings it up in his show, I blame it 100% on the other Jon.

Didn’t Hitchcock say something along the lines of “The closer we get to representing reality, the further we stray from expressing art”? Bravo, Favreau.

You forgot a detail: When Mufasa first notices the stampede, no music is playing. Both him and Zazu just assume it's yet another stampede and move on with their lives. But as soon as Scar mentions Simba, the chorus gets louder, signaling Mufasa's realization and horror of Simba being in danger. In the remake, however, the music is playing all throughout, losing all of the tension it may have once had in favor of constant noise.

This somehow made me appreciate the original even more. Which is saying alot considering I can recite the entire original from memory.

“sOdA” made me choke in the kitchen at 4 am, waking my house up. Great job.

its pretty insulting how disney is soo scared of the movie being called "animated" because of hollywood's stigma against animations being "only for children"...something that disney themselves are responsible for mind you...

John feels like a guy who's never left a big city in his life and thinks anything beyond grey skylines are pure fantasy

About the 'be prepared' section, they did the same thing with Ursula in the live action remake. They removed the verse in her song were she says that women should not speak. It's like Disney doesn't want their villains to be evil anymore

The annoying thing is that they could have got Idris Elba to play Mufasa instead... he has a powerful voice.

that commentary about the stick as rafiki's lightsabre is really funny, because it implies that Rafiki used to use the stick, then realized that monkeys don't use sticks, so he hid it away out of shame

I’ve watched this multiple times and “It’s like his lightsaber” still does immense psychic damage like how does someone not have any self awareness to such a degree

@ 54:03 I will never get over how Mufasa's tired expression transitions into irritation. Its just such a smooth animation.

Also to add in Mufasa's death scene- in the original, he's pleading with Scar, using their family connection when he didn't immediately help. In the 2019 version, he just sounds demanding and huffy.

The hyenas laughing is even scarier in the animated movie because it’s on cue it means they were watching them the whole time and decided to make an entrance then

“Full disclosure, Disney is the parent company of ABC news.” The news reporter said that like she had a gun to her head and was trying to warn us for what’s to come

I don't blame Hans Zimmer for his comments. He's literally under contract to not say anything bad about the film and could also be labeled as "hard to work with" if he says anything out of line. We can't take interviews from people that worked on a project at face value. Just look at the interviews from the cast of Game of Thrones during the final season.

This video is unironically teaching me about the interaction between filmmaking and it's score, so thank :)

*Wow, dude.* You should take *pride* in how much work went into this review. You *rock.*

The more I watch Jon's interview footage, the more I get the sense that he just straight up *hates* the original movie. "I like it because it's one of the most successful films of all time, but it's outdated because 2D animation is purely made for nostalgia." "When we looked at the kind of fruit it was, it wasnt filled with _face paint."_ "The original film had a schedule and a budget." "Hans really wanted to fix and fill the orchestra." He acknowledges explicitly that his intentions for the film run _counter-intuitive_ to the building blocks of the original film, as though he's using avant garde decisions to craft some sort of masterpiece. What's especially pissed me off as of late is his insistence that the only emotional impact comes from the color of the dirt and Hans' score, that "You could hold up still drawings, and you'll cry." But Han's score is only impactful because the score worked _together_ with the _animation and story!_ *We remember the movie first!* There's just so much shade being thrown it's kind of jarring

heres to two years waiting on part 2! 🍺