The Lion King 3D – Hakuna Matata
Disney’s The Lion King has always been one of my favourite animated movies from the Disney studios and even today it still stands up to being an enjoyable movie to watch, but it’s hard to believe the movie is now 17 years old!
With its brilliant animation, catchy Tim Rice and Elton John soundtrack, it’s comical, scary and sometime a sad movie all rolled in to one, but old and young still enjoy the story of the young lion cub that after thinking he has killed his father leaves the pride to find his only way and leaves the thoughts of being a future king behind him.
Featuring an all star voice cast including James Earl Jones (Mufasa), Jeremy Irons (Scar), Rowan Atkinson (Zazu) and Matthew Broderick (Adult Simba). The Lion King was a box office hit when it was originally released and it’s doing well in cinemas again!
The Lion King 3D Still A Success
So now 17 years after its original release Disney has decided to release a “Special 3D Presentation” of the movie in 3D, I must point out that is a converted 3D movie!
The 3D conversion is quite good, specially in the musical set pieces, where there always seems to be a lot more going on and key parts of the movie do seem to stand out a lot more in 3D than other parts.
The Hyena sequence early in the film works well as does moments in the elephant graveyard. Though I was a little disappointed with the “stampede” sequence as this didn’t really have a massive 3D feel to it, maybe there is just too much going on at the time for the 3D to have a good effect and some parts did seem a little “jerky”.
3D For Traditional Style Animation
Generally I found that scenes with foreground grass or trees worked extremely well and the sequence of an adult Simba chasing Rafiki through the dense forest of trees worked very well.
For me though I don’t really think that traditional style animations leads that well to 3D and converting a movie which is 17 years old seems to be another way of getting bottoms on seats and money in to Disney’s ever-growing pockets.
Don’t get me wrong The Lion King is a wonderful film, but I really don’t think it warrants a conversion and that goes for the other films in Disney’s “3D conversion” list of movies, if a film is made in 2D then don’t convert it, make new films in 3D with state of the art 3D cameras!
Overall Thoughts For The Lion King 3D
As I said earlier The Lion King is an all time Disney film great for small kids and adults, but the 3D is a gimmick on this one and in my point of view it’s really nothing to shout about from the roof tops.
So my overall rating is 8/10 – Brilliant movie that still stands the test of time and the 3D is just a bonus.
Karen Woodham is the founder and owner of the Blazing Minds. She is also a Cinema reviewer and works with RealD 3D reviewing the latest 3D releases and IMAX, she has also had several articles published in various publications including the first edition of SFW Magazine. In 2015 she became an Award Winning Blogger and also has her website listed as one of the UK’s Top 10 Film Blogs.
