Disney is so committed to live-action remakes of their animated classics that there have been three big trailers for them in the last month and change. Previously, we got an Aladdin teaser. Last week there was Tim Burton’s Dumbo. And right before Thanksgiving the corporation gifted the world with the one for their revamped The Lion King, which doesn’t feature any humans but does feature CGI critters, looking as realistic as anthropomorphized animals who speak with the voices of Donald Glover and Beyoncé can.
Now someone’s gone one step further: YouTube user Sowicki329 went and mashed the 1994 original with footage from the trailer of Jon Favreau’s newbie. We can see how Favreau and company have tried to mimic images from the original, right down to the framing, placement of characters and movement.
Of course, one could argue that this video does the new Lion King, due on July 19 of next year, few favors. Showing both new and old versions of, say, the shot of the newly born Simba being held up, you may notice this: The old image is much, much, much prettier than the new one. That’s because the animated original features unrealistic yet gorgeous colors, while those in the new one are realistic and, frankly, bland. At least Favreau’s last live-action Disney redo, The Jungle Book, had, well, a jungle. Here he pretty much only has a desert to work with, severely limiting his color palette.
But who knows! It’s just a trailer, and maybe the full thing — lensed by the great Caleb Deschanel, the Oscar-nominated cinematographer of such gorgeous pictures as The Black Stallion, The Right Stuff, and The Natural (and who’s also father of Zooey and Emily) — will be sear our retinas after all.
(Via The A.V. Club)
