A comparison of all 18 shots in the new Lion King trailer

If there's any iron law you can depend upon, it's that Disney will ruin the classics with needless remakes. It is one of those horrifying but inevitable acts of waste and folly that define our species, like the urge to build giant statues or hold referendums on ultra-complex constitutional change. The only thing to do is ignore it and try not to think about poverty levels in Los Angeles.

But the new Lion King trailer stands out for me among the regular follies; a shot-for-shot remake, it seems to have given up on the paltry if abortive attempts at originality seen in the previous remakes, instead doubling down on reproducing the film in every detail, adding nothing more than 25 years of progress in animation technology.

Needless and profligate as such an endeavour surely is, it would be comprehensible. People like to see beautiful images. Fair enough. What's more troubling than the incredible pains it takes to hew identically to the original, is that it looks way worse. It's extraordinary. Every image is so much less moving and beautiful than the hand-drawn versions we know and love from 1994.

Allow me to demonstrate in excessive detail. Others have already created comparison videos of the new and old versions (here is an example) but I want to go further. What's required, clearly, is an analysis of every single shot so far made public.


Shot 1: The sun rises





The very opening frames of the Lion King (1994) are among the most evocative and memorable in modern cinema. Who among us does not remember the sight of a vivid crimson sky, a blazing furnace of a sun rising majestically, rippling like syrup in the thick haze of heat, promising a spectacular African day to come - both in terms of temperature and also dramatic potential. Passionate, primordial, utterly compelling.

The new version does away with that, giving us instead... a sunrise. That's about all you can say for it. It's quite a nice sunrise, but that's like calling a superhero movie unrealistic. It's not an achievement to look nice when you're a sunrise.

If I saw this sunrise in real life, I would probably watch for a few seconds - whereas if I saw the bright red fireball of the original, I would fall to my knees and rethink everything I'm doing with my life.


2: Antelopes looking up

Amazing how a cartoon can look so real and true, while an ultra-realistic computer render of the same image looks utterly fake. Would it have been so hard to shoot some actual antelopes instead of spending trillions of terabytes simulating them? They could probably have found some in the LA zoo.

But there's another pressing question here. Just as with the previous shot, the new version is a replica of the old one but so much less compelling and mythic. But why replicate it at all? Even in the original, this shot was always slightly confusing - if the animals have this great kingdom and they're all conscious enough to be aware of things like monarchs, lines of succession and christenings, then why do they look up in surprise? This isn't a random earthquake, they must have known that today was the big day, since they are all convoying over great distance to attend. While the "looking up in surprise" thing nicely conveys excitement, it makes little sense in hindsight. It would have been a perfect place to try something new. You can convey excitement by packing a suitcase.


3. Elephants beneath Kilimanjaro

Pop quiz: which is cooler, a herd of majestic elephants waking past an awesome mountain, or a herd of majestic elephants waking past an awesome mountain wreathed in mist beneath a summit of flaming glory?


4. Birds over marshland

This shot I'm willing to concede is a draw. While the original version is vastly more sensational in both scope and colour, the new version adds a camera tilt which I can't help but enjoy, and the ending image of silhouettes against the sun is a nice touch. At least in this one shot we can see an attempt at capturing the splendour needed for this sequence to work. Still, the new version misses the sun's powerful reflection, and loses the sense of perspective and hugeness conveyed by the very high camera in the original, capturing multiple layers of flock.


5. Loyal subjects rejoice

This is another shot that isn't totally hopeless. I like the sense of a big celebration in the new version and again the framing against the sun is working in its favour. Still, the original is clearly closer to the mark, as it spans over multiple shots showing each of the different tribes united not by physical proximity or being mixed up randomly among each other, but by their support of the new heir. It's one thing to ask us to believe that all the prey animals love their predator overlord, it's another to pretend that the herds all join into a single jumbled crowd.


6. Simba sees his future

For some reason the trailer breaks away from the Circle of Life sequence at this point to foreshadow later parts of the plot, specifically the moment where Simba steps in dad's footprint and realises there are large paws he will need to fill.

Once again, the new version is visually mundane and hopelessly realistic when compared to the original. But story-wise it's weird as well. In the original, Simba feels his paw touch the larger print, and flinches back in surprise and dismay. In the new version, we can clearly see his other front foot come up alongside the first, suggesting he hasn't even noticed where it landed, or is unfazed. I'm sure when we see the full scene, Simba will react appropriately, but here it's our first glimpse of weirdly alien, animal body language which does a terrible job of showing the little human details we need from these characters.


7. Mufasa's Bane

Another weird jump to this shot, and one that brazenly plays on our greatest childhood trauma. It would hardly be worth showing some running wildebeest at this point if we didn't know what doom came with them.

The shot itself is perfectly functional, and I can even forgive it for indulging in the modern taste for swooping, fast-moving cameras - a departure from the steady and ominous pan of the original shot. Interesting fact: the original stampede sequence used rudimentary computer generation tech, and you can see it if you look for details. The animals are all too similar in their movements; they feel "computer random" rather than "nature random".

None of that matters, of course, when you first watch the movie, since the overall effect of an unstoppable force moving into a dark gully of death is so powerful. If the new version wants to go for more immediate adrenaline and less building dread, that's not the end of the world, but it is clearly worse. The rich ochre palette of the original has also been sacrificed in favour of indistinguishable browns and greys, but what do you expect at this point?


8. Pride Rock

We're back at the intro sequence. The original version is another shot that suffers if you look too closely at the details. Our first glimpse of Pride Rock is breathtaking (and timed to coincide with the mighty Circle of Life chorus in the music), with its rapid crest of the hill and Zazu soaring across the foreground. But the approaching animals on the ground are kind of ugly and weird - though they are clearly in separate groups in later on, here they are jumbled and blotchy, in terms of the colour of the overall frame.

The new version escapes this fate by accident. Since its colouring is so bland and undifferentiated anyway, the mixed up animals can't ruin the shot. Still, these are relatively unimportant details. The original version is still obviously superior thanks to its more dramatic camera movement and superb use of an avian audience proxy. The new one is staid and tepid in comparison.


9. Enter Rafiki





Oh god. Oh dear god.

Where my primary concern with the prologue images leading up to this point is the use of colour and photography to create the sense of epic grandeur so vital to all Disney success, at this point a new problem emerges to dwarf and consume the first. I believe I can sum it up in three words:

ANIMALS AREN'T CHARACTERS.

Or at least, they're not dramatic characters like you need in a Disney movie, especially not a Disney movie supposedly inspired by Shakespeare. Animals can be characters in a documentary, but that's a very different class of storytelling that clearly won't work in this format. What you need in a Disney movie about coming of age and fighting for justice is not some random monkey. You need a mentor. You need someone with quirks and mystery, a trickster, an archetype. In other words, you need a human.

All of the characters from the original are humans, exaggeratedly so. In this scene, Rafiki emerges over the rock and his tail is bent to show his eccentric nature, he immediately cocks his head to show he is both thoughtful and roguish. He leans on a staff to show he is advanced in years and therefore wise. And then he gives Mufasa a big hug. They are old friends. And you can see all of this right there in the drawing. The cues we are trained to recognise. The human emotions, the human faces, the human styles of non-verbal communication.

I'm sure that the new film will try to show all of the same character traits for Rafiki, but they won't be anything like as effective because we won't be able to see it. It'll just be a monkey. I mean look at this guy. This is the shot they've selected to show off the new Rafiki. I can't imagine a blander looking hominid. He's so utterly dull! Expressionless! No glimmer of human feeling, or any trace of character. I literally can't see his eyes or mouth, and this is a medium close-up looking right at us. He's just an animal. And animals aren't characters.


10. Simba awakes





This shot sort of works because it's super cute, and that's all you really need at this point. But why eschew the nice slow zoom, or crop out the smiling parents on the edge of frame? It simply makes the cuteness wilt a little under the burden of static boredom.


11. Ritual

I quite like the roots as an image, but the faint mist of red dust that follows is uninspiring - especially when compared to the explosive display of the original version, where the unidentifiable red husk-goo fruit is rent asunder in a blinding flash against the white sun, a moment of pure creation, like the primordial fire. The dripping gunk inside is the thick red blood of life, of the kingdom, of Simba's birthright, which seems to have shrivelled to a dry powder in the new version.


12. The chosen one anointed

Not a huge difference here. The original version is slightly betrayed by Simba's cheesy grin, which is not very newborn of him, and this is a rare instance where the animal non-comprehension of the new version works in its favour. But the point from the previous shot about the benefits of goop vs dust is more apparent here than ever.


13 and 14. The nation meets its prince

Reverse shot:

In the original, these shots are combined as a single long camera movement from behind to in front of Simba. The same may well be true of the new film, so I won't judge it by the trailer's decision to chop it in two - and to show the front side first when clearly you need to start from behind so that by the time you get to Simba's face you can fully comprehend his awe.

And that's just it. Simba is awestruck. Look at that face. In just a few lines, the animator conveys not just awe but concern, curiosity, fear and a sense of something momentous. The cub in the new version is merely looking at stuff. Being an animal, we have no idea what it's thinking.

Side note: the new version seems to take place on a sunny day. It has quietly excised the grand billowing clouds from the original version, through which the sun beams fix Simba in a godly spotlight, and which also foreshadow his future destiny as Rain King.


15. The subjects swear fealty

Seriously - what are these animals doing in the new version? It seems they have been struck by a collective bout of neck cramps. Mufasa should execute them for failing to bow properly.


16. Pride Rock: Redux

God rays aside, I'll just note that the original version holds on the royal family for much longer before zooming away, while the new version almost immediately begins with the shot's primary focus as nothing but dots in the distance.


17 and 18. Bring the rain





I've combined a couple of shots for this one, because you can't really take them separately. They were stuck on to the end of the trailer as a kind of stinger and I have to say, of the 18 shots Disney have released, these ones make me the most nervous and most certain that the new film is going to but unwatchable.

In these shots, Disney makes it clear that it has totally failed to grasp the dramatic principles that made the first film so great. Not only have they sliced away any trace of the extraordinary emotional richness by replacing human expressions with animals, but they've made Simba give his triumphant rain roar without any rain.

By all that is holy in storytelling, what is this abomination? Surely they haven't missed the point so badly that they think the roar actually causes the rain?! Surely they realise that the roar is not about saving the kingdom, but rather about saving Simba himself. That his journey is one of finding self-belief, remembering who he is and confronting his responsibilities. Simba doesn't have to roar for the rain to come. Simba roars because the rain comes: the rain of clear thinking, of personal growth, of sweeping away all that is flawed within yourself. He brings the rain by making the choice to act, to return and to do what is right. The roar is symbolic - it comes after the victory has been achieved, in celebration and affirmation of it.

Plus - you hardly look badass doing a giant roar if it's not bloody raining!

Equally concerning is this: if there's no rain at the moment of Simba's roar, where is the fire? In the original, Scar's reign is so ruinous that by the time of his downfall the land is being consumed in great firestorms, which are not extinguished until the rain comes. In the shot from the trailer, there's no glow of fire or sign of smoke, and since it hasn't been put out by rain, it must never have started. So am I supposed to believe there's going to be a climactic showdown without fire?

If I had any hope that there was some originality in this movie, then I would be curious about how different the ending must be if they are not using the fire sequence. But I feel confident that what's more likely is that the climax is just the same showdown...simply without the flames of pathetic fallacy that makes it awesome.

Oh, Disney. Oh, oh, Disney.

Response to Film Crit Hulk's Infinity War Piece

Drama is about change and consequence. We need stories to create this drama. There is nothing truer than that.

But there are many vectors of change. We are used to seeing stories where there is a hero, with a flaw, whose experiences and mistakes cause her to suffer clear consequences and change herself – her behaviour, her personality – as a result. An individual who learns an individual lesson.

There is another kind of change – the change of creation. Not a unit that moves from state A to state B, but a unit that is created where there was nothing at all before. A unit that is created from the combination of other units, perhaps.

Film Crit Hulk demands to know: what is Avengers Infinity War about?

It's about teamwork.

How could it not be? How can you not see it? Avengers and Avengers Age of Ultron were about teamwork too. So was the first Guardians of the Galaxy. When it comes to telling stories in shared universes with lots of alpha heroes, it's the only thing that really matters. We're primed for this. We know this. And Infinity War does it better than anyone else has ever done it.

Film Crit Hulk is wrong to idolise the story of Prometheus. This is a fable for an ancient time. Prometheus suffered for his actions – he experienced real consequence, real change – but his actions were not ones he should have suffered for. All he wanted was to help others. To give people a warmth that could comfort them on a winter's night. To alleviate suffering for the powerless masses by taking a tiny portion of what was hoarded by the few. Whether the gods symbolise the powerful or just “fate”, it's still a story told to keep people in line.

We no longer need to tell stories about people suffering for dreaming big, and trying to go beyond their “destiny” (especially when they're doing so to help others). Pretty soon, in the real world, we will see technologies that produce effects as big if not bigger than those in our sci fi movies. When this happens, we don't need to punish the perpetrators but figure out how to deal with the new world we create – together. What the world needs more than anything in the coming future is teamwork. That's why Marvel is telling the most important stories it could be telling right now.

The drama of the MCU is clear and exceptionally effective. A team is born that can do extraordinary things – if it works together. Internal conflict destroys that foundation in Civil War, breaking it into separate parts. Atomised, these parts face a threat that is simply the emotionless personification of destruction, one that intentionally has no relatable psychology that can be reasoned with. Thanos is the extinction of humanity that we will face if we don't work together. And for two hours and forty minutes, that is exactly what the team fails to do. They face the threat as separate parts, one after another, and, as separate parts, it defeats them one by one.

It's a brutally clear lesson. The ending could not be more of a gut punch. It's devastating not just because death befalls beloved characters, but precisely because these deaths are so futile and meaningless. They never got the opportunity to achieve their potential. The film shows all of these mighty heroes, all the things they can do, but while they are together in the same story, they are not together as a real team. Most crucially, of course, Cap and Tony are on separate planets. But everywhere there is in-fighting. The Guardians split up, and are useless without each other. Tony and Dr Strange can't overcome their egos. Thor is in crisis because he is left alone – but there's a reason the greatest and most triumphant moment of the film is when he finally shows up to work alongside his real family in Wakanda – it's the closest the heroes come to achieving unity. But vital pieces are still missing, and so destruction prevails. And they pay the price.

It's a real fucking price. It's extremely disingenuous to game the ending with your meta knowledge. I've seen the film three times with three different friend groups, only one of which were uber-fans, and all of them were left in stunned and stony silence. Don't fucking tell me that it's not a real price they're paying, just because you know when Spider-man 2 is scheduled.

Of course there will be resurrections. But this is a stand-alone movie. There could be an asteroid impact tomorrow, and the last Marvel film we ever see ends with total, unequivocal victory for the bad guy. No blockbuster has done this before. It's historic. This is the pure Prometheus ending where the heroes are left to suffer. Prometheus that eschews the third act. But unlike Prometheus, their suffering teaches us a worthwhile lesson: we must come together or perish.

In the next movie, if we see it, we can be sure that we will learn that same lesson again with a more positive outcome. The heroes will finally form a unit and defeat death. Here's the crunch: there will be real change and consequence. Whether or not characters die – which is only one among many, many ways to demonstrate consequence – the MCU will be left in an entirely new state to how it was before Thanos came along: it will be united. Just because the horrifying deaths are undone doesn't mean their impact is gone, or that no price was paid. The heroes will still have suffered super-duper intense trauma. They will give everything to pull through and atone for their mistakes, and in the end the trauma will never leave them. And they will have learned, again, the lesson of teamwork. The lesson that can never be learned too often, that must always be repeated.

The fact that Film Crit Hulk doesn't mention teamwork in his piece – the thought doesn't seem to have occurred to him – blows my tiny fucking mind.

Prometheus' story ends with him being tortured for eternity for his selflessness and courageous ambition. In the Disney version, you bet your ass there's a sequel. In the sequel, Prometheus' team of friends, who initially refused to help with the fire-stealing, would have an act three where they decide to risk their own lives to save Prometheus, and having done so, they would have a climactic battle with the gods in order to protect humanity from their tyranny and stop them taking back the fire. Prometheus would be nothing without his team, just as he is nothing without humanity. That's the lesson we need to teach to children. We should be telling them that they can steal fire from the powerful – and yes, they can cheat fate, and that's not something to be afraid of. But only if they believe in themselves, and believe in the team.

Life is like a browser game

You start with two grey boxes. You must decide what to do with them.

You have choices. Directions for movement. The illusion of freedom. You decide what happens, but certain things are not possible. You can't go diagonal. You can't rearrange at a whim. Most of all, you can't leave the box. You have one box, and it's a certain size. It will never get bigger no matter how much you plead for more space, more time. The box doesn't care.

Oh, and there are strictly no takebacks. You live and die with your mistakes.

So you get going. You send your boxes flying. The movement is fast, thrilling, overwhelming. But more astonishing than the movement is the appearance of a third box. It turns out that as you proceed, things happen. Things you could never see coming. You gain something with each choice, each progression. Another box; another something that will be yours forever, a part of you.

You move again and there's a fourth box. The appearance is random, and sometimes there's a different number in the box at intervals you can't predict. But that new boxes appear - new things happen - is a certainty. These sudden arrivals are scary. They throw strange new elements into a world you thought you knew. But if you accept them - and you must accept them, they are here to stay - you will see that they respond to you like the other boxes. They are you. You will love them all, even as you sometimes curse their initial inconvenience. You are learning new things about yourself all the time, and they're not always nice.

You move, and now a miracle occurs. Two boxes become one. A flash of perfect synthesis, two elements so attuned that they produce a spontaneous singular, the sum of themselves. You have taken the parts of you and you have forged them into new shapes. You have learned something. Two twos become four. The four is slightly less grey - there is a hint of colour, albeit beige. Soon you will see that two fours become eight in a detonation of glorious orange. Oranges deepen and turn red, then transcend themselves into a blaze of ever-brightening yellows. You have become a rainbow of fire. You are vivid with boxes.

And all the while, while you combine your boxes to mould ever greater constructs, the new boxes continue to appear. There is never a shortage of fuel. Stuff happens - continuously, unceasingly - and you effortlessly fold the raw new elements into yourself. You have become an engine, powered by these two processes: combination and acquisition.

You are growing.

For a time, it is glorious. You are a furnace of amalgamation, an inferno of coalescence. Boxes whiz in every direction, merge and bloom. You reach ever greater heights.

But then you start to notice something. Your space is finite. Grow too big, and something pushes back. There are walls. There are limits. There is something that doesn't want you to expand forever, that refuses to let you reach your predestined potential. Your boxes get stuck. Movement becomes strained, impossible. You are filling up, and the walls are unyielding. You are drowning in yourself.

And so two things will happen. Either you will die: a husk, unable to move, defeated by your own unwieldy inability to comprehend your world and what you were up against. Or you will compartmentalise. You will learn the skill of organisation, of long-term planning. You will look to the future, and delay gratification. You will not respond simply to the desire to grow, that purest, truest instinct. You will have to make decisions about how and where you grow. Where you see yourself going further down the line, what you see yourself becoming.

You will organise your growth, create a foundation, a corner-stone on which you can build. You will only move in certain directions at certain times, not wherever you feel like moving. You will have purpose. You will ensure that your boxes align, like with like, so that the engine never goes hungry, that progress never ceases.

You are chugging along nicely. With the organisation comes a sense of safety, a sense of security. You grew too big and you learned what it is to be anxious, to fear for your continued growth. Now you are confident, although not completely confident. Random events can still happen, can throw spanners in your carefully constructed works, derail the formation of your great edifice. The more you master the chaos, the more that what little remains becomes the source of ever-greater dread. You realise your anxiety in fact has not diminished, but it has grown alongside, in proportion to the mightiness of your achievements.

And sooner or later you will find that a terrible question comes, one that never occurred to you in your salad days, but which now takes dreadful form: Why?

Why are you even doing this? What is the real purpose of your labours here? Suddenly this growth that seemed so vital and urgent begins to feel hollow. Pointless. You need a reason to continue, so you look for one, and you find it. An external source provides it. You are told. You are commanded, and you believe. The great mantra is handed down, written in mighty tablets of stone, an ineffable answer that reads:

2048.

You are reborn. Now you understand. A reason for all this struggle. A goal to be your point of focus. Something to strive for. A scripture to whisper to yourself when the anxiety strikes, to fill your heart with devotion, to banish your concerns about the nature of the world and its cruel, arbitrary limitations.

You are a zealot. You are bent on reaching this destination that has been ordained. Your fervour for growth reaches new heights. You struggle. You labour. You build, box by careful box.

And finally, one day, there is a tremendous final rush and you have done it. It is done. 2048. There is a fanfare, a triumphal procession. The world itself turns yellow and tells you that you have won. Endorphins flood your system as everything you ever desired is consummated. You are at peace.

You read the victory message over and over, wallowing in it. You notice something. You hesitate. You turn cold. There is another box, just below the official certification of victory. It is grey, but it is not a number box. It is just a simple box with two words: Keep Going.

Realisation is like an anvil. This is not the end - it never was. There is no end, there cannot be an end. 2048 was just a short-term thing, to keep you sane. You were never really doing it for 2048. You were doing it for the growth. The growth, you now see, is its own terrible end, the end that can never end. The yawning abyss that must constantly be fed, now and for ever. If you made 2048, you can make it again, and you can merge it with itself, and create 4096. 8192. You see it now - the wave of satisfaction that passes like a summer storm, the fulfilment that seeps away, leaving only the option of continuing ever on.

You have no choice. You never really did. Your mouth is dry as you watch yourself click the Keep Going box of doom, like someone signing on a parchment for a deal with Ursula the sea witch. By condemning yourself, you know now who you truly are. You are not the boxes. You are the need to keep going.

And so you do. The boxes never end. The days turn to years, to millennia. The numbers rack up and up and up. The biggest ones turn black, unforgiving, hugely heavy. You have been going so long now that you barely register the movements, the mergers. There is almost no more conscious input; you are on automatic.

And maybe that is the end, in its very endlessness. Maybe that is just you, now and forever, until you fill your space and your time is finally up.

Or maybe...something extraordinary happens. Two boxes merge, and something new is born. Your eyes flicker for a moment. They mark the tiny genesis, and they notice its beauty. The little flash of colour. Distantly, they remember how bright that moment used to make them feel. They remember the heat of the flames from the great engine, the light on their face.

You watch, and you see another spark, and another. You find they precipitate microscopic delights. And you sit back and watch them flicker across the grid, across yourself. All these moments of beauty building into something greater. You realise that your edifice, your biggest number, represents an entire lifetime of joys and successes. And now you see the patterns. You can appreciate both the minuscule moments and the dizzying macroverse that exists and thrives in these four small walls.

And maybe, just maybe, before you die, you will get the feeling that you have made the most of what you were given.