All the performances in the Disney live action remakes are amateurish as hell. It's so weird - it really is like they're community theater, or dollar store versions of these movies.
@@videogamenostalgia Look, they just have to get enough of a product together to fit on a poster and cash in on their already established fanbase. You only need one take.
I think I just realized why the line delivery is eh.... lack of direction or the lack of effective voice direction. All the actors are performing as if they’ll be seen on screen and/or they’re in some of sort of Lion “Game of Thrones”. Not that ‘realistic’ vocal expressions can’t be done well in animation (there’s tons of cases of such) but with the barren aspects of the script, lightning, landscape, and animation/facial expressions of the characters, the “realism” of the actors vocal performances come off as stale or as them completely being themselves (or an archetype of themselves) in a regard of un-immersion with no direction or inner-wants of the character ... and even then, it’s a musical... so vocal inflections and personality is appreciated even when the material for a musical takes itself rather seriously. Shit, even Cate Blanchett and Margot Robbie vocally inflect and stretch words or lines... it’s a part of the character usually and even in real life people do that depending on who they are.
Occasionally it works. There are some actors who can do voice acting, but unfortunately it’s kind of a looked down on as a profession by a lot of actors who just view it as an easy paycheck.
Luis Mario Guerrero Sánchez That’s cuz Wes Anderson is a brilliant director who knows how to get good line deliveries out of people. Not saying John Favreau hasn’t made good movies but... he clearly didn’t care about what he was making here.
@@IDHLEB right, because anytime a black person is hired it's not because they have talent its affirmative action. Fuck off dude. Why dont you go complain about women in video games or something
@@anenemystand5582 Nobody tell them John Oliver sucked in this too or it might break their tiny brain :c Like I'm not saying that some of the celebs couldn't just NATURALLY suck (looking at you, Beyonce; girl PLEASE just stick to music because you are NOT an actor), but it's so obviously made unbearable by the lackluster direction more than anything else. The fact that they blamed "diversity" instead of Disney just being a money sucking shell of its former artistic self is telling lmao.
It's because everyone was wrong the whole time. The Lion King isn't a rip-off of Kimba. It's actually in the same universe, just a few decades after. Thus, the graveyard Nala and Simba visit is all the remains of the elephant genocide which took place during Kimba's reign 30 years prior.
and the 2019 one still sounds shorter than the original when “life” is sang. They lengthened it digitally and then didn’t even bother to make it as long as the original.
"I wasn't approached to play Scar. I don't know who will play him. Probably some whipper-snapper." That was masterful. A gracious reminder, in tone and in vocabulary, that he's still very able to play Scar.
When Scar speaks, everything above his nose literally looks like a still image. It’s so commonly known that most emotion is expressed in the eyes/eyebrows but they made one of the most expressive characters’ eyes remain totally static. That angers me beyond belief.
I think I just realized why the line delivery is eh.... lack of direction or the lack of effective voice direction. All the actors are performing as if they’ll be seen on screen and/or they’re in some of sort of Lion “Game of Thrones”. Not that ‘realistic’ vocal expressions can’t be done well in animation (there’s tons of cases of such) but with the barren aspects of the script, lightning, landscape, and animation/facial expressions of the characters, the “realism” of the actors vocal performances come off as stale or as them completely being themselves (or an archetype of themselves) in a regard of un-immersion with no direction or inner-wants of the character ... and even then, it’s a musical... so vocal inflections and personality is appreciated even when the material for a musical takes itself rather seriously. Shit, even Cate Blanchett and Margot Robbie vocally inflect and stretch words or lines... it’s a part of the character usually and even in real life people do that depending on who they are.
Yeah, all I can do is stare at all the tiny black beady eyes every time they're on screen! Then...then they decided to bury the tiny eyes in the lion's dirty deep fur blocking any reflection of light, THEN they decided to completely numb their entire face (except for the jaw)...making it literally impossible to get a read on where they are even looking! The eyes of the lions look unnatural, honestly. It doesn't look realistic. (I'm sure lighting doesn't help.) Real animals have whites in their eyes. Their pupils are just bigger. When I imagine a freaked out mammal, I imagine being able to see the whites of their eyes. It's just, instinct.
@@sorryifoldcomment8596 Not to mention, when I watched the movie I noticed that the pupils almost never change size! They never dilate when they're scared or contract in bright light! They're almost always in the default position.
@@ShroudedWolf51 Which is really baffling because The Lion King is such a well-known classic movie, so even if the actors WERE given terrible direction, surely they've seen the original movie at some point and had a vague idea on the context to their lines? But it really does sound like none of the actors know what sort of character they're supposed to be playing, or what the context of their lines are, so they're delivering them in the most broad and bland way possible. It's....bizarre.
That's just how he talks lol. I don't even think it's his comic persona or whatever - he basically does it in everything he's in, even when he's 'acting'.
"Scar the incel" to be fair the original Scar look like foreign , weak and with very female moves so this was the logical progression the character would take.
Its weird, I never thought the way Scar acted was feminine. I just thought he was being coy or arch, like a villain. He clearly thought he was a superior intellect, so he was just being condescending in a sly way
@@kimifw58 Well thanks to this joke I watched the Kimba video to learn what the fuck everyone mean by that phrase so I gues there are pros. Besides after writing /s or /j jokes aren't that funny most of the time.
That shot of Jon Favreau banging the drum never gets old. It really highlights that he knows he's following the beats he knows are famous and important without any knowledge of what made them so impactful to begin with.
I kinda feel like Disney’s motto for these remakes is “who needs talent or retakes when we have technology” *cut to Patrick smashing stuff with a computer
To me, it's more like that Gravity Falls episode where they're up against these Ray Harryhausen-esque clay monsters and they found out about the invention of computer animation. *"NOOOOOO! WHERE'S THE HEART?!!"*
"...Sorry you got twisted up in this reboot, from where you're editing, it must seem like a 18 decibel take of bad vocals. Truth is... the review was rigged from the start."
The "how weird is that" line changes the entire tone of the conversation. In the original, Simba was like cocky and smug about it, so Scar firing back with his trademark sarcasm is just perfect. But this line makes it sound like Simba is actually wondering about what being a king would be like, in earnest. No extra layer here.
I kinda like it because it’s just him expressing his charisma and making the song more fun in his own way. The song still isn’t that good, but it does look like he’s having fun with all the extras.
Hearing just the vocals without all the sound effects trying to cover up the quality really does highlight how bad the new version of Circle of Life is.
It's a shame that Disney and the people working for them (like Jon Favreau in that interview in the last editing highlight) back that stupid idea that 2D animation is obsolete when they helped to pioneer it, spent decades advancing the craft of it, and with their unlimited resources, could continue to advance the medium today. The way they used to blend 2D and 3D animation is still impressive to this day, and had potential to be developed even further, but because it didn't make as much money, they completely ignored it for years, and now act like they're too good for it. It's so infuriating.
They were literally restating opinions Jon invented to get his own hack director rocks off. This opinion would never have been said by anyone if he hadn't slapped it together to sound edgy and smart in an interview.
Disney just couldn't have Jeremy Irons steal every scene he would have been in again. The discrepancy between him and the other actors, non-actors and a way too old James Earl Jones would have been way too palpable.
I fear that Jeremy Irons would've been partially like James Earl Jones, weak and with very female moves. I can't think of any newer movie I've watched with Jeremy Irons in, the newest I think is High Rise. Granted, Irons isn't as prominent in that film (it's mostly a Tom Hiddleston film and even then the original story was more interesting, sorry Tom) To put it simply, the casting choice of James Earl Jones was foolish. I'm glad that they didn't cast Jeremy Irons, because then we'd have two weak performances rather than just James Earl Jones. Not that we didn't end up with weak performances all around, but seeing great actors fall from their pedestals due to age is..saddening.
This dumpster fire of a movie proves that having a disgustingly big budget and all the resources in the world that a company like Disney can provide doesn't guarantee a good movie. It takes talented people with a real vision other than just to make money
Worst part is that there is clearly talented on the project, but the vision boils down to “Make Lion king but real”, and even then can’t decide whether to make a documentary or not.
Might not make a good movie, but it'll certainly make the highest grossing animated film to date. Unfortunately these shitty disney "Live Action" movies seem to be working out well enough for them.
@@jamespaige2078 With the way they marketed this thing they were sure to be one of the biggest grossing movies, using celebrity clout to get ppl who don't really care about lion king to go watch as well because Beyonce sings in it. Then they spin this "live action" choice like it's some envelope pushing stroke of genius while securing many with their nostalgic feelings for the original. They always just look at box office numbers which btw mean less and less every year because of inflation, increasing population, bigger budgets, etc.
I may be in the minority, but I don’t think that’s true. I do think there is a ton of effort in some places. The problem is that it’s in service of an atrocious idea that was only proposed because of money and not much else. Just I feel bad for the animators who had to work on this :(
I forget is Hans Zimmer also responsible for the songs with lyrics in them? I dont have an ear for music much, so I felt Zimmer at least didnt embarrass himself with the instrumentals. But I have no idea what he is talking about with this whole 'unfinished' OST stuff.
I can’t get over how people have already completely forgotten about the movie, we get people all the time at work now seeing our lion king plushies that are just realistic looking lion cubs and the kids and parents alike already give us looks like “wtf do you mean this is lion king?”
The melodyne abuse is so painful. Also, the key debacle about 10 minutes in is actually just them being too lazy to pitch it downwards because the singer was so off-key . Usually you only need to move it about 10 or 15 cents down but they just didn't do that at all. It's so amateurish, even for the egregious use of it everywhere else in the soundtrack, and all because the singer went a little wild with the warbling. It probably threw the sound engineer off lmao. God I hate pitch correction and the rampant use of it in corporate shit.
I feel inadequate because I have some really nice headphones on and I just for the life of me can't really hear what he's talking about. Sometimes when it's really bad I can but the 'mic peaking' since I just don't really know what that is I can't hear it 😞
Honestly that’s an insult to fanfiction. Heck, The Lion King 1 1/2 feels like one big headcanon and that one’s actually entertaining. The remake is like if you took a random group of people and made them recite The Lion King from memory.
Hey so my orchestra had a spring trip to Disney and we got to meet with one of their music directors and the reason so much of the vocals/tracking is bad is probably because the professional musicians that Disney uses are a part of a union so no matter how much time they spend in the studio there's a still a fixed charge that is paid so if you only stay 30 minutes you still get paid for the hour (this isn't exactly right but stick with me). When we met with the music director he explained that if you're part of an orchestra recording for 8 hours you have to work every minute of it (minus the union regulated break time of course) and it has to sound just as good at hour 8 as it did at hour 1. SO. I have a hunch that they probably booked the singer for like, an hour or whatever the cheapest option was, and drilled her until it was done and then cobbled together the "best sounding" takes and were done with it. TLDR; Disney probably cut corners on the time spent in the recording studio with the vocalists so they wouldn't have to pay more money and whatever they got in that one session is probably what they threw at the editing team and told to fix/make sound well.
The part about the singer fits perfectly. They got her in, recorded, punched her in at the worst parts, like the end of circle of life, and threw her out. Then they just stitched it together, pitch corrected it and put on some reverb. The result is this artificial, lifeless, clipping (!) mess we’re hearing. I really don’t understand how they couldn’t prepare the studio, mic her up correctly, set the levels properly or whatever the hell went wrong. It’s the most basic audio engineering there is.
@@HOTD108_ Sideways, he makes video essays about music. If you type in Sideways Avatar you'll find him (and start with a great video essay about the James Cameron movie).
General audience reaction to this film feels like a kid playing with action figures from a movie, and his mind is filling in all the details so that he doesnt have to do all the things the movie does. Similarly the audience just fills in the details using the original movie while watching this. What Disney has made is essentially a wireframe of a movie for audiences to fill in the details
Fun fact: lions have some of the highest rates of infanticide among mammals so if John was really going for rEaLiSm he should have just had Scar kill and eat Simba in that scene when they were alone together.
Not to mention that Mufasa would have killed Nala in real life. Except, of course, if she is his daughter, which is something I couldn't help think about watching the film as a kid XD
@@ghihbgyu something i always think about is in lion king 2, kovu is scar's son, right? and since nala is simba's daughter, that technically makes kovu her uncle, lol. best not to think about these things i guess!
@@ghihbgyu that makes me realize the realism of simba and nala’s ancestry would be they’re technically kin and it’s incest at that point (if the scenario was all cubs were realistically sited by mufasa)
God I can’t believe they pitched corrected the singer for the “Circle of Life” like they did in Beauty and the Beast (2017). The shitty audio mixing really reminds me of the song “Evermore” where you can hear weird pitch corrections on Dab Steven’s voice that doesn’t sound realistic.
25:30 in the original movie there was a little back-and-forth, which established that simba is a little naïve and doesn't see Scar true nature, but we also see the moment Scar himself realizes that fact, and shifts from sarcastic and unpleasant to phony and cunning. wanna know that moment? watch the original scene, and check when Scar starts to smile. in this scene, scar is literally unable to smile, therefore is stuck on his sarcastic stage, and we feel like he's less cunning and more hurt when he sends Simba to the trap
@@michaelstrong5383 Not only sucking the fun and colorful personalities out of the villains, but also watering down them down as well when it comes to their intimidation. Jafar, Gaston, Scar are all less impactful with their actions as villains in the remakes and are not as scary as they originally were.
This video helped me realize what gaslighting really means. This man is gaslighting everyone by saying the original was worse in every way and the Disney simps are like “wow he’s right”
I had my first sleep paralysis experience while this was playing in the background and I had to listen to the isolated auto tune vocals of Aladdin and the circle of life's terrible peaking audio while some demon girl whispered into my ear and crawled around my room. It wasn't fun...
The "Uh flife" part is not only done poorly, but it just doesn't match the style. That sorta thing is for those huge dramatic bVII bVI I kinda endings, or like cadential 64 chords. Not belting out the end of Circle of Life
The 'animation' genuinely irks me. Dude they look like stuffed toys...it's almost like they haven't seen any of these animals in real life. Disney should have sent their animators on a trip to Kenya or Tanzania to look at actual animals, instead of getting Beyonce.
@@superemoboi2050 yeah, like going to the zoo would be asking the minimum... but I thought actually going would be better because the zoo doesn't have all those animals or how they interact with the environment (actual African terrain) if they were going for the whole 'realistic documentary' approach. Added bonus for those places, the main language is Swahili...
I actually have heard script table reads that sound better than Seth and Billy's line delivery. There's plenty of cast script readings on RU-vid, spend two hours watching those instead of TLK 2019.
@@deprilula28 damn there were a lot i used to watch and I cant find most of them :( the director Jason Reitman used to orchestrate them all the time. But here's one to an episode of Breaking Bad ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-VGhOdvzlloE.html
John Favreau looks into the eyes of Christopher Moltisanti and steals his idea with no fear yet he’s petrified of Adam for the power he wields is too great, the power to expose his shitty film making
This is insane. I saw yms had vocals only and I wondered where he got it. I remember back in the day trying to manually isolate it with no luck and I thought that the technology just got better, but some guy just gave him the stuff? That's so weird, but definitely must be useful and enlightening.
I like how they wanted to go for a "'realistic" documentary style movie and making that the reason alot of stuff was either changed or removed yet in the battle scene all lions still have a tiger roar. Why is that? The sound of actual lion roars not good enough for their oh so realistic movie?
It's easy to forget just how musically skilled Adum is, there are so many little things he points out about these songs and why they're bad that I'd never notice. But when he explains them it's like "Yeah that does make sense!" Just like Mr. Plinkett says: you may not have noticed it, but your brain did.
Oh my God that video of Will Smith was missing the worst part, the big finale "prince Ali, marvelous he, Ali Ababwa, heard your princess was a sight" the autotune is UNBELIEVABLE on that part
The remake wouldn't be so bad if they really committed to the documentary approach. Keep the story, don't have the animals talk and sing, and have James Earl Jones do the narration. I guess there'll be trouble on translating some parts of the story that way, but it'll be a lot better than the remake we actually got.
Sure that sounds great, but you know, nobody knows who James Earl Jones is, instead we will have Beyonce narrate it, sing and promote. Actually, on second thought, we will have a bunch of famous celebrities do the voices, so it's easier for the audience to follow the story. And we just got a message from the board, we will also need to remake the whole soundtrack. Ah, what's that? Aha, ok John. We will make sure to make the animators have as little time and free will as possible. This one will be a hit, our pre-test-audiencing test audiences are very enthusiastic, I have personally heard one describe it as "me personally? i think it's very cool".
so, I am certain that Seth Rogan is a nice person and I almost feel bad saying it, but I just honestly think he was the worst pick for a VA. I just can't him.
@@lewisedgar3475 It's weird because Dreamworks usually gets crap for doing just that. Why don't these companies realize that voice acting isn't the same as regular acting?
Honestly I don't think he's that bad a pick really. Purely the qualities of his voice fit Pumbaa pretty well, and Seth has some voice acting experience. Not that he can sing well, but that could still be a cool artistic choice as long as it doesn't get annoying. I feel like it could have worked with Seth, but I don't think it did.
He has more personality in his voice than fuckin Beyonce, who always acts like she's the popular-but-untalented kid in a high school theater production.
Jank Bunky yeah I thought that when I first heard he was cast sounded like a good choice but I think it’s cause he’s just using his normal speaking voice instead of playing the character probably didn’t give the actors a lot of direction when recording lines
5:16 why didn't they get it in the live action movie that the whole "it's a ciiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiircle of live" thing was timed? That there was a pause raffiki did so he can push up Simba with energy, so much that it gets different cuts of him pushing him up like it's some kind of anime? Like seriously, there is no energy. And people eat it up because hurr durr Lion King.
Adum: I heard there's this rumour about The Lion King ripping off Kimba, I'm gonna read into the conspiracy just to include it in the review for a bit The Kimba Conspiracy: *3:32*
I remember the audio-commentary for the first Narnia film, when one of the child actors (not an adult, not the director, not a VFX guy, A CHILD ACTOR) mentions how important Aslan's expressions are, and compares him with Manny from Ice Age (back in 2004 when there was only one acclaimed Ice Age film and was 2 years old) and mentions how much emotion was there just in Manny's eyes to convey emotion without even showing his mouth in most shots. You don't have to be an expert or even an adult to notice the importance of such details. Also, in the BTS for Finding Nemo someone mentioned that some of the motions were unrealistic for fishes but were kept anyway because fishes don't talk so there was no need to be totally realistic. Then in 2019... NO EXPRESSIONS? SERIOUSLY???
They got the writer of speed 2 cruise control, kingdom of the crystal skull, and pirates of the Caribbean 5 to remake one of the greatest animated films ever
Love how one of the pride rock elephants was literally a stock sound effect (5 mins) I think I heard it in scooby doo once. Honestly, I have no idea why the animal noises weren't more dense and layered, it's a documentary after all
THEORY: All the characters are outlined in the scenes he's discussing around the 16-ish minute mark because it's so dark and chaotic and messy-looking that people couldn't see what tf was going on when they screened the footage. And instead of doing anything that would visually improve it, they were like WOOPS JUST THROW NEON OUTLINES ON EVERYTHING SO PEOPLE CAN TELL WHAT IT IS. Just guessing, based mostly on the fact that I can barely see what's going on even with the outlines. That's what happens when you have almost zero visual contrast in your scene composition- a lot of this movie is just a same-value color mush with way too much cluttery detail, and when there's a lot of motion on screen it's like... eye soup. All the disney remakes I've seen footage from are dark and muddy like that, even though they have beautifully composed and readable source material to draw from. I do not understand. One thing that applies specifically to this movie, though.... Lions in nature have coloration that blends in with their environments, for camouflage, for hunting. You know. So you can't see 'em? SO WHEN YOU GIVE BOTH YOUR LIONS AND YOUR ENVIRONMENTS REALISTIC COLORING IN YOUR MOVIE, YOU CAN'T SEE 'EM
I don't get it...what is up with their audio recording department??? Why is it all so bad. Shouldn't they have like, the best microphone set up at Disney?? My brain is breaking at the incompetence.
They just had to make the entire cast famous black actors (and Seth Rogen) without realizing actors are NOT voice actors. They couldn’t just cast the right people for the fit role voices.
Also, if they really wanted to have the talking animals be voiced by black actors...did they just forget that black voice actors exist? They've ALREADY HIRED some of the most famous ones for their other movies and shows! But no, I guess nobody would have seen this unless they got those big names in. Don't even have every cast member be known for their acting, put Beyonce in a leading role. Don't even direct them properly so they all sound bored and terrible, because when was the Lion King ever about emotion, am I right?
I once had tracks given to me for a mix. I noticed that a lot of the vocals were not only already processed with some reverb but were edited in such a way that it was chopped off before the reverb decayed fully. When I raised my concerns over this, the excuse was, "It won't be noticeable in the mix." I didn't even bother responding to that.
When the original Lion King was being made, Disney was still churning out original titles. This remake idea is them trying to recapture the Disney renaissance. Sad but the only reason they had a renaissance was because they stuck to trying to create original work and got that lighting in a bottle moment with little mermaid. They have always been creative, even though some poor business ethics were part of the company, they've always strived towards a image, one that celebrates the magic of storytelling. Remakes are insulting, these works are products of their time, lighting that rarely strikes twice. Were in a digital age, enter the spider verse celebrates the time we live in, it is possible to make entertaining millennial epics, just takes imagination and effort. Lion Kings story has been told and its sad. Mandalorian Wass great though lol
I’m surprised how much I enjoy these. I know almost nothing about music and editing, so it’s cool seeing someone with experience dissect the hiccups in a piece of art. It reminds me of an art critic that shows off a classic painting and then points out all the flaws in a contemporary work.
I don't think they did more than one take with everything in the whole movie, bub. Disney got bigger but, they also got lazier, at the same time. They were clearly more interested in the visuals and it being a spectacle which, is crystal to what you have presented to us, so far. Story and audio weren't a high priority.
Dude. When Adum was comparing the key sung to the key he plays on the piano... I was in a JR. Production of the Lion King and even in a freaking JR. Production they were strict as hell about staying on key and following the sheet music. Because they’re not gonna lower their standards for the sake of a kids ego. Young Simba had to either make the cut or get out. But nah. Disney be like “G.”
17:56 I could buy Hanz Zimmer saying that the soundtrack "isn't finished". When you're working on a project, you don't always complete something to your own satisfaction. I've worked on video games both as student projects and in jams and I've had to leave things on the drawing board when crunch started. But the fact that Jon Favreau (is that the correct spelling? I don't really care) says it is a bit of a dick move.
The reason it looks like they are green screened in is because they basically are. They are rendered in a separate pass from the environment, and they add a bunch of post effects to the animals on these separately rendered layers including the weird rim lighting effects using a compositing software (most likely Nuke) to separate them from the footage more and draw your eyes to them. A technique I personally hate. Instead of letting their physically based rendering software handle the lighting, they ruin it by trying to manually do it by hand in the compositing software.
