Spanish postcard by Ediciones Beascoa S.A., Barcelona, no. P 56. Image: Disney. Publicity still for The Lion King (Roger Allers, Rob Minkoff, 1994).
Italian postcard by Disney Store for the DVD release. Image: Disney. Scene from The Lion King (Roger Allers, Rob Minkoff, 1994).
Vintage postcard by European Greetings, no. 535563. Image: Disney. Scene from The Lion King (Roger Allers, Rob Minkoff, 1994).
Vintage postcard by European Greetings, no. 535563. Image: Disney. Simba and Scar in The Lion King (Roger Allers, Rob Minkoff, 1994).
Osirian myths
The Lion King (Roger Allers, Rob Minkoff, 1994) is inspired by William Shakespeare's 'Hamlet', but the story also has elements of the Osirian family myths of Ancient Egyptian mythology. In the Osirian myths, the king is killed by his jealous brother and the rightful heir is sent into exile as a boy. The murdered king visits and mentors his son in ghostly visits and when the heir comes of age, he returns to exact revenge on his father's murderer.
Lion king Mufasa lives with his wife Sarabi and the other lions on the King's Rock and is the proud ruler of the lions and other animals of the savannah. In Mufasa's shadow is his jealous and resentful brother Scar, who is eager to become king himself.
Mufasa's son Simba is born. Young Simba learns from his father what kingship entails. Scar supposedly accidentally points Simba to the elephant graveyard, intending to lure him there only to have him killed by hyenas, the outcast animals at the bottom of the food chain. Simba and his girlfriend, the young lioness Nala, get curious and sneak off to check out the forbidden place. The red-billed cam Zazoo, who has been appointed by Mufasa as the supervising guardian for Simba, cannot stop the two.
This brings Simba and Nala into contact with the hyenas Shenzi, Banzai and Ed, who have been ordered by Scar to kill Simba. Simba and Nala narrowly manage to escape thanks to Mufasa, who arrives on the scene just in time. In a new attempt to get Simba and Mufasa out of the way at the same time, Scar, with the help of his hyenas, unleashes a gigantic stampede of stampeding wildebeests, which head straight for the spot where Scar first lured Simba with a pretext.
Mufasa's attempt to rescue Simba from the gorge narrowly succeeds, but Mufasa when he hangs helplessly from a rock above the gorge moments later is thrown back down by Scar and dies. Scar then convinces Simba that he is to blame for Mufasa's death. He tells Simba to flee and then sends Shenzi, Banzai and Ed after Simba to kill him. Simba just manages to escape.
Italian postcard by Disney Store for the DVD release. Image: Disney. Publicity still for The Lion King (Roger Allers, Rob Minkoff, 1994). Sent by mail in 1996.
Vintage postcard by European Greetings, no. 535563. Image: Disney. Scene from The Lion King (Roger Allers, Rob Minkoff, 1994).
Vintage postcard by European Greetings, no. 535714. Image: Disney. Scene from The Lion King (Roger Allers, Rob Minkoff, 1994).
Italian postcard by Nuova Arti Grafiche Ricordi S.r. l. Milano, no. 1337. Image: Disney. Publicity still for The Lion King (Roger Allers, Rob Minkoff, 1994).
Supposedly Disney's 'team B'
As with the Disney classic Bambi (David Dodd Hand, 1942), illustrators studied real animals for The Lion King (Roger Allers, Rob Minkoff, 1994). Some filmmakers went to Africa to observe the animals there in the wild, while other cartoonists had the animals brought to the drawing studio.
The wildebeest stampede took Disney's CG department approximately three years to animate. A new computer program had to be written for the CG wildebeest stampede that allowed hundreds of computer-generated animals to run without colliding with each other.
The film was produced at the same time as Pocahontas (Mike Gabriel, Eric Goldberg, 1995). The team working on the film was supposedly Disney's 'team B', who were 'kept busy' while 'team A' worked on Pocahontas (1995), on which the production had much higher hopes. As it turned out, The Lion King became a huge critical and commercial success, whereas Pocahontas met with mixed reviews and a much lower box office.
Elton John and Tim Rice wrote five new musical numbers for the film. Elton John himself sang 'Can You Feel the Love Tonight' for the credits. Hans Zimmer in collaboration with Lebo M also provided music, featuring traditional African musical elements. Three of the songs were simultaneously nominated for an Academy Award: 'Can You Feel the Love Tonight', 'Circle of Life' and 'Hakuna Matata'. The Lion King was the highest-grossing film of 1994 worldwide and the second highest in the U.S. behind Forrest Gump (Robert Zemeckis, 1994).
The film was followed by two direct-to-video films: The Lion King II: Simba's Pride (Darrell Rooney, 1998) and The Lion King 1½ (Bradley Raymond, 2004). A musical was made from the film, which premiered in 1997. The characters Timon and Pumbaa were given their animated series after the film, which ran for 86 episodes. In 2019, a realistically computer-animated remake, The Lion King (Jon Favreau, 2019), was released.
French postcard by Sonis, no. 458. Image: Disney. Publicity still for The Lion King (Roger Allers, Rob Minkoff, 1994).
Italian postcard by Disney Store for the DVD release. Image: Disney. Publicity still for The Lion King (Roger Allers, Rob Minkoff, 1994).
French postcard by MD, Paris, no. 860-1. Image: Disney. Publicity still for The Lion King (Roger Allers, Rob Minkoff, 1994). Sent by mail in 1996.
French postcard by MD, Paris, no. D 860-2. Image: Disney. Publicity still for The Lion King (Roger Allers, Rob Minkoff, 1994).
French postcard. Image: Disney. Publicity still for The Lion King (Roger Allers, Rob Minkoff, 1994).
Dutch postcard by Donald Duck magazine. Image: Disney. Publicity still for The Lion King II: Simba's Pride (1998).
Sources: Wikipedia (Dutch) and IMDb.
No comments:
Post a Comment