Pretty much, a lot of people dismissed Spiderverse because it was animation :/
Is it better or worse if I tell you that they absolutely did, and didn't care?
I hate people defending the look of this movie with the 'but it's supposed to look realistic!' argument.
Here's a screenshot from Planet Earth II, a documentary series:
Desaturated colors =/= realism
This comment sums it up nicely
Probably helps the original Jungle Book is not as recent and beloved, but also it was far less of a musical relying on a lot of emoting. The comparisons of the songs side by side certainly seem damning. One has the cartoons swimming, cavorting around, constantly changing framing... and the other is just them walking through a forest.
Disney was told this explicitly. Julie Taymor flat out said this isn't going to work. The animals need to be stylized and emote like people.
Did you have any problems with the expression of the faces and the moving of the mouths? That is for me the most critical.
You know, it's all about the mouths. Animal mouths, especially lion mouths, just don't move and behave like human mouths do. So when they use animal mouths to produce human speech, it just doesn't look right. It looks super realistic and absolutely gorgeous, but as soon as they start to talk it just breaks the illusion that you're watching 'real' talking lions (as dumb as that sounds, haha). There are shots where Simba looks sad or happy, sure, but you just won't get the same expressions you get in the original movie, because that would look super unrealistic. I didn't have a problem with it myself, since I'd rather watch a movie with realistic looking animals than realistic looking animals with cartoony expressions, but I can understand why someone wouldn't feel that way. I'd say the animals look better (more realistic) than they did in Jungle Book, but maybe not as expressive.
Oh yeah, this was really weird. Such a strange song to use there. I expected it to be the credits song tbh but then it just showed up in an iconic scene.
Thank you very much for your detailed post. Maybe I should still go see it.
I honestly think Favreau/Disney intentionally kept the emoting/color restrained so they could sell/trick general audiences on the fact that this is a "live action" remake and not just a CG animated film. If they moved away from the nature doc style in favor of something more colorful/emotive they risked scaring away that audience.
There's a cut sequence from the original where, after killing Mufasa and becoming king, Scar tries to talk Sarabi into being his wife, so I'm guessing that was restored in this version.
Why are so many suddenly so upset about Disney copying stuff even though The Lion King 1994 itself borrows heavily from Kimba?
Tbf cinematic realistic ≠ real world realistic. People just mean there is a higher level of visual fidelity and stuff looks a bit more "gritty". People said the Bourne films were 'realistic' but that's only relative to the language of film at the time. I don't think people are claiming this is Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk with lions.
I lol'd at "Someday this CGI Kingdom will be yours"
You're gonna be waiting a while there bud. They've been happening for over a decade and only two performed poorly. With three (going on five) of them being billion sellers.
EX-FREAKING-ACTLY! TJB is not only the most justified remake, it did it best. Corrected problems with the original story (ya know, actually giving it a plot and a villain that's a villain) and still keeping some of the charm of the original. Honestly I wish TLK and TJB were inverse in their direction on that subject.
