Family Movie Night Series - ‘The Lion King’ Will Always Be A Classic

Since Thanksgiving is a couple weeks away and it’s a time for family, I decided for this month to check out a few films that the whole family could easily enjoy and have a nice family movie night! So, to kick things off, I checked out two films the whole family can enjoy - the 1994 Disney animated classic ‘The Lion King’ and the 1984 classic ‘The Karate Kid.’

‘The Lion King’ is an animated feature that follows the adventures of the young Simba, the heir of his father, Mufasa. Simba’s wicked uncle, Scar, plots to usurp Mufasa’s throne by luring them into a stampede.

But, Simba escapes and only Mufasa is killed. Simba returns as an adult to take back his homeland from Scar with help from his friends Timon and Pumbaa.

‘The Lion King’ is a film that I’m sure the entire family has seen many times over the years. This 1994 animated classic can still give you a good laugh and still can get you feeling a little emotional during a few scenes.

To this day, I still think that ‘The Lion King’ is one of the best Disney animated classics ever and can entertain anyone young and old. The animation is extremely breath-taking and its opening sequence gives us a great animated view of the African savanna.

Not only is this film known for its beautiful animation, it delivers a really compelling story and many unforgettable characters. A few of the moments between Simba and Mufasa (R.I.P James Earl Jones) can really be heart-felt and humorous at times, mixed in with a few serious moments. 

Timon and Pumbaa still steal the show with their funny antics as they help Simba out. And, for the character of Scar, you get to see how nefarious he can be when the song “Be Prepared” as this is Scar’s stand-out moment.

‘The Lion King’ also has a great soundtrack that I’m sure all of us (or at least most) still remember today! This animated feature still does an outstanding job building up the emotion. And, of course, the Mufasa death scene still can make you tear up a bit and is still one of the most iconic scenes of the Disney canon.

Cast: Matthew Broderick (Simba); Jonathan Taylor Thomas (Young Simba); Jeremy Irons (Scar); Moira Kelly (Nala); Nathan Lane (Timon); Ernie Sabella (Pumbaa); Robert Guillaume (Rafiki); Rowan Atkinson (Zazu); Madge Sinclair (Queen Sarabi); Whoopi Goldberg (Shenzi); Cheech Marin (Banzai); Jim Cummings (Ed) and the late James Earl Jones (Mufasa).

Writers/directors: Irene Mecchi (Strange Magic; Brave); Jonathan Roberts (Jack Frost) and Linda Woolverton (Maleficent: Mistress of Evil); Roger Allers (Open Season) and Rob Minkhoff (Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank) (both directors)

TRIVIA: This film is the best-selling video of all time, with more than 55 million copies sold. The team working on the film was supposedly Disney’s “team B,” who were “kept busy” while “team A” worked on ‘Pocahontas,’ on which the studio had much higher hopes. As it turned out, ‘The Lion King’ became a huge commercial/critical hit, while ‘Pocahontas’ was met with mixed reviews and a much lower box office.

‘The Lion King’ is rated G and has a running time of 88 minutes. You can stream the animated classic on Disney Plus and rent it on various PVOD services.

• A few weeks before the film opened, Sir Elton John was given a special screening. Noticing that the film's love song had been left out, he successfully lobbied Jeffrey Katzenberg to have the song put back in. Later, "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" won him an Academy Award for Best Original Song.

• 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.

• The best-selling home video of all time, with more than 55 million copies sold to date.

• 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 but without colliding into each other.

• In early drafts, Scar was a rogue lion with no relation to Mufasa. Eventually, however, the story writers thought relating him to Mufasa would be more interesting, a threat within. This is why Scar and Mufasa differ so much; they weren't originally designed to be related.

• The highest-grossing film of 1994 worldwide, and the second-highest domestically, behind Forrest Gump (1994). This is the third animated film to be the highest-grossing film of the year worldwide, after Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and Aladdin (1992).

• Several Disney animators went to Africa to study animal behavior and interaction in the wild. A grown lion and a cub were also brought into the animation studio as models for anatomy and musculature.

• There is a lost verse of "Hakuna Matata" that was storyboarded which explained Timon's situation. It was later used in The Lion King 1½ (2004).

• This is the second film in which James Earl Jones (Mufasa) and Madge Sinclair (Sarabi) perform together as an African King and Queen. Jones and Sinclair were also King and Queen of a fictional African nation in Coming to America (1988).

• The close relationship between Timon and Pumbaa is based on fact. In the wild, meerkats often stay close to warthogs to eat the fleas and ticks off their backs, relieving the warthogs of an itchy parasitic nuisance.

• The plot is loosely based upon William Shakespeare's "Hamlet", as well as the biblical stories of Moses and Joseph.

• At the time of its production, many at Disney had high hopes for Pocahontas (1995) and deemed the concept of The Lion King (1994) as experimental. Then-studio head Jeffrey Katzenberg regarded Pocahontas as a more prestigious project than "The Lion King", and even believed that it had a chance of earning an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture, following in the steps of Beauty and the Beast (1991). As production on the two films went on, "The Lion King" finally began to take shape and opinions also began to change. "The Lion King" received overwhelmingly positive acclaim from film critics and audiences alike. The film went on to not only become one of the highest-grossing films in cinema history, but also as one of the best selling home video titles of all time. Pocahontas (1995), on the other hand, was less successful commercially than was hoped and received a mixed-to-negative response from film critics. Because the film dealt with more adult themes and tones and featured both a disjointed script and less regard for historical accuracy, it wasn't a mammoth success as the earlier Disney hits had.

• In 2016, the film was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".