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Submitted by Don D
Have you guys heard of this movie? Music by Elton John and Tim Rice, FTW. Lose the next twenty minutes of your life watching clips of every song from the film after the jump.
NANTS INGONYAMA BAGITHI BABA
SITHI UHM INGONYAMA!!!
“Circle of Life”
“I Just Can’t Wait To Be King”
“Be Prepared”
“Hakuna Matata”
“Can You Feel the Love Tonight?”
BONUS: “I Just Can’t Wait To Be King” in Japanese
DOUBLE BONUS: “Be Prepared” in German
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My FAVORITE movie ever!
I am now unreasonably afraid, because yesterday morning I suddenly had the urge to watch the opening song to this very film.
I get one here today, and THERE IT IS.
It took a long time, but FINALLY it got here.
had its 15th anniversary this summer btw.
PS: there’s a secound and a third part too
There are things you cant copy or prolong.
This movie wasn´t made to have sequels and you notice that.
It´s like the matrix. The plot ends with the original and everything after is mediocre.
Teaching all the kids of our generation that animals in the wild never eat each other, as long as they’re doing awesome musical numbers with choreographed dances.
Except it makes that entire point. Mustafa points out that the lions eat the antelope, but when they die their bodies feed the grass which the antelope eat, whom the lions eat in turn. That’s what the Circle of Life is about.
And, y’know, that whole scene with Nala chasing Pumbaa when she first meets him. And the scene with the hyenas eating the zebr— er, stripey necktie (seriously, look at what they’re chewing next time). And of course, all the talk about how Simba has to get used to eating bugs when he first meets Timon and Pumbaa…
Nope. No nod to animals eating animals in the entire film, anywhere
Do you know what we did for almost three months in freshman biology in high school? We watched this movie, and talked about this movie, and listened to songs from this movie.
But then, my teacher was the head football coach and athletic director, and it was football season.
Productivity fail… or win, I guess, depending on who you are.
This is still one of my favorite movies… One of only 4 or 5 films that actually ever made me cry.
It makes me cry too. It’s like my generation’s version of Bambi.
We have a video release of Fox and the Hound that has an even older trailer, from when the film was still in production. Some of the clips are line drawings.
I’d still love to hear the whole version of Can You Feel The Love Tonight? that’s in that promo.
Here it is: http://www.lionking.net/otherstuff.shtml
It’s the full version. I actually loved this version more than the one that went in the movie.
PS I also love the second film even though it didn’t do as well.
Complete and total rip off of Osamu Tezuka’s Kimba the White Lion. I consider The Lion King a fail.
I don’t know, Kimba the White Lion was pretty terrible. Also, there’s not much similarity plot-wise between Kimba and The Lion King. Sure, they have anthropomorphized lions, but Kimba’s story was more akin to The Jungle Book. The Lion King was Hamlet.
Kimba vs Simba
Both had a dead parent speak to them from the clouds
The opening sequences from Jungle Emperor (Kimba movie) directly parallels the Lion King
The Antagonist in Kimba was the aunt, in TLK it was the uncle.
The scene with the thorn patch and the one where bigs are eaten, yeap present in both.
Oh and Disney’s original drawings had Simba as a white lion.
Take a look at them both again and see if the similarities are just co-incidences
Looks like my first reply got eaten, if it also shows up, sorry for the effective double post.
Looked at, and dismissed.
I was taught stories of the African “Simba” stories in lessons somewhere between 1972-1975 in primary school in Ohio (where I attended K-2). Those are the stories that THE AMERICAN IMPORTERS ripped off to name “Kimba” (the Japanese character was named Leo), and probably were part (a VERY SMALL PART) of Tezuka’s inspiration for the Leo the Lion/Jungle Emperor anime.
Kimba had the SAME INSPIRATIONS as Simba. Much as how Nadia & Disney’s Atlantis were both based on the same Edgar Cayce and other New-age and other fringe Atlantis beliefs (in fact, if anything, both ripped off Miyazaki’s Nausicaa about equally). In fact, Disney took much LESS liberty with the source material than Tezuka.
Oh, and I’ve been staffing anime conventions for the last dozen years, and been watching anime twice as long. So, I’ve actually gotten to here several Japanese professionals’ opinion.
Well you have shown someone can claim experience and still miss it all. Tezuka and Disney have both said otherwise.
If i had a llama, i would name him bojangles
In which alternate universe that isn’t this one?
Last I heard, while Tezuka (who died shortly after The Lion King was released) said he thought there was influence, while the Disney writers stated point blank that there wasn’t any direct connection, at that time. Most likely, if there was any influence, it was more subliminal, half-remembered stuff from childhood, rather that direct borrowing.
Hell, Disney had copies of Leo/Kimba in their vaults, that they didn’t even KNOW they had until YEARS after The Lion King was made, and those copies had never left the vault for decades before The Lion King. Surely, if you were going to rip something off, and had your own copies of it, you would have LOOKED AT your own copies for reference. It wasn’t until about the same time as Disney’s movie came out, that a collector began attempting to recover what survived of the dubs of Tesuka’s work-turned-into-anime from the vaults of the networks and TV stations (mostly the latter), to try to assemble tapes of the series for the public – some episodes even managed to only be found only in their US versions, their original Japanese versions forever lost.
Let’s see some citations, bucko….. Wikipedia doesn’t count.
And, again, the Simba stories were being used in elementary school classes throughout the Baby Boomer as children era (50s-70s), in textbooks. It’s much more likely that the Disney staff AND Tezuka (who liked collecting stories from other cultures to use in his writings) had common sources, with minor cross-pollenation from old childhood memories of Kimba for the Disney staff, than the conspiracy theories of rabid Disney bashers.
It’s EXTREMELY easy to compare a movie to a long TV series, and cherry-pick elements from non-sequential, almost-unrelated-to-each-other, episodes to make the movie seem to be a ripoff of the series (or vice versa). I once saw this demonstrated by someone doing such “creative comparisons” to “show” that a populat 90s anime “had” to be a rip-off of “Dallas” – when they weren’t even the same genre….
Lion King and Kimba really have not much in common storywise (the story of Kimba is much better in my opinion anyway – and I mean the manga, not the TV series that was more or less made to fit the american market
). But from a design-ish point of view, there are many similarities that surely aren’t coincidental (some scenes, characters and all are almost identical). Simba was even originally intended to be white and the working title was Jungle Emperor! How more coincidental can you get? And while this wouldn’t be a problem at all (who doesn’t get inspired by other comics or TV shows), the whole “Kimba? Tezuka? Who’s that?” by DISNEY (!) Animators that came after the problem was pointed out, was purely embarassing. Oh well, I still like both, Lion King and Kimba, and I don’t want to bash neither of them. I just felt a bit sad that they couldn’t just admit they got a bit of inspiration out of it. Tezuka always admitted how much he was influenced by Disney. Oh well…
Perhaps, except for the whole fact that The Lion King was actually based around the idea of a Disney adaptation of “Hamlet”. Any similarities between Simba and Kimba would just mean they were both copying Shakespeare.
Besides, it’s not like this is anything new. Osamu Tezuka (who created Astro Boy, thus starting the whole “anime” medium (yes, it’s a medium, not a genre)) was trying to copy Walt Disney’s artistic style. Once anime caught on, American cartoons, in turn, copied the anime style. I mean, heck, Star Wars (the original, singular movie) is really just a copy of the Japanese film “The Hidden Fortress”.
It makes a big difference when the movies are made within a few years of each other, and you lift entire scenes with out attribution. If they were both adaptations it would be one thing, but this goes beyond adaptation this is direct copying. Plus the minor facts that Tezuka was in negotiations with Disney at the time and Disney originally planned on it being an adaptation of the Kimba series and then later denied they knew anything of it.
Star Wars shows direct similarities to the hidden fortress ( I am a huge Kurosawa fan) but the settings scenes character names etc are different even if the overall plot is almost identical. Plus GL acknowledged Kurosawa’s many works as providing inspiration to his writing.
Completely unrelated – has anybody nominated Astro Boy for a win? I remember that from when I was a kid, especially the outro with the flipping page
The thing that really bugs me is that Disney outright lied. Even though one voice actor has been QUOTED saying that he thought he was going to be in a Kimba remake, and the fact that Simba is, (as shown on a bonus reel) originally white, and that someone wore a Kimba costume to a cast party, Disney’s official line is, “We’ve never heard of Kimba.”
Does anyone remember the Pinky and the Brain (win!) episode where Brain was forced to watch “The Lion King” a la “A Clockwork Orange” and he starts to cry? “My eyes are leaking,” he says. Gawdalmighty, my eyes leaked something TERRIBLE when I saw this movie.
This is my favorite Disney movie of all time! Saw it in theaters and many times on tape, each time I cried or fast forwarded the gorge part.
My favourite Disney-movie. Also the only Disney-movie where I love *all* the songs. Especially ‘Be Prepared’, that one’s awesome.
I was surprised when I saw this on here.
Because the fact that it is epic win goes without saying.
We watched this in my Shakespeare class because it’s HAMLET! Even the circle of life thing … kinda … we are all food for worms
I remember seeing this in theaters and jumping right at the beginning where Scar swats that mouse. The bass in the theater hit so hard that you felt it in your chest.
my mom went to see this when she was pregnant with me. apparently, the whole movie i was kicking around and rolling over. this is STILL my favourite disney movie, next to aladdin.
i never knew that this was meant to be “Hamlet.”
I sadly have watched this movie so many times, I could recite the entire movie word for word. Back then… ahh…
Haha me too!
“Have you guys heard of this movie?”
WTF? Who hasn’t heard of this movie and watched it thousands of times? This came out when i was like 3. I loved it, and my mom even loves it. This movie is totally an epic win.
I think he/she is being sarcastic.
That’s what I thought too. Who hasn’t heard of it? My son asks to watch it on a regular basis.
Once again I feel ancient. I’ve got to stop coming to this site….
I was four when this movie came out, and it was the first movie I ever saw in theater. I can still remember crying when Mufasa died and cracking up laughing at the hyenas and Rafiki. Good memories. And Scar was the best villain in Disney history!
The trailer for this came out in November during the Three Musketeers (the Chris O’Donnell one) and my friend and I often elbowed each other when we saw a trailer for a movie we wanted to see. We almost knocked each others’ elbows off during this one. It didn’t come out to what…June??? I was soooo eager to see it I cried through the whole Circle of Life intro. I got to go see it in IMAX for the 10th anniversary, and it was AWESOME on the BIG screen. Everyone was singing along to the all the musical numbers. I’m such a nerd… But it’s one of Disney’s finest offerings EVER.
OMGOOSES!!! Me tooo!!! I prefer to call that the Kiefer Sutherland version… Was about ten at the time. Might not should have been watching 3M but remembered being very excited to see the Lion King.
The Broadway play of The Lion King is just as fantastic! I’ve seen it twice already, and I really want to go see it again. Now I want to go find our DVD copy of the movie and watch it…
i cry every single time i watch the circle of life. it´s just so moving, so beautiful. best movie opening of all time.
mufasa (god) says simba (jesus) you are my son you are the true king
sound famileir (how cares about spelling)
Some one is reading way to much into a simple childrens movie. What next, you going to tell us that the purple tellatubby is queer and that the Smurfs were all communist?
NO, the Smurfs were an anarcho-syndicalist commune, Papa Smurf just rigged the votes each week so he was always the executive officer.
Did they shout “help, help, I’m being repressed!” too whenever Gargamel came around?
Only if Johan or Peewit is there to do something about it.
The Smurfs are socialists. however, Scar and the hyena’s ARE communists. we talked about that in my government class way back in high school.
When the bird was singing for Scar and went into ‘It’s a Small World’, and Scar said, “NO! Anything but that!” I couldn’t help thinking of “Don Giovanni”, where the quote from “Marriage of Figaro” comes up and the Don says, “I’m sick of that tune!”
(Sorry; my mother was a music teacher.)
Has it been completely missed out on EVERYONE that this is actually an adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”?
No, you are the 4th person to mention it.
This one one of Disney’s last hand animated movies. Everything is done with computers now. There is a place for computer animation but it is way over done and lacks the warmth and detail of hand drawn animation. This was a truly gorgeous film.
All you kids talking about watching this as little babies is making me feel damn old though.
Of course, there is still a fair bit of computer animation in TLK too, though, don’t forget. It was one of the first Disney movies where they made use of CGI to help with difficult or time-consuming scenes. The wildebeast in the stampede were CGI, and I think that they used some CGI for the Mufasa in the clouds scene too (but don’t quote me on that last one.)
I’m glad they’re going back to hand-drawn with their new animated movie, Frog Princess. They actually fired and had to rehire their entire cell animation team because they weren’t planning to do anymore classic-style animation anymore, it seems they’ve changed their minds though
God, I was horribly obsessed with this movie from the time the first trailers started appearing on the disney VHS’s, like Aladdin. When I was 12-13 my entire room was covered with posters, drawings, plushies, toys. I was collecting everything I could get my hands on. Luckilly, I still have some of the more rarer things. To this day at almost 30, whenever I find something Lion King related, I have to buy it. *eyes Nala pez dispenser*
definitely one of my most favorite movies ever. Second only to the little mermaid which is the first disney movie i remember seeing, and I watched the tape all the time until the tape deteriorated and my parents had to get a new one for me.
It’s a ripoff of Kimba the White Lion, so I don’t see any win in this…
How about you a) read the other posts and b) read the FACTS about the movie before you spout off the “Kimba ripoff” bull.
“El Rey Leon” is how I learned Spanish. We watched it once a month for my advanced Spanish class. Ten years after the class I was still singing in Spanish.
My best friend’s Dad called it the “Tree loving, hippie movie.”
Then there is the movie/ride in EPCOT. Great place for naps!
Oh wow. I was obsessed with this movie as a kid an still am to this day. Probably one of my favorites.
does the great mouse detective not fit in between oliver and company and mermaid, it was their first film to use computer animation and paved the way for the likes of aladdin and what beauty and beast computer animation
GMD was the second, actually, and it was made before O&Co. The first Disney film to utilize computers in production was the Black Cauldron in 1985. GMD followed in 1986. Oliver & Co, which was released in 1988, postdates GMD by two years. Beauty & the Beast was the third, and the most advanced, and very often overshadows its predecessors because of how prevalent the CG was in the setting for the ballroom, considering the use of a “moving” camera to capture the entire scene.
You are forgetting “Rescuers Down Under” which was the first Disney movie to make use of computer colouring, iirc.
…
STOP MAKING ME FEEL OLD!
Once upon a… *grumble* *grumble*
(I thumbs-upped it, anyway)
Every single time that trailer and/or the intro music ends, I have to wipe away tears. Every. Time.
Similar thing here – every time I hear the opening chant (“Nants ingonyama bagithi Baba, sithi uhm ingonyama”) from The Circle of Life I get goosebumps from head to toe. Never mind that I loved Ladysmith Black Mambazo before this even came out (picture an eight-year-old white girl with pigtails trying to sing Paul Simon’s “Homeless” for weeks on end, and never quite mastering the glottal ‘!’). And I can’t listen to the whole song without crying my eyes out by the end of it.
I lost the container that held all my Pogs when I saw this movie in the theater. I was upset for *days*, lol.
Wonderful voice cast for this film: James Earl Jones was the perfect Mufasa, Jeremy Iron wonderfully villianous as Scar, Rowan Atkinson as the officious Zazu…
I remember seeing this at the movies when I was 19. I feel so old now…
that was rowan atkinson? WIN!!!
I loved this move i watched it so many times i burnt out two VHS tapes before the age of the DVD, Plus have any of you watched Kimba? its a fail, the animation is so bad on the episodes, and yes i watched the movie “Jungle King” and was glad Disney made a movie that is so much better. At one point at the end of the movie my dad and i got creeped out because he told the fat dude to kill him and eat him….agh…. if you like the lion king u should see the lion king 1/2…
While Kimba had rather limited animation, the storylines for the time were incredible. it’s the only TV cartoon I remember as a kid that included DEATH. As in the character DIES, and never comes back. Usually they were minor or one-shot characters, but ……
I’m sure anyone who saw Kimba remembers the showdown between the Ranger and Magic Mask. The ranger had to shoot Mr Mask, coz he and his band of thugs would have killed HIM and laid waste to every creature around. And that’s HUMAN death. A point-blank fatal shooting.
How can that not be awesome?
And I must add this – the clip with “Be Prepared” in German, I find doubly chilling. Combined with the Neurmburg imagry (and the Islamic crescent moon – remember that Nazism and Islam worked well together in WWII, due to their shared Jew-hatred) it’s just … creepy. And it was creepy enough in English.
Nothing Disney ever made was ever this … dark. Nothing.
Cool fact- The voice actor for Mufasa also voiced Darth Vader.
Creepy fact- The voice of Scar did a book on tape for the book Lolita.
Yes, because he’s SMEXY.
Which one?
James Earl Jones was Mufasa and Jeremy Irons was Scar. Jeremy Irons can also be seen on Eragon and Die Hard 3 with Bruce Willis. He’s that awesome!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Irons
Go and read up on his awesomeness!
I was 5 years old when this came out. Still my favorite Disney movie, hands down! I wore the VHS out in spots from watching it so many times. Then it was Lion King everything. Bed sets, toys, birthday cakes, tents, stuffed animals, I had to have it all. And seeing it at Broadway. Does anyone remember those “Baby” Lion King jungle toys from Toys R’ Us? They were little plastic baby animals that came with little leaf beds and bowls and bottles etc. I loved them. And lost all the cool little pieces, of course.
Definitely my favorite Nostalgia!
If only Diesney realized that this is what they’re all about, not overhyped, ego-filled tween idols.
this movie is great. it was the first movie i ever saw, and i still love it (and break out in songs from it) today!
I LOVE JEREMY IRONS, WHOOPI GOLDBERG, JAMES EARL JONES AND CHEECH MARIN!!!
You forgot Rowan Atkinson (Zazu, Blackadder, Mr Bean)
LOVE. THIS. MOVIE.
i was totally obsessed with it when it first came out, i was like 8, an have watched it more times than i can remeber, an as i got older an got into drawing, i would pause the movie and draw simba for hours til i got it right OwO it was so fun
i also nabbed anything lion king themed i saw
gawd i think im gonna go draw simba now~
Win.
Lion King = win Kimba =/= fail.
At first, I used to like Kimba. But since the network seemed to show the same ten episodes every day/week and the thought of a vegetarian lion seemed silly as I grew older. I was so glad they made Lion King to be based a little more in reality. (A white lion would’ve been killed shortly after birth due to its lack of camouflage. (I seem to remember in the first few ‘promos’ that Simba was actually white). After that changed, any resemblance to Kimba was forgotten. The whole movie experience of sight, sound, story, music, voices, animation—it became its own masterpiece having little or nothing to do with “Kimba”. As to the person who mentioned the Jungle Book–in the making of the movie, Disney himself declared that he didn’t want anyone to have read the story by Rudyard Kipling. He wanted the story to be about Mowgli and Baloo. That would explain the extreme liberties that many Disney flicks take with the original source material.
I’ve always said The Nightmare Before Christmas is my favourite
movie, but The Lion King is like… there’s not even a word
for how much I adore(d) this movie!!
It was the first movie where I actually cried. Like Barboid
said, the story, the animation, the music, everything about
this movie is just awesome. I think I was 12 when it came out?
I was obsessed. I had Lion King EVERYTHING. I STILL have
alot of my Lion King stuff!
A friend took me to see it in IMAX. Freaking amazing. I died.
Then the musical came to San Francisco & I didn’t need to take a
trip to NY to see it on Broadway!
I thought I loved that movie before, but the musical blew me away.
I was practically sobbing during the Circle of Life just from
how beautiful everything was. I died again. x.x
That’s it. I’m turning off the computer and watching The Lion King now.
This movie is such an Epic Win that I’m tearing up just watching the trailer lol. I was seven when I saw it in the theater. Good times.
I’m 24 and I still cry at Mufasa’s death scene. It’s so wonderfully done, without being terribly overdone. It ramps up to the climactic fall just right, then slowly lets you down to the grieving Simba. Makes me cry, every. time.
did you know the Lion King is based off of Shakespeare’s Hamlet?
except with a happy ending.
Think about it for a minute and it will blow your mind.
That brought back so many good memories, this movie was one of my obsessions when I was a little kid. I still have the VHS, I might just go watch it.
Definitely a winner among the win.
It always annoys me that Elton John and Tim Rice get the only credits for the music for this film. They wrote the SONGS – all five of them. The rest of the soundtrack, including the music for the opening, was written by Hans Zimmer with additional matieral from Lebo M, an African musician, using traditional African chants.
I can’t say that this is my favourite movie by any stretch; it felt just like most modern Disney films: a big, long advertisement for the merchandise. I watched it once (I was old enough to go to the cinema on my own, go figure) and while of course it was a very well-done movie, it didn’t impress me enough to make me buy a copy, or watch it again.
So I guess I’m in the minority here
whatwhat No, you aren’t. TLK is one of the few Disney DVDs I actually sold. I will keep BatB, Aladdin, Tarzan and even Atlantis, but I was able to easily part with TLK. A nice movie, catchy songs, but very cliched and very predictable.
Actually, I find most Disney movies cliched, but that doesn’t ruin it for me. About the least cliche one was Pocahontas. I nearly thought they were going for the cliche ending when they showed her running after Smith, but when they just showed her on the cliff watching the ship sail away, I was impressed.
That being said, I’m gonna go get my copy of Lion King and watch it now.
And when it came out, I had young children. I still loved it.
notice the fail when he says 30 second animation about 23 seconds in on the original Trailer.
he meant it was the 32nd animated disney movie…
The Lion King is essencially a copy of a Japanese movie called Kimba the White Lion. I was quite depressed when I found out D:
best disney movie ever. hands down.
I’m with everyone else on this movie being one of the best Disney ones made! I still love this movie, and now I need to go watch my dvd =)
ENOUGH with the Kimba crap, please spare us all and read the above posts. And, even if it WAS a “rip-off” of it (which it is not), who cares? It wouldn’t change the fact that its a great movie. So many movies are rip-offs of each other it really doesn’t matter a whole lot, does it? Stop keeping track and just enjoy the damn films.
It is my favourite movie ever seen but its tickets are difficult 2 find but I bought lion king tickets at cheaper rates.
Oh my goodness, I LOVE this movie! I had two disney movies growing up, Beauty and the Beast, and Lion King. I literally watched Lion King EVERY DAY for about a year and a half. I still have the whole thing memorized! When I couldn’t fall asleep as a kid I would recite the movie. No kidding. It’s so good!
totally EPIC WIN!! My all time favorite Disney movie ever! I still have my Lion King sheets, and stuffed animals, and toys… I subjected my parents and family to seeing this 9 times in the theater when it came and then once again in ‘03 when it was released for IMAX… will always hold a very special place in my heart!!
The fact that it is based on Hamlet, and the second on Romeo and Juliet makes it all the more epic.