And people aren't necessarily that interested.
https://thatparkplace.com/disneys-lion-king-prequel-faces-big-trouble-mufasa-trailer-hit-with-enormous-number-of-dislikes/
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Let me guess, the bad guys are actually the good guys, but were oppressed. And the good guys were wrong the whole time.
What I’m thinking
To be fair, the original Lion King movie did a good job of making that point for them. With the whole "everyone is part of the circle, except those hyena guys they deserve to die because they ugly lol" thing.
They had to literally make them goosestep to try and convince us they were evil for not wanting to starve because the King didn't like them.
Except when the hyenas were allowed into the Pridelands by Scar, the entire realm became a lifeless wasteland not much different from the Elephant Graveyard that the hyenas inhabited originally. Which makes you realize it was most likely their own damn fault they were starving in the first place.
The original Lion King is a pretty damn based film in retrospect.
And as a rough guess, the entire process only took two years based the time it took Simba to mature. Talk about demographics and destiny.
It doesn't take long for undesirables to turn a neighborhood to shit.
Muh magic dirt.
Yeah, because they were allowed to do whatever they wanted because they were the muscle of a tyrant who gave zero shits about the realm. A large amount of animals would turn their domain into a barren wasteland if they weren't kept in check by the competition and predators of that domain.
That's the point of the "circle of life." Its that everything big and small has its place in the process, in life and death both, and the point of the "Lion King" as a ruler was to keep that process running smoothly.
And considering Scar was able to literally say "hey I'll feed you" and amass a fucking army strong enough to conquer the entire kingdom that means Mufasa failed by letting such an angry undercurrent brew in his kingdom that his life, legacy, and people could be so easily destroyed by refusing to solve the issue. Instead he removed it from his sight and considered it good.
So either the hyenas were driven to and allowed to be destructive monsters by years of being outcasted and oppressed from their basic role in nature, or they were always chaotic evil and Mufasa was a coward for letting them fester like they were.
You think it based because the hyenas are blacks or some other parasitic minority group in our society, I think it based because it shows that when you treat a group (like say, white males) like monsters long enough they can easily be swayed by a little charisma and a little fulfillment of basic needs to topple kingdoms.
Heck its almost a perfect example of how Hitler rose to power, and why its a very bad thing to let those types of resentments fester.
The hyenas were never part of Mufasa's kingdom. He spells this out early on in the film when he says the "shadowy place" they inhabit is "beyond our borders," which implies it's a separate nation-state entirely. The only "oppressing" Mufasa does is when the hyenas leave their territory and trespass into his, which is just ordinary border enforcement. Besides that (and that one little incident where they tried to kill his son), whatever they did in their lands wasn't any of his business.
The hyenas weren't an undercurrent society that festered. They were a separate one entirely that failed, likely as a result of their own stupidity and decadent culture, which by all appearances was incompatible with the Pridelands.' Which is probably why they weren't part of it (and the "circle of life" that went with it).
And unfortunately, you two have now just discussed the politics and power dynamics at a level deeper than anything Disney is capable of anymore. We'll get girlboss Shenzi and absolutely none of this.
At least Shenzi being in charge is accurate for the species. They're matriarchal. Ed and Banzai would be her first and second favourite husbands or something like that. And yeah, in that order, they always refer to Ed for the final decisions.
Which is why they won't be able to resist, and why you're a bigot and science denier if you object.
They tried to kill Simba because HE tresspassed on THEIR land. Border control!
The hyaenas are allowed to do it, too.
Considering everything that happened, clearly it was. Especially as both this movie and the sequel show that the main form of "punishment" him and his son deal out is exiling people there, which gives credence to the idea that they got kicked out just the same as Scar and his pack did (who were citizens of his kingdom).
Regardless, they still did fester, whether they were a former citizen or not. And he left them there fully knowing they did so with outright hatred and lack of respect for him in their hearts, as shown by their attempt on his son. That's why isolationism is a terrible idea, because part of securing your nation and protecting your people also means stamping out groups like that entirely. Rather than let them breed unchecked enough to have numbers of an army and a ticking time bomb of a guy promising them almost nothing to invade and ruin you.
So again, he failed entirely by letting them live. Whether as exiles from his own nation or just the remnants of a dead one, they were openly and obviously a threat to his people and his "out of sight" policy let them ruin it. Double so when they kept exiling fucking psychos among them like Scar or Kira.
Like every immigrant in Europe
The hyaenas were NOT "refugees". They had THEIR OWN COUNTRY, which makes Scar a fucking traitor on the scale of real life politicians allowing mass immigration (it's the SAME FUCKING THING).
Hell, the Hyaenas even had control of an elephant graveyard. A place where elephants willingly come to die. That's a lot of free meat that isn't going to fight back.
But they're starving and their land is devastated. Why?
LOOK AT THEIR FUCKING NUMBERS.
Hyaenas are basically the pakiniggers of the piece.
Deer also create infinite numbers and strip entire forests dry when not in their proper place in nature dealing with competition and predation. That's kind of the entire deal with the "circle of life."
Yes, and he was a traitor his entire life. All the currently canon material showed he has tried to overthrow Mufasa multiple times in the past. At some point, him being your brother doesn't matter to the fact that he is incompatible with allowing to live.
Deer also get their cripples and retards trimmed by cougars, wolves, and bears (humans aren't needed, eat your cows and chickens you greedy fucks).
ANY species with no predators, a high birth rate, and a low infant mortality rate, will destroy the land they live on. INCLUDING HUMANS, who have no predators but each other. But humans really, really need one or three.
I only know the movie, never saw any series. The movie does suggest that the birth of Simba is just the last straw, but doesn't elaborate on why there would have been friction between Scar and Mufasa before Simba's birth. And he had already been dealing with the Hyaenas for a while, as they seemed to be quite familiar with him coming and feeding them.
Agreed, that's my point. Its not unique to them the barren wasteland of their location. Its just them being left alone there to fuck and eat without any check on their behavior that nature would give.
They've been anthropomorphized, so they should have morals and higher thinking to not do that, but that's the issue with humanizing animals in fiction. The line where their instincts and nature has to be ignored for the story to function.
AFAIK, nothing in the sequel or series is at opposition with the movie's canon and fills in a lot of gaps in it, so I think its a decent explanation of how things ended up. With Scar being the neglected son his entire life to him meeting the literal devil in the form of a scarred lion filling his head with envy of the throne and giving him his own scar to mark him as "evil." Which is how the first coup attempt ends up happening.
They've been anthropomorphized, all right. I doubt hyaenas enjoy the kind of low infant mortality rate humans do. There's probably no way they'd really get that overpopulated, just like human populations were regulated and stable before the Industrial Revolution, the way the Sentinelese are teeming and overrunning their island (most of their infants die, some get eaten by monitor lizards, etc.)
And they had him meet the devil? Lol. That's pretty out there, but hey, storytelling. But it's not like such royal jealousy hasn't been a thing in real life, with real life princes. Not to mention other stories almost exactly like this one, ie, Hamlet, the Ramayana. I consider the latter to actually be closer to the plot; in that one, the uncle murders the King and banishes the Prince, but his girlfriend opts to go into exile with him. They do stuff, then she gets kidnapped by a demon, and Rama gets help from the King of the Monkeys and his people - Timon and Pumbaa - rescue the girl, and the lot of them go back to the Prince's home and vanquish the evil uncle (and the monkey king gets ascended to godhood for being helpful to a god in human skin.)
They also get to have litters though with a faster raising time. Which means even a decently high mortality isn't enough to slow.
Either way, during the Scar song we get to see there are hundreds of them somehow. So something is keeping their numbers up, even if only the main three ever get to be acknowledged.
Its a very weird Paradise Lost/Garden of Eden type of thing too. With him not only meeting the devil, but the devil's "friend", a fucking snake, is what gives Scar his scar and its outright called the "Mark of Evil" that slowly corrupts the bearer to lose the ability to see good/evil as distinct.
Its a dumb kids show still, but its a very not-kid level development for his character and adds a lot more tragedy to it beyond "jealous manchild destroys and steals everything."
What is wrong with making the Hyenas goosestep?
Lion Kangz n shiet!
Was anyone asking for this?
Nobody was asking for any of the live actions, but Disney keeps churning through them.
But most of them are still making huge amounts of money and skating by with little controversy, so they won't stop either.
Little mermaid had some controversy and Snow White is predicted to bomb.
And prior to that all of them, sans Beauty and the Beast with only a little bit, were just little blips that died quickly but made hundreds of millions easy.
They only started to get trouble when they niggerfied the leads instead of the side characters.
Aka "Why you don't let Emma Watson sing" the Movie.
There wasn't nearly enough criticism of that movie. Wasn't the Aladdin one after that? Somehow that one did alright despite how terrible it looked.
It happened at some point after, I don't know if there were more in between because they come and go with barely a ripple (I didn't even know Cinderella had already happened). And Aladdin ended up being the only one I've seen, because a friend dragged me along with her, and it was fine. Nothing offensive, nothing stand out, and everything functioned as it needed to. Even the prerequisite de-damseling of Jasmine didn't feel very girlbossy and more functional.
But yeah, all the criticism and discussion of Beauty and the Beast was focused around the "first gay" character marketing, and so nobody spoke about anything else about it.
What's with Disney only cranking out shitty live action remakes of previous animated films? Wasn't animation the thing that built Disney in the first place?
The Princess and the Frog bombed hard, so they took it as a sign that animation was dead and never looked back.
It was an alright movie, and I appreciated a movie set in my neck of the country that wasn't a long diatribe about racism and "lol you stupid," so its bombing is likely just a fluke of timing and bad marketing.
at least this one's an actual new story. now they can just put out complete shit, rather than tarnish the memory of great movies.
Why does Baby Mufasa look like a really ragged, heavily used stuffed toy?
How else do you do a rags to royalty story?
I'll believe people are sick of it if the movie bombs.
If people complain and still buy movie tickets, then complaining means nothing.
I'm hoping that people start following through and ignoring these bad movies, because Disney doesn't give a shit about the critical reception if it still gets lots of MONEY. So far I think only the Little Mermaid remake was a notable box office disappointment, which is enough for Disney to say was just a fluke.
What? In 2023 Disney's flops included The Little Mermaid, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Haunted Mansion, Ant Man and the Wasp, the Marvels, and Wish. Basically every single movie they released last year disappointed or bombed outright.
This according to Wikipedia.
Little Mermaid. Budget of 240.2 million, box office of 569.6 million.
Indiana Jones DoD. Budget of 295-387m. Box office 384 miilion.
Haunted Mansion. 150m. Box office 117.5 million.
Ant Man. Budget "326.6 million (gross) 276 million (net). Box office 476.1 million.
The Marvels. Budget 219.8m to 274.8m. Box office 206.1 million.
Wish. Budget 175-200m. Box office 254.9m
What a beautfiul sight to see. Little Mermaid was the most succesful of all of these films.
Don't forget: studios spend (as a rule of thumb) another 100% of the budget on marketing, and theaters keep about half of the gross. So a $200M movie like Wish needs to make (not gross) about $400M to break even. And if the box office was $255M, that's just $127.5M that Disney actually made, for a total loss of (400 - 127.5) a whopping $272.5 million dollars. It's beautiful to see indeed.
Yeah, absolutely. I should have been more explicit in my dancing on the corpse of the mouse.
I would guess The Little Mermaid truly made money for Disney (and probably more so with Disney+ action), but everything else is an outright loss or at best break even.
Even TLM needed to make about (240 * 2) $480M. With the theaters keeping half of the box office, a gross of $570M means that Disney took home just $285M, for a total loss of (480 - 285) $195 million lmao
Guardians of the Galaxy 3 apparently did alright, still pissed off the hardcore fans (with how they handled Warlock), and whatever they did manage was basically nothing compared to the losses of everything else.
Sure, and Elemental apparently legged it out to break even. But yes, as you said, they lost a metric fuckton of money on virtually everything else* they released.
...I'm only talking about these remakes of beloved animated classics. Of all the remakes so far, The Little Mermaid is the only one to not do well at the box office.
One can also argue that Pinocchio and Lady and the Tramp also bombed, but since those two were primarily Disney+ streaming movies it's difficult to tell.
Fine, but all of their 2023 flops (other than Wish) were continuations of old, formerly successful properties. Even Haunted Mansion is a classic ride that millions and millions of people have visited. They've also basically burned through their 90's animated library, which is why they're now resorting to a Lion King prequel. Finally, their most recent remake of an animated classic, The Little Mermaid, flopped badly. Are you saying that two flops in a row -- but specifically of classic animation reboots -- is the magic number?
edit: don't forget 2023's Peter Pan and Wendy, which reportedly cost $170M and also released on Disney+ -- which has been losing Disney money ever since it launched lmao.
If only Walt had lived a lot longer, and streaming tech had come a lot earlier, we would have gotten the Disney channel we actually asked for.
looks like it's going to be more musical numbers with uncannily nearly realistic animals. They should have done the Disney Renaissance animation style, but who am I kidding?
Nah, what they do have, is 3d models from the last movie that they invested a lot of time in.
What they don't have, is people talented enough to make 2d animation of high enough quality that it won't be compared with Hunchback of Notre dame 2.
Total hyena death
Let the hyenas into Lion territory, BIGOTS.
Who fucking asked for this? Oh that’s right… modern Disney movies are just a money drain in order to pretend to look like people are working.
They already retconned Simbas kid to be a girl a generation ago. This is just more of the same
Oh, fuck these retards can't even stand the concept of inherited royalty in LIONS.
But they love NK, which IS A FUCKING MONARCHY.
Oh, wait, they love it when monarchies are created by force from below, rather than being something inherited since the Stone Age.