‘The Lion King’ turns 30: all the secrets of the animated film that made history

The sun rising on a red sky, the music that grows and the verses sung in the Zulu language, then the animals of the Savannah that wake up and run towards the Rock of the Kings. If even today, after thirty years, this incipit is majestic, for those who saw it in 1994, in the dark of the cinema, it was explosive. From those first minutes it was clear that The Lion King he was proposing something never seen before in animated cinema, accompanying viewers towards a new and exciting experience.

Inspired by Shakespeare’s Hamlet, The Lion King it followed the story of Simba, a lion cub, son of a king and destined to become king himself. His life, privileged and already mapped out, completely changes course when Uncle Scar, who secretly aims for the throne, decides to kill his brother and place the blame on his nephew. At that point Simba begins a different but happy life thanks to his friends Pumbaa and Timon who teach him the motto ofhakuna matata and life without worries. But is it possible to turn your back on your past?

Released in US theaters on June 15, 1994, arrived at the height of that period known as the ‘Disney Renaissance’ and helped confirm that the studio was experiencing a moment of very high creativity and talent. It all started in 1989 with The little Mermaidwhich was followed by two other enormous successes with audiences and critics, The beauty and the Beast And Aladdin. In this scenario, The Lion King – already from its making – it seemed like a risk, a film very different not only from these last three feature films, but also from what the studio had created in the last fifty years.

The biggest news concerned the music: never before had a pop star signed the songs for a Disney film. He was chosen as a lyricist Tim Rice who, after the untimely death of Howard Ashmanhad worked on the missing lyrics of the songs of Aladdin and it was he who proposed to the producers to get involved in the project Elton John with whom he had worked in 1982 for the song Legal Boys. “When you are famous and you get old – Elton John told Famcrawler in 2011 – people are afraid to ask you to do something. They say, ‘Oh, no he won’t.’ That’s exactly what happened when Tim Rice called me in 1993 to do The Lion King. He said to me, ‘Disney said you’ll never accept. But you are my friend and I told him that you will do it instead.’ And I said, ‘Tim, I’ve worked with you in the past. I love you. Of course I will.” A collaboration born almost by chance that changed the course of Elton John’s career and made The Lion King one of the most successful musicals in the history of cinema first and then theater. At the 1995 Oscars the film won the award for best soundtrack, composed by Hans Zimmerand the one for Best Song (the statuette went to Can you feel the love tonightbut three of the five songs nominated in the category were written by Elton John and Tom Rice for The Lion King). Two years later, in July 1997, the theatrical adaptation of the same name debuted, winner of six Tony Awards, and still on stage in some of the most important theaters in the world, above all the Minskoff Theatre of New York and the Lyceum Theatre from London.

Even from a visual point of view, The Lion King it offered a very particular experience. The authors not only gave up on creating anthropomorphic animals for this feature film but decided to make the appearance and movements of the animals as realistic as possible. As had only happened for Bambireleased way back in 1942, the animators studied the fauna and flora in depth (in this case of the Savannah): some of them took a trip to Kenya, for all the others documentaries were shown, days in parks and nature reserves were organized and it was brought in the Burbank studios a family of lions so that the animators could see it up close and study the interactions between the male, the female and the cubs.

Meticulous attention to detail, as well as the use of new technologies (the famous wildebeest herd race scene was one of the first uses of computer graphics in Disney films), was rewarded. The Lion King was an unprecedented success: crowned as the highest-grossing film in 1994 worldwide, at the time it also ranked as the second highest-grossing film of all time, behind Jurassic Park. It is still the biggest hit in traditional animation in Disney history, while it held the record for highest-grossing animated feature film (in North America, outside of North America, and worldwide) until feature films animated in CGI.

Nothing would have been possible without the script written by Irene Mecchi, Jonathan Roberts and Linda Woolverton which has a very long process behind it, with years of continuous reworking of the subject, of animated scenes that were then thrown away and drawn from scratch to fit the new dialogues. A troubled genesis that gave life to an engaging and moving story of the transition to adulthood: not only that (and here too, the closest Disney film is Bambi) the protagonist faces the loss of one of his two parents, but over the course of the story he learns to look the pain in the eye and accept it. “Look inside yourself, Simba, you are much more than what you have become,” says the ghost of King Mufasa to his son, encouraging him to take his place in the world, to stop hiding and pretending to be someone other; while the ‘shaman’ Rafiki explains to him that although painful, the past teaches and one should never run away from it.

The rest was done by the iconic and immortal characters, born from the pencils of animators who later became legendary, such as Andreas Deja And Mark Henn: from the hilarious Timon and Pumbaa to the wise Rafiki, from the proud Nala to the faithful Zazu up to the unforgettable Mufasa (dubbed in the original by the deep voice of James Earl Jonesalready lent to Darth Vader, and in Italian by Vittorio Gassman). It is precisely to him, Simba’s father, that the new Disney film inspired by this milestone of cinema and expected for Christmas 2024 will be dedicated.

Over the years the beloved characters of The Lion King are back in a long list of entertainment products: the sequel The Lion King II – Simba’s Pridethe spin-off The Lion King 3 – Hakuna Matata (2004), the animated television series Timon and Pumbaa And The Lion Guardand finally the 2019 photorealistic computer graphics remake of the same name (which itself became the most successful animated film of all time). Mufasa – The Lion Kingdirected by the Oscar winner Barry Jenkinswill be a prequel to this remake and will therefore replicate its photorealistic style and will reconfirm some of the characters and well-known voice actors (such as Beyoncé in the role of Nala) already seen in 2019.

The original, however, remains unmatched thanks to the innovative animation and creative choices (in fact all replicated in the remake). On the occasion of this thirtieth birthday there is no shortage of tributes all over the world: in the United States The Lion King also returns to the room to excite again with that majestic sunrise and the birth of a puppy who is part, like all of us, of the great “circle of life”.????