The Lion King 20th Anniversary – Seven Things You Didn’t Know

Luke Owen looks at a few things you may not know about The Lion King….June 24th 2014 marked the 20th anniversary of the pinnacle of Disney’s renaissance era of animation, The Lion King.Working as an animated version of Shakespeare’s Hamelt, The Lion King is one of the highest grossing animated movies of all-time and it was showered with a bevy of awards. When websites and TV shows compile lists of “greatest animated movies”, The Lion King is guaranteed to always be at near the top of the pile. It spawned several sequels, a couple of TV shows, a variety of video games and a Broadway musical that has also been showered with its own bevy of awards.It was even ranked 10th in Flickering Myth’s Top 10 Movies of All-Time.To celebrate the anniversary of this brilliant piece of Disney animation, let’s look at seven facts and tidbits that you not have known about The Lion King.1. The movie very nearly not called The Lion KingIn perhaps the most hilarious tidbit of information to come about since the movie’s release is that the movie was originally not going to be called The Lion King as was instead to be called The King of the Jungle.However, this idea was scrapped when Disney realised that lions do not live in the jungle.Seriously.At least they have the excuse that Wikipedia didn’t exist in the early 90s…The story was also going to be different with the original idea being about a war between lions and baboons. However the pitch of “Bambi in Africa meets Hamlet” got the green light for the movie we know today.2. The Lion King was not supposed to be as big as it wasDuring production of The Lion King, Disney were also working on another animated feature that they had high hopes for – Pocahontas.Disney had such big plans for Pocahontas in fact that they had all of their top animators, writers, directors and developers working on that movie as the ‘A’ team while everyone else was pushed over to The Lion King as the ‘B’ team.And let’s be honest, Pocahontas is… well it’s just a “fine” Disney movie.At the very least, you can’t say it’s better than The Lion King and it certainly wasn’t as successful.Not only was The Lion King one of the highest grossing movies of the year, it spawned several sequels, TV shows and a Broadway musical that is still going strong to this day.3. The Wilder beast stampede took 3 years to animateIt’s perhaps one of the most iconic moments of the movie, but it was also one of the trickiest to do.In fact, it was so tricky that it took the animation team a whole three years to complete!If this was to be done in an animated movie nowadays, it would take months – maybe even weeks, but back in the early 90s this was a huge job and it required a lot of man-power, will and determination to create a scene that runs for around 2-3 minutes.It’s amazing to think, given the movies we have released in cinemas on a weekly basis, that this one scene took a whole three years to animate. Not only that, but they had to invent a new computer that would make sure the stampede would not run into each other.4. Jeremy Irons didn’t sing all of Be PreparedJeremy Irons is superb as the voice of the evil Scar and Disney were so impressed with his performance that the design team put many of his facial features into Scar’s look (the same would be done for Rowan Atkinson as Zazu). And while all of his dialogue scenes are great, perhaps is best moment is the song Be Prepared. So it’s interesting to note that he didn’t sing all of it.Everything was going fine, but when Irons shouting the line, “you won’t get a sniff without me” towards the end of the song, he blew out his voice – meaning he couldn’t finish the song.In his place was legendary voice actor Jim Cummings who filled in for the rest of the song. This means that Cummings not only had to do an impression of Jeremy Irons, he had to sing like him too.And if you listen to the song, you would never know the difference.5. The video game is notoriously hardVideo games based on movies aren’t quite as popular as they once were, but back in the 90s every movie and TV show was seemingly turned into a game – no matter how silly it sounded. Many of them in fact are now the butt of jokes and ridicule for being nothing more than cash-ins. It should be said though that some were very good, even if they were very easy in order for younger gamers to play and complete.But others were hard. Jurassic Park is one example, The Lion King is an even better one.The game starts of innocently enough, but then you are thrown into the very tough “I Just Can’t Wait to be King” stage which requires pin-point accuracy. One mistake and it’s all over. If you can get passed that, you’re reward is the hard-as-nails Graveyard stage before the even harder stampede after that. It’s relentless to say the least!The game was met with huge praise upon its release and was even voted as game of the year in 1994, beating out Sonic 3 and Sonic and Knuckles. In the end of year Gameplayers issue they wrote, “even on the easy setting, the game is hard for an experienced player”.6. Can You Fell the Love Tonight was nearly cut from the movieIt’s perhaps the best-known song from the movie, but there was a version of The Lion King in which Elton John’s Can You Feel the Love Tonight was omitted.And who do we have to thank for the movie being put back in? Elton John himself.When the movie was finished, Elton was given a private screening of The Lion King and this was the version where the now iconic song was missing. So annoyed was Elton that he demanded that Disney put the song back in. They did and he won an academy award for it.More amazing still, there was a version of the movie which didn’t have the song, but did have a parody of it sung by Timon and Pumba. Suffice to say, Elton John and Tim Rice were not amused and this was removed.7. The Lion King has the first Disney fart jokeAnd to end on a light note, The Lion King is the first Disney movie to make a fart joke.You read that right.It seems amazing to think that despite making films for nearly eight decades by this point, the House of Mouse had never thought to use of one of the easiest jokes in the world to make a child laugh. But it’s true. Pumba the warthog is the first Disney character to exhale flatulence.And he would clear the Savanah after every meal, so the legend goes. But he’s a sensative soul (though he seems thick skinned), so be nice to him.Maybe Disney thought they were above fart jokes. But what do they know?—That’s it from this list! Where they any facts you didn’t know? Any facts you think are more interesting? Let us know in the comments below.Happy birthday Lion King!Luke Owen is one of Flickering Myth’s co-editors and the host of the Flickering Myth Podcast. You can follow him on Twitter @LukeWritesStuff.

The Lion King 20th Anniversary – Seven Things You Didn’t Know

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