Above: Simba
encounters comedy
duo Timon (Billy
Eichner), the meerkat,
and Pumbaa (Seth
Rogen), the warthog.
Right, top to bottom:
Baby Simba faces
a daunting future;
Chiwetel Ejiofor voicing
the character of
villain Scar.was very stylised.” In the original, the
hyenas’ patch was an elephant graveyard
filled with oversized skeletons, and their
boss’ lair was a cavern so huge he could
hold rallies in it. All that has changed.
He’s also expanded the cast in certain
parts of the story. There are no new main
characters, but there are supplementary
ones. “There are characters that populate
the area of the forest where Timon and
Pumbaa live,” says Favreau. “An elephant
shrew, a bush baby... a big menagerie.”
THAT DEATH
If the following counts as a spoiler to you,
then you’ve managed to avoid one of the
biggest plot points in cinema history:
Mufasa is not going to make it to the end
credits. The moment that changes Simba’s
life comes when his dear dad is trampled
by a herd of rampaging wildebeest while
trying to protect his son. In the 1994 film,
the scene was so upsetting that it reduced
grown-ups to tears and caused sensitive
children to have full screaming meltdowns.
Rendered photo-real, that scene could be
not just upsetting but harrowing, with an
animal the audience has come to care
about turned into furry pulp.
“That was a discussion we had over
and over,” says visual-effects supervisor
Rob Legato. “How do you play this
moment that is the emotional fulcrum of
the film? It would be easy to play it really
bloody and shocking.” Given the targeted
PG rating, nobody wanted to do that.
Favreau scheduled the shot very early
in production, so that “if we [got it] wrong,
we could adjust it.” After a lot of attempts,
Favreau settled on trying to make the
audience think they’d seen more than they
had. “It’s why I hired [cinematographer]
Caleb Deschanel. If you look at his work,
whether it’s in The Black Stallion or The
Right Stuff, his images and lighting,
you’re making a painting. If you compose
something right and light it right, you can
get the impact without seeing the detail.”
It was also an instance where Favreau
felt his realistic imagery was a gift, sensing
that Planet Earth-like documentaries had
conditioned an audience to cope with the
brutal realities of the animal world.
“Once you see the animals fully rendered,
it feels akin to something you’d see in a
documentary,” he says. “It has a lot of
emotion but there’s a distance.”
THE VILLAIN
For the most part, the 1994 movie’s
characters were roughly true to their
real-life counterparts. Simba had a few
more facial muscles and a mane that
looked heavily back-combed, but he was
basically lion-shaped. Timon could dress
up and was remarkably dexterous, but he
looked like a meerkat. The only lead
character who took major stylistic liberties
was Scar. With a black mane, elongated
face and emerald eyes with drag queen
eyebrows, he would look absurd if the
animators had tried to make him photo
real: part-Rasputin, part-Joan Collins, part
throw-rug. He was completely redesigned.
“You have to make him feel like he fits in
the animal kingdom,” says Favreau.
“Mufasa is the alpha of the pride and Scar
is a weaker lion, but he’s intimidating.” The
look the designers developed for Scar bears
no comparison with the animated version.
A scrawny jungle cat with ragged ears, a
gash over one eye and a receding mane, he
looks not camp but creepy — like a
desperate, half-starved creature who’d kill
you as quickly as possible, not try to floor
you with a withering putdown.
For Scar’s voice, Favreau cast Oscar
nominee Chiwetel Ejiofor. Where Jeremy
Irons’ memorable take on Scar was arch
and just a touch panto villain, Ejiofor’s is
no-nonsense and definitely no joke.
“I tried to find that psychological
heart of Scar,” says Ejiofor. “To show that
damage; the level of manipulation and
suppressed rage, and that intellect.” He
had no fears about comparisons to one
of the most memorable of animation
performances. “Great stories stand up to
different interpretations,” he says, pointing
out that The Lion King itself is an animal
version of Hamlet. “Me [doing Scar] is like
someone doing Claudius or Hamlet... It
can be approached in different ways.”THE COMEDY
When Billy Eichner first set foot on
Favreau’s set, he was terrified. He
was playing The Lion King’s smallest
character, the wise-ass meerkat Timon,
but he had some large shoes to fill.
“Nathan Lane was my hero ever since
I was a child,” he says. “Playing a role
he’d played was thrilling, but terrifying.”
Lane’s performance of Timon in the
original movie was a comic masterpiece
and his double-act with Ernie Sabella as
Pumbaa one of the film’s greatest selling
points. Trying to recapture that, with Seth
Rogen as Pumbaa, had Eichner quaking.
“Seth and I would look at each other like,
‘Thank God you’re here and I don’t have
to do it alone.’”
Favreau didn’t want an imitation or
even a faithful reinterpretation. “The way
[the 1994 film treated] comedic characters
is too broad for photo-real,” he says.
“The humour [in our film] is much more
grounded and conversational, but there’s
the same relationship. You’re not going to
get anthropomorphic performances. You’renot going to get Timon dressed up as
a hula girl. That stuff just wouldn’t work.”
“Both Seth and I come from the
comedy world and we like to improvise,”
says Eichner. “At first we’d read with the
script in our hands, but that made us stiff.
Then Jon said, ‘Throw down your script,
start from the beginning and just go
through it. Try to remember the beats, but
the actual words aren’t important.” Most
of the final dialogue came from that
improvised session, Eichner says. He hopes
he and Rogen will capture the affectionate
bickering of Lane and Sabella, but with a