Back in the 1990’s Disney was beginning to make their comeback of being the biggest producer of animated films and musicals with films like Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin. Going into 1994 Disney was on a strong run but 1994 had some of the strongest film competition ever including films like Forrest Gump, Pulp Fiction, Shawshank Redemption, Speed, and True Lies, all of which either received critical acclaim or tremendous box office success. So how did the Lion King do compared to its competition and how has the film held up a little over 30 years after its release?
To start off, the film had a really good range of voice actors working on the project. Beginning with James Earl Jones iconic portrayal of Mufasa in which if it weren’t for some silly space franchise it would be his most iconic role. Then you had an academy award winning actor in Jeremy Irons as Scar in a performance where the villain of the story kind of steals the show with probably the best Disney villain performance that warns us all of the dangers of middle child syndrome.
In addition to the great voice acting the film’s biggest strength is its score. The film has plenty of memorable songs but generally it mostly gets remembered for Hakuna Matata in a song that produces one of the stronger ear worms in cinema. Hans Zimmer conducted the score for this film and in hindsight it was the film that launched his career in which he would then go on to have arguably the best movie score composer career of all time right next to John Williams.
Circling back to my original question, The Lion King in the box office made a whopping 771 million dollars in the world wide box office on a 45 million dollars so it was just a major global success. It also won best original song and best original score at the Oscars which for a children’s movie that is remarkably rare to see happen.
In conclusion not only was The Lion King a huge success in the 90s that set Disney up for success throughout the remainder of that decade in the animated film industry but the film has arguably aged better as time has gone on.
