Disney has recently redone a lot of their original movies. This is due to our ever changing views as a society. The plots in both the animated Lion King and the live action Lion King stay relatively the same. However, Disney changes some characters' roles and specific scenes to fit into society's norms, such as women empowerment.
In the 1994 animated Lion King Nala is seen as just the love interest of Simba. She never has her own scene; she just plays along as Simba’s mate, goes with him to the elephant graveyard and then convinces him to go home. In the live action remake of this film she is given a much bigger role, however her intentions are still the same. The camera follows her on a journey to seek help for Simba since he is in trouble in the Pridelands. Then in the final fight scene she duels it out with the head hyena. These scenes give her a more powerful role as the lead female in the movie. Nala is shown as a paradigmatic character as she is portrayed as equal to Simba which also represents women in 2019, equal to all. Thee song “Be Prepared” was rumoured to not even be present in the remake however it was still included, However almost entirely different. Nala also performs a new song in the remake called “SPIRIT” which shows a syntagmatic relationship.
I've never actually seen the Lion King Remake, so there's not much I can contribute beyond what you have written here. It seems like you want to focus on the character of Nala and her evolution. Since the New Lion King doesn't seem to have changed much plot wise, your thesis can focus on all the ways Nala's role had expanded. You can probably quantify this numerically by going back to each film and cataloguing the length and frequency of Nala's scenes in the original vs. the most recent adaptation. You can also examine Nala's song and analyze what it adds to the adaptation, as Nala only gets a love duet with Simba in the original. If you want to get really deep, you can analyze the shot composition of her scenes between versions- but that's just a suggestion.
ReplyDeleteSide Note: You bring up "Be Prepared" for a moment in your last few sentences. It felt a little out of place. Does that factor into your main argument? What do you think the rationale behind changing that song was? What does it reveal about modern audiences (or what Disney believes about modern audiences)?