By all means, ruin my childhood: THE LION KING undergoing 3D conversion

By all means, ruin my childhood: THE LION KING undergoing 3D conversion

Jun 23

I haven’t watched The Lion King since I was a wee grasshopper, sometime in the early-mid 1990s. I don’t really want to watch it again any time soon, either — perhaps I’ll give it a spin when / if I have kids, or when I feel a particularly strong urge to indulge in some hard-hitting nostalgia.

Being that I watched The Lion King when I was a kid, I don’t even know if it’s a “good movie.” I loved it at the time, but who knows if I wasn’t just amused by the flashy colours and jaunty musical numbers, rather than the engaging narrative, the beating heart of the story?

Anyway, now we hear that Disney’s planning to re-release The Lion King in 3D. Thankfully it won’t happen any time soon, but it begs the question: why remix a 2D animated film into a 3D animated film? Part of the charm of watching these smug-looking lions struggle to resolve their leadership woes is that it’s a cartoon: fluid, easy on the eyes, with strong lines and rich colour.

Squeezing all that through a 3D ringer won’t have the same effect. It’ll hurt my eyes to watch The Lion King. The painterly landscapes will be ruined by the addition of an extra dimension. The lions’ smug grins will be right up in my face. I don’t want any of these things.

I want to be able to introduce The Lion King to my offspring the way it was introduced to me — animated in 2D. Now every time The Lion King comes up in conversation my prospective children will roll their eyes and have to sit through daddy’s explanation of his version, when everybody knows The Lion King has always been in 3D.

Congratulations, Disney, you’ve simultaneously subverted my own childhood while pre-emptively derailing that of my future children.

(Beauty And The Beast is also undergoing the same unwholesome treatment; expect it to hit 3D cinemas in 2011)