Re-re-re-re-re-release

Is anyone else bothered by the re-release of The Lion King?


Apparently not that many people are, given that it is the top-grossing film of the month. It's a fair bet, though, that anything that doesn't bother many people is apt to bother me. And so...

Folks have been lambasting Hollywood for a lack of creativity forever, it seems. For all I know, my great-great grandparents were disgusted with the derivative plots of silent movies. But surely this marks a new low.

I suppose I should be grateful that Disney didn't remake its animated classic as per usual Hollywood practice. "Hey, I know! Let's do a remake of Little Women! It's only been done, what, seventeen times before!" Remakes are just odious. Either they take a crappy movie and inject new crap into it, or (at least as often), take a good movie and ruin it. There was, I would argue, no need to remake Psycho. The seminal thriller stands as one of the best examples of its genre...leave it alone.

But simply re-releasing the EXACT SAME movie (albeit this time gimmicked up with 3-D!) is somehow worse. And the fact it has done so well at the box office bodes ill for the future of film as far as I'm concerned. It's depressing as hell to imagine, but I can vividly picture the marquee ten years hence. Just take all the top-grossing movies of 2011 and release them on a 2021 audience. Then maybe do it again in 2026, on the grounds that the world is speeding up and ten years is too long to wait.

By the way, colour me unimpressed with 3-D. Avatar did it well: the screen was a window. The effects elevated what in and of itself was--let's be honest--a painfully derivative movie into something otherworldly. You tend to forget you're watching Pocahontas or Dances With Wolves in space when the screen environment is so immersive.
 Pretty much every other movie since--with the possible exception of Cave of Forgotten Dreams--has treated 3D exactly the same way it was done in the fifties: ooga-booga-look-at-me-I-can-jump-out-of-the-screen! Great fun if you're a child, apt to give you a headache if you're not. And that's to say nothing of the glasses.

But The Lion King, now...I'm as flummoxed by this as I was by the sudden resurgence of Thriller to the top of the charts when Michael Jackson died. Surely everyone who wanted to own Thriller already did: it's only the top selling album of all time. Likewise The Lion King...except it's only sitting at at number 26on the list of the highest-grossing films in history. Give it another seven or eight re-releases, I guess. Then again, everything around it will probably be re-released as well. Harry Potter, films one through eight, re-released over an eight-month period. If this be the future of Hollywood, shoot me now. Then release me...and re-release me...and re-release me...