La Garde du Roi Lion: Un nouveau Cri

This series is an absolute abomination. Disney totally ruined their best movie/franchise by making this awful series with cheap animation, horrible voice acting, no-sense my-little-pony-themes and plots and more discontinuities with the main movie than the X-Men movies. The Lion King is by far my favorite movie and Simba is my favorite Disney character. They have both been disrespected and ruined by this no-sense cartoon. This is not The Lion King. The characters from previous movies are completely OOC or disrespected or doing pretty much nothing for all the episodes, the new characters are stereotypathed annoying children- cliché, there is not even half of the epicness from the original movie. Disney forgot that what made The Lion King so successful and beloved is the epic tone of the story and the characters. This is cheap-animation, not worthy anyone's time.

This is less a sequel to The Lion King and more a rehashing. While the plot itself is unique enough and the Lion Guard doesn't feel out of place in the setting- even if it wasn't in any way hinted at before this, nearly everything else feels copied directly from the original. They even directly reference Hakunah Matata before the song it inspired. Kion's friend Bunga is not only a blatant Timon and Pumba analogue, he's their nephew (despite being a honey badger, which is questioned but not explained). Homaging a beloved precursor doesn't have to be bad- it's one of my favorite parts of Jurassic World- but this feels completely paint-by-numbers. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that they had a literal checklist of Lion King elements they had to hit while writing. The one thing it should have taken from the movie but didn't was the emotional depth. Kion is around the same age Simba was at the beginning of the movie, and this only covers one day instead of a lifetime, so they don't have time for the same sort of resonance, but some of the elements presented- original or otherwise- should have had some sort of impact on the characters. That's what separates a kids movie from a family movie, and Lion Guard doesn't have much to offer adults. That said, this is the pilot for a Lion Guard series, and it does what a pilot should do. It sets up the premise and the characters, while coming across as more than exposition.

As a huge fan of the Lion King, having grown up with it as a kid, this was an extreme disappointment to me.

To see the characters of Simba and Kiara being reduced to these uptight royal semi- antagonists is painful to say the least. Kiara, from the sequel "Simba's Pride" was adventurous and headstrong, like her father was when he was young. And now she's this obedient, tattletale daddy's girl who is also reduced to the stereotypical damsel in distress.

All to make new male protagonist look good. Kion, Simba's son (who strangely didn't appear in Simba's Pride) wants to be part of the Lion's Guard, (Kingsguard) but not the king, as the throne will go to Kiara. So he assembles a diverse group of animals as his "soldiers". This is where the producers thought "The Lion King meets The Avengers" comes in. It doesn't. It really doesn't.

I can't even begin to tell you how stupid, predictable and lazy the dialogue and story was. Why do they have make every single scene so utterly childish? When I was child, the Disney films I watched weren't dumbed down or censored to appeal to a younger audience! They were intelligent, meaningful and heartfelt films. People are too scared now to take risks with animation. It's all about the money and never about the art. Very sad.

2 out of 10

Like a lot of people I was sceptical about this show when it was announced as it stunk of Disney milking a franchise dry.

It turned out to be not too bad, judging only at this point on this Pilot episode.

Yes, it's aimed at younger audiences, so there's annoying comic support characters, and fart jokes galore, but it does seem to have been made with love, and within the original 'Lion King' time line.

Some nice original voices return, plus some good sound-a-like's, and I enjoyed this more than I thought I would.

Well, lets see. The music is really on point, the songs could have been better. They really tried to stay on track with the original animated movie. I'm so glad they went for hand-drawn animation and not that ridiculous 3D computer animation. The plot is really my weak spot. They try to pay homage to the original movie, and they rely heavily on nostalgia. They actually have made a plot for a new following of course, and that's why the plot is messing with the timeline of the original movie and its sequel. It just awoke such nostalgia in me and so many fond memories of the "Lion King" that I really can't hate it for that although it drives me crazy at times. Still a really fun watch. I'll definitely try and watch some of the episodes of the TV series.