[copied this from my facebook :P)

Right, so I've just seen it tonight!

I must stress that this is solely my opinion and I'm not saying that I am right and other people's views are wrong, you may disagree with what I say and that's fine. We all fell in love with the original which is what brought us together so when a new thing appears that's different to what we all fell in love with there is going to be different veiws ^^.

In short, I was pleasantly surprised! It's not -perfect-, but its a lot better then what I set my expectations at.

I'm not comparing this film to the original because they are worlds apart, its a completely different style, animation, cast (apart of James Earl Jones and Hans Zimmer returning to play their parts of course) I'm looking at this film for what it is in itself. Also at this time, I'm not going too into detail as I've only seen it once and its a lot to take in.

Realism - The realism of the animals isn't perfectly polished, but enough to feel that they are in fact, real. How lions act in the wild has been very well replicated here, I like how they animated how a lion is really meant to roar when Mufasa roars before "everything the light touches" scene, and not like a wide yawn (although admittedly this does still happen a couple of times). The interactions between characters are nicely done (like Zazu not looking head-on while talking, but to the side) The scenery does look amazing too.

Emotion - This was a big thing a lot of people were talking about. We all know expressions play a big part in a film and it does come across that this film barely has any, and it was intentional for realism purposes. Now I can see where Jon Favreau is coming from with that and it does kind of work in the film for most scenes and feels realistic, but he did go a little too overboard when there was zero expression in the most famous scenes. Lions expressions are subtle but not non-existent, So it worked for some of the movie, but not all, but to be honest I tended just to not think about it and it only became apparent when something big happened. So it only ruined it a little bit for me, wasn't a complete deal-breaker.

Music - Well, being a huuuuuge fan on Hans Zimmer this is kind of biased. He could do a dramatic orchestral arrangement of "Baby Shark" and I would love it.
Although Hans hasn't really made anything -completely- new score-wise, I like how he has done it, its a huge blast of nostalgia but with added bits or things mixed around just enough for it to feel fresh. You can tell he has injected a lot of experience he has had over the last 25 years into this. The score for the stampede, for example, it's shocking to say that I loved so much more what he has done with this, sent so many good shivers ^_^. The whole score, in general, did not disappoint but I won't go on and on as I could go into depth for hours.

The songs - I mostly enjoyed, Circle of life is classic of course and it was great to hear Lindiwe from the west end production singing ^_^. Just can't wait to be king & Hakuna Mata was brilliant, really enjoyed how they pulled these off in a realistic manner, and Lion sleeps tonight was just pure gold, myself and most of the cinema was in hysterics and really brought a fun atmosphere xD. Can you feel the love tonight was forgettable, that was a letdown. The biggest flaw is that it wasn't night time and the singing just had no feel to it at all.

Another little let down was the Mufasa Spirit scene. It felt quite rushed and not that powerful. It was still nice, but with all the things at their disposal I expected something a little more, I dunno *shrugs*.

As a whole, solid 8.5/10 for me. Though it has its flaws I really enjoyed it as a whole. Lion King has followed me from childhood to where I am now and when I heard this film was coming I was scared yet hopeful. This remake has brought a lot of new content, some of it didn't work, but I feel a lot of it worked very well. It's nice to see that this film has brought a lot of popularity back and hopefully re-ignited a lot of the audience's childhood nostalgia. I went into a full cinema full of people around my age and only a few younger people insight. Looking around after the film finished they all left humming, laughing and singing the songs. It's like it's been reborn for us all, and to me, that's a treasure in itself.