Regardless of what you think about the remake of Disney’s THE LION KING, what’s undeniable is that the movie sports some groundbreaking visual effects that, almost eerily, blurs the line between what is and isn’t real. Entire landscapes and animals were created with CGI – from all of Pride Rock to the smallest rodent – but even among all the digital wizardry was one shot that was ripped straight from good ol’ fashioned real life.
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Director Jon Favreau took to social media to reveal the little Easter egg, showing an image of the movie’s very first shot of the morning sun rising over the African terrain, writing that it was the only shot in the whole movie that wasn't digitally rendered.
“This is the only real shot in #TheLionKing. There are 1490 rendered shots created by animators and CG artists,” he wrote. “I slipped in one single shot that we actually photographed in Africa to see if anyone would notice. It is the first shot of the movie that begins The Circle of Life.”
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Every other recent Disney remake of one of their animated classics can be constituted as live-action, even Favreau's THE JUNGLE BOOK, which pairs real people alongside CGI animals. THE LION KING can't quite be put in the same category given that the whole thing is CGI, but I guess now it can be said that about .1% of the movie is actually live-action. But every shot after that opening one has been met with either praise or scrutiny, as some are heralding the immaculate visuals while others lambast it for basically being a shot-for-shot CG remake of a true classic.
If his plan was to see if anyone could spot the difference between this opening shot and the rest of the digitally-rendered movie, then bravo, because I certainly couldn't. It probably would've been a bit easier to tell had they staged a stampede or a musical number there, but still, it just goes to show how impeccably everything else was rendered. These visuals are one big reason why people are flocking to the movie, which they are in droves, as after it's second weekend in theaters it's made $350 million domestically and $962 million globally, and will likely cross $1 billion by the middle of the week.