THE LION KING II: SIMBA’S PRIDE. A trivial Disney coloring book

Disney has never been a master of sequels. However, it is acutely aware of its global significance and the value of its legacy. Today, Disney regularly brings revamped, live-action versions of its animated classics to theaters. All the “Maleficents”, “Cinderellas”, “Jungle Books”, “Beauty and the Beasts”, and “Aladdins”, “Lion Kings”, and “Mulans” (so many!) re-monetize the same cinematic material. These projects are highly profitable, supported by multi-platform marketing, and frequently nominated for Oscars in categories like set and costume design. It’s great business—and often good cinema.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, Disney’s position was not significantly weaker. But alongside its artistic boom (rightly referred to as a renaissance, featuring films like “The Lion King”, “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”, “Pocahontas”, “Mulan“, and “Tarzan”), an interesting phenomenon emerged: the creation of direct-to-VHS sequels of these animated films. These sequels, opportunistically capitalizing on their predecessors, were made half-heartedly and with limited resources. The studio’s marketing logic behind this strategy is all too clear and isn’t worth delving into here. But it’s worth scrutinizing the films themselves. “Artificial Worlds” has room not only for beautiful and significant animations.

“The Lion King II: Simba’s Pride” is a derivative and frustrating film. Even a brief, soap-opera-style synopsis might dangerously exhaust its actual content. Kiara is the daughter of Simba and Nala, and they live with the rest of the pride on the safe, sunny Pride Rock. In a more distant territory, shrouded in fog and shadows, live the lionesses exiled by Simba, who were previously allied with Scar. Among them are the revenge-driven Zira and the young Kovu, whom Scar adopted before his death. During one of her escapades, Kiara meets Kovu. Friendship blossoms into forbidden love. Simba struggles to trust his daughter’s partner, while Zira seeks to use Kovu to overthrow the reigning king.

In the original film, the creators drew on “Hamlet”, reinterpreting it in a unique context. In “Simba’s Pride”, director Darrell Rooney’s team followed suit by loosely basing the story on “Romeo and Juliet”, specifically its basic premise. However, while “The Lion King” gains significance and genuine dignity from its Shakespearean roots, “Simba’s Pride” feels like a reach for the nearest available idea, as if they thought, “If we have to make something, let’s make anything.”

I understand that it’s not easy to give a unique visual style to an animation set on the African savannah, but in “The Lion King II”, the number of copied scenes (and even whole sequences) is initially puzzling and eventually grating. This issue extends to the characters, who are stripped of symbolic weight and emotional depth. Significant characters like Timon, Pumbaa, Nala, and Rafiki are reduced to one-dimensional extras awkwardly squeezed into a hastily written script. With just over an hour of runtime, there’s barely enough space to remind the audience that these characters still exist.

“The Lion King II” is a static and derivative film, almost entirely devoid of the creative energy that bursts from the frames of the original. Of course, audiences like to return to what they know well. This is the core appeal of sequels, reboots, remakes, and prequels. They’re usually guided by the credo: more, louder, and bigger. Unfortunately, Disney overlooked the fact that appetite grows with the eating. They took shortcuts, choosing instead a sparse and lazy approach.

The two best moments in “The Lion King II”—Zira’s song “My Lullaby” (clearly referencing Scar’s “Be Prepared”) and the gripping scene in which Kovu is exiled—introduce hints of new themes: a toxic mother-son relationship and a story about loss, searching for new role models, and redefining values. Kovu is, after all, rejected as much by Zira as by Simba. Unfortunately, these promising ideas remain mere illusions, never satisfactorily developed. Ultimately, “The Lion King II” is no more than a makeshift movie, a trivial Disney coloring book. Don’t take these terms metaphorically; here, they’re meant literally.

There’s certainly nothing wrong with capitalizing on artistic success, and there are countless examples of brilliant sequels. But it’s a different matter entirely when the approach is so blatantly disingenuous. Adding an innocent “2” to a proud and iconic title like “The Lion King” ought to come with some responsibility for the creators.