by Panpardus » August 18th, 2017, 10:45 am
Protagonists causing a life-and-death scenario for an entire demographic, a new mashindano, an assassination attempt on the king himself, and an onscreen exile... My, that's a lot for a preschool show; definitely more intense than what I watched in my children's cartoon-viewing phase. (Outside of then-existing Lion King material of course.)
Addressing Ghost Scar first - since I didn't post a proper review on The Rise of Scar and the draft I wrote up for it accidentally got deleted and I don't feel like re-writing it - now that I've actually seen him in-universe, I generally like how he's been portrayed so far. The creators haven't done a number on him like I felt they did with Zira in "Lions of the Outlands"; he has a more outright imposing presence than his movie incarnation, yes, but that's because he's a demonic lava head in a volcano. I like Oyelowo's interpretation and performance; his voice is not as smooth as Irons, but it's close enough to aspects of the original in terms of general tone and cadence (both when he sings and speaks) that I find it familiar, while also acknowledging that this is a somewhat more openly hostile version of the character more along the lines of your standard "for the evulz" baddie, an interpretation that I actually don't mind. I've seen this opinion expressed by a fair number of fans both on here and elsewhere - that Scar seems less devious and cunning than he was before and is more of a "destroy everything" type of villain now, especially given that plan I think he has - but I think the change is perfectly fine and sensible given that in life, Scar had to be scheming to successfully accomplish his goals while covering his tracks (especially since he couldn't necessarily fight himself out if caught), but now he's a presumably virtually untouchable spirit with nothing to really lose should anything go awry. As far as we can tell, there's no real need for him to be cautious anymore, so he can be just as openly evil as he pleases at this point and I'll happily be along for this ride to see how the series ends his storyline for good, even though I'm not too keen on this whole villain team-up from a storytelling perspective; it just seems very cliché and not especially interesting, though I do hope that whatever they do, they do it well.
Moving from Scar, I definitely found myself getting invested in the episode's events. I tend to like more political stuff in these types of stories, so it was interesting to see Makuu have to negotiate a series of situations that kept spiraling out of control as the episode went on. Poor guy has to deal negotiate with a king and royal family with whom he has tentative relations (not that he's not culpable for it) in order to save himself and his people from a life-or-death situation that they've suddenly been forced into, and put down a rebellion that ends up spiraling into an assassination attempt on the king himself. That's quite a lot, and the fact that he was able to forgive Ono and the Guard for causing this whole mess (I like that this was a crisis the Guard actually caused) definitely speaks to his character evolution since we first saw him, and for me all but confirms that he's well on the path to becoming a "good" guy. I like Kiburi as an antagonist and I think he has the best design of any croc in this series, though Common's voice acting is stiff at times. It'll be interesting to see how he develops now that he's stuck in the Outlands - which I assume is effectively a death sentence given the whole "crocs need water" bit now that he can't return to aestivation, unless he muscles into say, Jasiri's family's water hole...
On that note, Rob Lowe actually convinced me that he can put some emotion into his voice for Simba with that exile scene. (I actually had mild shivers from his delivery of the line, "I said now.") I honestly can't see Broderick pulling off that tone as well I felt Lowe did; it's just not in his vocal register. I feel like we'll be seeing a little more of Simba this season than last, so hopefully Lowe's voice acting gets better and he has more good moments like this.
Finally, I like that there is a new intro, and I like the new bridge of the "Call of the Guard" theme, as well as more subtle musical changes like the call-and-response between the low and high brass. However, I am definitely of the party that thinks that the last third of the intro sequence was kinda lazily put together given that it's clearly just a bunch of scenes thrown together; it felt more like a random YouTube compilation video than a proper title sequence. They could've just left the rest of the intro intact after the Scar section and it would've been a lot cleaner. We'll see how long they keep Scar around, but hopefully next season's is better.