by Ninaroja » April 7th, 2014, 9:53 pm
Simba has always been my favourite character, right from the beginning. I guess, now that I'm older and lived a bit more of life, I relate a lot to him. We have been through much of the same character growth, in a sense.
For starters, we both started out as naive, quite cocky, at times arrogant, and a bit unaware as to the effect our actions can have.
After this, we both got a heavy dose of real life, changed almost completely, and in a sense forgot ourselves and did things we deep down knew we shouldn't be doing. And then, a sequence of events set us straight again.
All this occurred to me fairly recently. I think it was because I read a lot of people saying they really hated cub Simba for his cockiness. I think I liked him better that way, though. He still has his innocence, and one of the saddest elements of TLK for me is the destruction of Simba's life at the hands of Scar. If you think about it, it was completely ruined. He was deprived of his home, his family, the remainder of his childhood (sure, he seems happy enough with T&P, but I think the whole time he was living with the guilt of the crime he thought he had committed {it would have been so great if the film-makers had explored some of Cub Simba's low points, like they did with adult Simba}) and a huge chunk of happiness.
He's probably one of the most complex characters I've seen in film. Simba's emotional journey and growth is by no means as black-and-white as many people perceive it to be.