[quote="Iberian"]The soundtrack is out!
Even though i´m a sucker for soundtracks I think ill pass this one untill I see the movie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tU-g9OHluU[/quote]
I'm definitely leaving alone the songs I haven't heard in any of the promo stuff, so "Be Prepared" is not getting touched at all; I'm perfectly fine with leaving "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" and "Just Can't Wait to Be King" alone as well. I actually listened to "Spirit" (Beyoncé's/Nala's new song) once a couple days ago when it was first released and I remember thinking it wasn't bad, but I didn't have my proper listening equipment so I didn't catch the full breadth of the music. It's also kinda vague lyrically, so I'm still not sure how it actually fits into the story. I might just save that one for the movie.
I had to hear how "Circle of Life" sounds, so I broke and just listened to it.
Unfortunately they played it safe with the arrangement; it's identical to the original in terms of form, the only thing that's different is the instrumentation and the singer for the English lyrics. (One of the long-time actresses for the Broadway Rafiki, Lindiwe Mkhize, sings this time. She's good.) There's a lot more percussion and the bass "slaps" (to borrow a current popular term among the black interwebs) hard too, but there's also some new instrumental ornaments in the background that makes it feel a little different from the original if you're attentive to that sort of thing; the average person probably won't notice though.
"Hakuna Matata" I also don't mind having spoiled, especially since I already saw the clip and it sounds nice. (Although Seth Rogen/Pumbaa tries to hit a lower harmony at one point and I can hear he's a bit off; fortunately he's masked by the music so it's not too apparent. As for the musical number itself, it's as I expected/feared. The lions actually look good when they talk, facial expressions and all -- there's a bit with Scar and Simba in the gorge, although the voiceover is slightly ahead of the animation which is actually standard practice for pre-release material for a lot of movies some reason, probably copyright-related:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnM8aTBbx0c -- but it doesn't work insofar as singing is concerned, especially when you have someone like Donald Glover who does lots of vocal riffs and they didn't really animate Simba's mouth to follow it convincingly. I'm not sure why they decided to do close-up long-takes on his face during that section; even during the wide shot there's nothing else going on in the scene, which makes it less engaging than some of the more mediocre
The Lion Guard musical numbers. "Just Can't Wait to Be King" looks a lot more interesting though from the promotional bits and I've heard that that one is actually the standout musical number from this movie, so we'll see.
