Disney's most commercially successful 2D film. Hamlet in the savannah, scored by Elton John and Hans Zimmer.
Simba, the lion cub heir to the Pride Lands, is the joy of his father Mufasa and the obsession of his uncle Scar. After Scar orchestrates a stampede that kills Mufasa and persuades Simba it was his own fault, Simba flees into exile. He grows up alongside Timon and Pumbaa, two minor mammals with a tolerant philosophy, until his old friend Nala finds him and tells him what's become of his kingdom.
The film is, openly, Hamlet with paws — Disney's own animators referred to it as 'Bamlet' during development.
Between The Little Mermaid (1989) and Tarzan (1999), Disney's hand-drawn animation department produced ten features that re-established the studio as the dominant force in family entertainment. The Lion King is the commercial peak of that run — the highest-grossing animated film for almost a decade, until Finding Nemo overtook it.
What makes The Lion King hold up where some of its Renaissance siblings haven't is its restraint. There are no human characters and no spoken anachronism. The world is closed and consistent. The opening sequence — the four-minute 'Circle of Life' presentation, with no dialogue — remains one of the most assured openings in mainstream animation.
Zimmer wrote the score; Lebo M, the South African composer and vocalist, wrote and performed much of the African choral work that defines the film's sound. The opening 'Nants Ingonyama bagithi Baba' is Zulu — 'Here comes a lion, father.' The choice to centre African musical voices in a film about Africa was, in 1994, more progressive than it is sometimes remembered as.
Zimmer won his only Oscar for the score. Elton John and Tim Rice's songs — 'Hakuna Matata,' 'Can You Feel the Love Tonight,' 'I Just Can't Wait to Be King' — are crisper than the standard Broadway-pastiche of the Renaissance era, which is part of why the film transferred so well to the Broadway musical (still running, twenty-eight years later).
Jeremy Irons's Scar is one of Disney's three or four greatest villains. The performance leans on insinuation rather than menace; Scar talks his way into power instead of fighting his way in. The 'Be Prepared' sequence remains the most explicitly fascist musical number in a Disney film — goose-stepping hyenas, red light, Eisenstein-derived staging. It's striking how openly the film draws those visual references.
The downside: Mufasa's death is one of the most viewing-shaping moments in the lives of millions of children, and the film does not soften it. Whether that's a virtue or not depends on the parent.