Bad Disney sequels: Lion King 2: Simba's Pride

I love The Lion King. It really is my favorite movie of all time.  Seriously.  I love the characters and story and music.  I finally got to see the stage musical last year which made me love the movie even more. 

But I don't like everything associated with The Lion King.  I never really got into the Timon and Pumbaa tv series but I really dislike Lion King 2: Simba's Pride.

Ok, for those who might not know, in 1994 Disney made a direct to video sequel to Aladdin titled Return of Jafar which set off a trend of raping our favorite animated Disney classics with direct to video sequels, midquels and pilots to possible TV series based on animated classics.  These were made by DisneyToon Studios who were the team responsible for many Disney TV series hence why  most of these look like TV shows and have a TV show-like plot which makes sense as some of these existed as pilot episodes for a possible TV series.  But in the end, they mostly existed as a cash grab for Disney to make money off lazy parents who wanted a baby sitter for an hour and a half and as it goes with children's entertainment "who cares if it's crap, it's just for my kids."  Isn't it funny that entertainment is the only thing in our kid's life where we settle for crappy or half assed?

But I'm here to focus on Lion King 2:Simba's Pride.  Of the direct to DVD sequel dump, this is actually one of the more "liked" ones, or at least not as awful as some of the other ones.

So the movie opens, once again with the animals of the savanna going to see the new "cub lifting" ceremony of Simba and Nala's cub as we saw at the end of The Lion King.  The song "He Lives in You" is a decent song as it's the only song in this movie taken from the stage musical.  Then the mood is changed when it pans over to Timon and Pumbaa standing there babbling on a bit about "the little guy" only to have Rafiki giggle and say "It is a girl."  "GIRL!?" cry Timon and Pumbaa, who faint and cut to the title screen.  So this gives you an idea of what kind of tone this movie is going for.

Cut to sometime later when Simba's daughter, Kiara is now a rambunctious cub eager to explore and frolic in the grass but suddenly daddy Simba stops her because now he's the stereotypical overprotective father who's doesn't want his daughter wandering off because of "danger?"  At this point it's not specified what's so dangerous out there and the audience is thinking "are the hyenas still around? Just tell her to stay away from the shadowy area.  So Simba finally lets Kiara go out and play but sends Timon and Pumbaa to follow her, because they were popular, they were the comic relief and needed something to do.  Of course Kiara sees them, there's some stupid scene of them fighting over bugs, Kiara wanders away because they're totally inept and you wonder how the hell they were able to raise Simba to adulthood (Lion King 1 1/2 kind of addresses this).  Kiara then reaches the "Outlands." Which is the where the Pridelands end and it turns into desert.  I guess this is where Simba ended up after he escaped the brier patch and ran off into the sunset after Mufasa's death.  There she meet Kovu, a cub who is Scar's ADOPTED son, which the movie drives in like a wooden steak.  They meet up, escape a bunch of crocodiles and start to become friends, when Simba shows up, followed by Kovu's mother(?) and Scar's wife(?) Zira, whose name in Swahili basically means "hate." Subtle.   This is where the movie gets really confusing. Zira was a follower of Scar and her group of lionesses were banished from the Pridelands after his defeat.  Huh?  Who are these guys?  When did this banishment happen?  Why did Scar not sire any cubs of his own?  The same issue comes up in Little Mermaid 2 where we learn that Ursula had a sister we never knew about, but I'll save that for another day.  Well obviously Kovu can't be related to Scar because we can't have Kiara falling in love with her cousin. This isn't Game of Thrones.  So they part ways, Simba tries to have the wise father talk with Kiara but it's easy to see he's not Mufasa and instead we get the "We are One" song. 

Meanwhile Zira takes Kovu back to the giant termite mound her pride lives in where we meet her kids(?), Vitani and Nuka. Now here's what fans have come up with to explain  Zira and her lionesses were part of  Mufasa's pride and were loyal to Scar so when Simba defeated Scar, they were booted out of the Pridelands.  It's believed that Vitani and Nuka are Scar's biological children especially Nuka who looks like a sickly, scraggly version of Scar and voiced by Andy Dick (one of many reasons to despise this movie) and it's thought that Nuka was seen as too crazy and sickly to be Scar's heir and Kovu was some orphaned cub they took in.  So that's what most fans can come up with.  After Zira chews out Kovu for interacting with Simba's daughter and how Simba killed Scar though we all know, it wasn't Simba, it was the hyenas though this could be explained that Zira purposely lies to remind her pride that Simba is the enemy.  As for those hyenas, they get explained off in one line by Nuka, that they just "ran off."  At least they got an explanation as opposed to poor Sarabi, Simba's mother who is just not around.  It's assumed she died of old age (as I heard her voice actress died).  You'd think Kiara would like to spend time with her grandmother but the movie has a hard enough time finding stuff for Zazu, Timon, Pumbaa and Rafiki to do.  But getting back to the plot, Zira gets the brilliant idea that when Kovu is grown and trained to be a killer, he'll infiltrate Simba's Pride asking to join, then assassinate Simba from the inside.  Zira sings her equivalent of Be Prepared but without nearly the amount of spectacle.  No goose stepping lioness parade here.

Then we come to another issue Lion King 2 has.  Rafiki.  In the original movie, Rafiki was an interesting character in that he didn't speak much, and when he did, it was usually very short and simple and somewhat cryptic and most important, he got to the point.  Here, he does not shut up.  He's in his tree having a conversation with Mufasa's spirit about Kiara and the rival pride and through the magic of blowing leaves Mufasa shows Rafiki that the way to bring about peace is to get Kovu and Kiara to hook up.  A plan that even Rafiki thinks it stupid, but plans to go through with it because the ghost of dead Mufasa told him to?

Fast forward a couple years and Kovu has now been groomed into a cold hearted assassin with one mission: "kill Simba." Their master plan involves creating a fire in the Pridelands, getting Kiara trapped so that Kovu can save her, be accepted into Simba's Pride so he can get close and kill Simba.  It just so happens that this is the same day Kiara is going out on her first solo hunt.  Wow, that worked out well.  Kiara, now grown, asks her father to let her do this on her own.  Of course Simba lies and, no sooner, is she out of site, then he sends Timon and Pumbaa off to follow her, you know because that worked so well the LAST time. She only almost got eaten by crocodiles and whatnot.  But once again, we went too long without Timon and Pumbaa's signature comic relief I guess.  During that time we also see that Kiara is a terrible huntress because she's rustling grass or stepping on rocks and scaring the prey off.  Of course Timon and Pumbaa blow their cover, Kiara gets mad and runs off right into the area where Zira and company are setting things ablaze.  So, as per the evil plan, Kovu rescues Kiara, who remembers him from that one afternoon when they were cubs. Simba and the gang show up having seen the smoke off in the distance.  Simba immediately goes into dickish overprotective dad mode, but Zazu and Nala point out that Kovu did rescue his daughter.  Nice to see Zazu got something to say. So Simba resentfully lets Kovu join but won't let him sleep in the house.  Kovu does offer to give Kiara a hunting lesson in the morning.

That night Simba has a weird dream about Mufasa's death only for things to change to Kovu shoving Simba off the cliff.  The next morning Simba goes for a drink and we see the only time Kovu makes any attempt to kill him only to be interrupted by Kiara for her hunting lesson.  The hunting lesson is short as they run into Timon and Pumbaa again and end up messing around chasing birds, then getting chased by rhinos where they all hide in a small cave where Kiara and Kovu sort of touch lips and suddenly they're in love because, Disney.  Yep, apparently despite years of harsh military training to be a cold blooded killer, can all be reversed by one day of chasing birds with a cute girl.  We jump to that evening where Kovu and Kiara are stargazing and Kovu goes all mopey and emo about Scar meanwhile Simba is spying on them and now torn because his little girl fell in love with "a guy from the wrong side of the tracks."  OH MY GOD!! Now I get why this is so popular.  Whiny teenage girl.  Mopey emo, brooding bad boy.  THIS IS TWILIGHT WITH LIONS!!  Ok, I know this came out years before Twilight was a thing but the formula has been done to death.  It makes sense as the first Lion King was loosely based on Hamlet so this one decided to go the Romeo and Juliet route.  But seriously how many movies, books, TV shows have done the good-girl-from-well-to-do-family -falls-for-bad-boy-from-wrong-side-of-the-tracks-and-she's-the-one-who-turns-him-good story?  I don't know, but somehow it keeps working.

So Edward lion starts to walk off and almost tells Bella lion what he was trained to do, starts to walk off only for Rafiki to show up, and now he gets a song titled Upendi which does not mean "love" as the song says rather in Swahili means "champion."  It's a pretty dorky, sappy song where our teenage lion lovers ride around on a heart shaped leaf boat, eating passion fruit while other animal couples dance around.  So along with being a Shaman, fortune teller and medicine man, Rafiki is also the local matchmaker.  But hey, during that song, Simba decides to stop being a complete ass and lets Kovu come in the cave to sleep, but I'm sure he wouldn't allow any lion hanky panky in his cave.  Of course Vitani is spying on Kovu and realizes he's not going through with the plan and of course Zira's pissed off.

The next morning Simba takes Kovu for a walk through the burned ruins to talk to him and tell him how bad Scar really was, Kovu realizes that maybe he's on the wrong team and everything's going well. Then Zira and her army show up and try to make it look like this ambush was Kovu's idea which Kovu flat out tells Simba, he had nothing to do with this but it doesn't matter, they attack, Kovu tries to help but gets knocked out. Simba gets chased into a dammed off river area, but manages to escape, but not without him knocking down a log that kills Nuka. That's one good thing this movie has.  We get to watch Andy Dick die.  And after all his annoying shtick ("roasty toasty princess! OW THESE TERMITES!!" Just Shut up!), it feels so good knowing you'll never have to listen to him anymore in this movie. Imagine if that had happened to Jar Jar.  Kovu shows up and Zira smacks him in the face leaving a scar on his left eye just to drive in the idea he's Scar's heir.  Zira blames Kovu for Nuka's death.  Kovu says "f--- you! I'm outta here."  Zira FINALLY does what she should've done all along, rally her pride to just go invade the Pridelands and take it by force.

Meanwhile Kovu returns to Pride Rock only to have Simba return to pompus dick mode and boot him out without letting him defend himself. Oh Simba, don't you remember when Scar was trying to accuse you of murdering Mufasa and you weren't allowed to speak?  You might be a hypocrite or something.  For some reason all the animals of the savannah showed up.  I guess they have town meetings periodically and they're there to be the chorus to "One of Us," the song that's sung as Kovu is running away being banished.  Kiara makes an attempt to reason with Simba, but of course he's back in dick father mode and grounds her. She yells back "you'll never be Mufasa!"  But within a few minutes has snuck out the back door of Pride Rock and run off to find Kovu.  And apparently despite all those animals hanging out to sing, none of them saw her escape.

Kiara wonders around to a sappy love song titled "Love will find a way" eventually finds Kovu and they frolic for a bit.  Kovu then makes the proposition to just leave and not deal with their stupid parents, but Kiara decides to be mature and realizes it's their responsibility to get their families to make peace and running away won't solve anything.   Imagine if Romeo and Juliet had done that instead of committing suicide.  So I give the movie credit for taking from the original in that you can't run away from your problems and eventually you have to face up to responsibility.

So cut back to Pride Rock, now at night and raining and it's clear a couple hours have passed and only NOW does anyone realize Kiara is gone.  Oh well we had to have another morsel of Timon and Pumbaa shtick fighting over who lost her despite Simba not telling either of them to watch her this time.  Zazu, getting something to do, is the one who tells everyone that the Outlanders are coming for a fight and then he's sent off again until the end of the movie.

So now we have our big climatic fight between two warring prides of lions. Remember how awesome the fight with Scar and the hyenas were with the brush around Pride Rock on fire?  Yeah, that doesn't happen here.  They battle is on some flat rocky plain with the "bad" lions covered in mud so you can tell everyone apart.  Instead of using their bowling for buzzards tactics they did on the hyenas, Timon and Pumbaa get one big fart joke and Rafiki's cool ninja monkey skills are absent as he is.  Then Simba and Zira face off and they're just about to have a cool slow motion fight like Simba and Scar did when Kovu and Kiara interrupt and stare down their warring parents.  Then comes the biggest retcon of a Disney movie moral.  Kiara tells Simba to stop this fighting because "they are us! What differences do you see?"  The idea being is that they're all lions and they're all the same.  It shouldn't matter as long as they're not a bunch of slobbering, mangy, stupid hyenas right?  So everyone realizes that war is bad and we should all get along as long as we're the same species.  Of course Zira won't let it go and she ends up doing herself in and falling off a cliff into a river. Guess she was beyond redemption despite Kiara's half-hearted attempt to save her.  It's also sad that Kovu was more upset over his annoying step brother dying than his adopted mother.  Oh well, he's got a new, better family anyway.

So everything is happy. Kovu and the rest of the rival lionesses are fully integrated into Simba's Pride.  No one had a baby for Rafiki to hold up but they all get to stand on Pride Rock and roar.  Then the clouds part and you hear Mufasa say "Well done. My son. We are one."  Why the hell, Mufasa, are you happy with Simba!?"  He did nothing!!  Where's the pat on the back for you granddaughter?!  She's the one who got everyone to make peace!!  You're son spent the entire movie being a pompous, narrow minded dickhead!!  For someone who was so wise, you sure are stupid in the afterlife.

Still, despite all these complaints, it's easy to see why this direct to DVD sequel is liked more than many of them.  The animation is well done compared to the Aladdin, Hunchback, and Atlantis sequels.  Also compared to other Disney sequels featuring kids of the original leads, Kovu and Kiara have their own story as opposed to the Little Mermaid and Lady and the Tramp sequels where they basically just recycle the first movie plot with the kids learning the same lesson.  Still I think it gets way more credit than it deserves given that it's still the clichéd good girl falls in love with bad boy and turns him around plot and it's easy to see the places where the writers were trying to give the supporting cast things to do.  You could remove Timon and Pumbaa from this and not much would change. Even more so for characters like Zazu and Nala.  Yet we get a whole bunch of new villains that apparently existed but we didn't know about until now.

At least John Lasseter put an end to terrible direct to DVD sequels but maybe I'll go after a few more.  I caught some of them on TV and I would like to rip a few more apart.