I loved the Lion King when it came out, but I've never lost sight of the simple fact that its story is extremely biased and human-centric: lions good, hyenas bad. This is purely based on human views of the two animals and not at all on their behavior or society. In the wild, hyenas have a complex pack culture dominated by females where, in hard times, they still look after the young first. They are not just scavengers but alpha predators; however, because of their appearance and sound, we revile them. Lions, on the other hand, can be pretty cowardly and callous, and in hard times have been known to kill their cubs to survive, yet are held up as grand and noble beasts based purely on their appearance.
So here we are again with more of the same. Pretty, 'fun' animals good: check. The heroes are a lion, a honey badger, a cheetah, a hippo, and some variety of insect-eating bird. Never mind that hippos are notoriously aggressive and rather disgusting animals, and one of the most feared creatures in Africa.
Ugly animals bad: check. So far the antagonists we have seen include the hyenas, a vulture, and a crocodile. At least in the original movie we had a bad lion and a good warthog (and Poombah is still around, but I think he falls on the side of 'gross is funny').
Also, the Lion Guard consists of five members, only one of which is female, and the leader is naturally male even though it is a female character, his sister, being groomed for leadership. Well, okay, at least his sister is being groomed for leadership, but another female lion cub acted like a stereotypical girl, whining over a broken claw, bugs, and every other little thing, and the sister just had to hurt herself and be rescued.
Oh, and we get casual racism. Simba chastises his son for even thinking of bring non-lions into his Lion Guard. Though the son's decision is eventually vindicated and upheld, this was a very disappointing thing to see from Simba, a character who should know better after his long associating with a certain warthog and meerkat duo.
There's also a lot of music, at least in the pilot. We get a song that is clearly meant to be a successor to Hakuna Matata without really explaining much, and a lot of other songs featuring quite a few trite lyrics that go well with the trite dialogue when they're not singing. The songs and dialogue both seem to rely a lot on repetition to make their points. There's also the frequent scattering of catch phrases throughout; each character seems to have their own African, or perhaps pseudo-African, catchphrase or phrases, which they use with great regularity.
Ultimately, I am unimpressed. This show goes to great lengths to hit all of the old clichés. I could practically just run down a checklist of them. In fact, I believe I just did.
So here we are again with more of the same. Pretty, 'fun' animals good: check. The heroes are a lion, a honey badger, a cheetah, a hippo, and some variety of insect-eating bird. Never mind that hippos are notoriously aggressive and rather disgusting animals, and one of the most feared creatures in Africa.
Ugly animals bad: check. So far the antagonists we have seen include the hyenas, a vulture, and a crocodile. At least in the original movie we had a bad lion and a good warthog (and Poombah is still around, but I think he falls on the side of 'gross is funny').
Also, the Lion Guard consists of five members, only one of which is female, and the leader is naturally male even though it is a female character, his sister, being groomed for leadership. Well, okay, at least his sister is being groomed for leadership, but another female lion cub acted like a stereotypical girl, whining over a broken claw, bugs, and every other little thing, and the sister just had to hurt herself and be rescued.
Oh, and we get casual racism. Simba chastises his son for even thinking of bring non-lions into his Lion Guard. Though the son's decision is eventually vindicated and upheld, this was a very disappointing thing to see from Simba, a character who should know better after his long associating with a certain warthog and meerkat duo.
There's also a lot of music, at least in the pilot. We get a song that is clearly meant to be a successor to Hakuna Matata without really explaining much, and a lot of other songs featuring quite a few trite lyrics that go well with the trite dialogue when they're not singing. The songs and dialogue both seem to rely a lot on repetition to make their points. There's also the frequent scattering of catch phrases throughout; each character seems to have their own African, or perhaps pseudo-African, catchphrase or phrases, which they use with great regularity.
Ultimately, I am unimpressed. This show goes to great lengths to hit all of the old clichés. I could practically just run down a checklist of them. In fact, I believe I just did.