The Lion King II: Simba's Pride

So, on Monday I spent a bit of time with my cousins.  For a bit we watched The Lion King II.  And yep, it's a sequel alright.  Lion King: excellent movie.  Lion King II: premise is alright for a movie, but the songs especially made me want to rip my ears out.

Anyway, it was interesting to hear some Shakespeare in it.  First, here's the basic premise of the movie.  You have the Pridelanders under Simba, and those who had followed Scar were exiled.  They are the Outcasts.  Kovu had been chosen by Scar to succeed him before his death.  Now, near the beginning of the movie, Kovu and Simba's daughter (yep, don't remember her name, so I guess that shows what I REALLY cared for the movie overall...) meet, but Kovu gets busted because he is an Outcast who happens to be in the Pridelands after he and the daughter nearly get eaten by crocodiles.  So, as Simba is talking about judgement and the price of an Outcast coming into the Pridelands, Kovu's mother says something along the lines of "He's just a young cub, but if you have to have your pound of flesh..."  Hmmm.  Interesting.

So, here is Kovu just a bit before the "pound of flesh" comment.

I can definitely see this movie as a bit of a mix between elements of both Romeo and Juliet (since the two lions  are from "warring factions") and The Merchant of Venice (it's pretty clear-cut in the above paragraph why).  So, my level of respect for the movie definitely went up a bit after I realized that.  But it still isn't anywhere near the Hamlet-esque Lion King.  I mean, you even have the littler elements represented!  For example, Claudius sets up the fencing scene of the play, and he even poisons Laertes' sword.  In the end, it comes back full circle and he dies with that sword--so all his plans and all the elements of the plan came back to kill him.  With Scar, it was the hyenas.  He used them to chase Simba away and increase his power, etc., but in the end they were the ones who turned on him and killed him.  I thought parallels like that that were more hidden were pretty cool.

And now, just because it was right under the picture I used above (it must be a sign!) I'll put this here for the girls.  This is somebody's rendition of Kovu as a human: