Originally Posted By Rebekah This topic is for discussion of the 1/21/2003 news item <b><a href="" target="_blank">LP: Disney's Lion King Special Edition DVD Features New Sequence</a></b> <I>101 Dalmatians II: Patch's London Adventure</I> featured a preview for the October 2003 video and Disney dvd release of <I>The Lion King: Special Edition</I> which announced a new sequence with all new animation featuring the song Morning Report.
Originally Posted By ToonKirby I still have strong reservations about the revelation of the new song added ... and its interesting that they tout "The Morning Report" as a 'brand new song' ... it's been performed in the stage version for 5 years now, hardly 'brand new' ...
Originally Posted By ToonKirby D'oh! Actually, I would have to agree. Zazu's portion of the song is clever, but they made a mistake by musicalizing the 'pouncing lesson', which comes off as just plain silly. And why does Mufasa sing the final chorus with Zazu??? It makes no sense. I have a feeling they were compelled to use one of the new Tim Rice/Elton John songs from the show, so it could have been worse ... it could have been "The Madness of King Scar" (shudder). A better choice would have been "Shadowlands", which could have easily been placed into the film without taking away from any of the other scenes, and also would have given more depth to the character of Nala.
Originally Posted By electra I agree, Shadowlands is a gorgeous song. But why are they adding a new segment now for the video when they could have had it in the Imax release?
Originally Posted By JeffG I agree that "Shadowlands" would have been a better addition. Another good addition might have been "They Live In You", which would have also had the advantage of being another one where they could potentially have used some of the existing animation. I suspect that "The Morning Report" was chosen, though, because it was one of the two new songs written for the stage show by Elton John and Tim Rice. That likely makes it more marketable. I definitely am surprised that they didn't make the revision for the IMAX release. It makes me wonder if the segment didn't work that well and they thought it would harm the reissue. Since the DVD will almost certainly also contain the unmodified version of the film, the new segment shouldn't hurt sales even if it isn't very good. -Jeff
Originally Posted By ToonKirby "They Live in You" would be a good choice ... except they used "He Lives in You" in "Lion King II: Simba's Pride". And Rice and John actually wrote 3 new songs for the Broadway show: "The Morning Report", "Chow Down" (the hyenas) and "The Madness of King Scar" (if you can call that a song ... ) I have a feeling you're right about it not being in the IMAX release ... it probably didn't turn out that well, so their just adding it to the DVD as an extra enticement to buy it, not that it really needs it.
Originally Posted By cstephens Please, no "chow down". One of the parts of the stage show that I was really disappointed in. /cs
