The 1 Scene In 2019’s Live-Action The Lion King That Is Real & Not CGI

2019’s The Lion King faced plenty of criticism for its CGI retelling of the classic Disney story, but the film was still an enormous force to be reckoned with at the box office that helped bolster the company’s continuing trend of live-action remakes of their most popular animated works. The 2019 remake of The Lion King again tells of Simba’s journey with brand-new voice performances and visual choices that give it a unique style, separating it from its 1994 counterpart, despite many similarities between the two Lion King adaptations.

The decision to retell The Lion King using CGI characters and locations was a controversial one, but it ultimately paid off with some beautiful scenery and more sprawling landscapes that helped emphasize the pure scale of this narrative. There were understandable complaints about this decision (which is why the Mufasa sequel is supposedly changing this visual choice), although many audiences may not have noticed that one scene in the movie didn’t actually include any CGI at all.

The Lion King’s Opening Scene Was Practically Filmed In Africa

One Single Shot In 2019’s The Lion King Uses No CGI Imagery At All

The opening scene of Jon Favreau’s Lion King remake is the only part of the movie that wasn’t created using computer imagery. The sequence was shot on location in Africa, depicting the terrain of the deserts and the plains exactly as they are in real life. The director recently revealed this on X, as the scene is so brief that it’s almost impossible to notice, and he hadn’t been brought up before.

The decision to open The Lion King with a real shot of the African plains is a smart one that helps build the film’s realism and gradually introduces the audience to its CGI style. Without this small moment of natural imagery, it would have been more difficult to get used to the uncanny animals and their computer-animated movements. This shot places the audience straight into the location and makes that transition less jarring.

Why 2019’s The Lion King Only Includes One Real Shot

It Would Have Been Difficult For The “Live-Action” Lion King To Keep Up This Style

Although the inclusion of this real-life shot is a nice touch, it would have been too difficult to adopt the same approach for the scenes where animals are involved, which is the majority of the film. VFX artists have mixed opinions on The Lion King‘s use of CGI, but admittedly, the film made the right decision of sticking to one medium rather than flicking between CGI and real animals. Since there are no animals involved in this opening shot, it was a smart and feasible decision to ditch the CGI for this The Lion King moment, but any longer would have been difficult.