However, tribal leaders had other thoughts. He is one of 300 such beautiful animals in the world and officials wanted to release him into a wildlife park in Limpopo. In this case, Mufasa was bought illegally and taken from his owner and brought to the Wild For Life rehab centre in Rustenburg in 2015. What was most striking was the complete disconnect in how such kills are seen by hunters versus the public at large, as shown by the subsequent controversy of a Idaho hunter taunting animal advocates and other such hunts ( here and here and here and here and here). We previously followed the controversy over the shooting of “Cecil the Lion” by American dentist Walter Palmer from Minnesota. I often hiked considerable distances to see these animals in the wild and cannot imagine finding joy in killing them. I just do not understand the thrill kill in shooting a beautiful animal. I simply fail to see why it is impressive or thrilling to shoot a giraffe or elephant with a high-powered rifle. Now tribal leaders are refusing to give him back and instead want to sell the right to shoot the young lion among eager trophy hunters.Īs many on this blog know, I am no fan of trophy hunting.
His name is Mufasa and he is a rare white lion who was rescued and sent to a rehab center. The latter certainly makes more sense on the surface, given that Mufasa is a king and not a prince, but those aware of its context in Hamlet certainly would've enjoyed the reference.We have yet another disturbing account of a trophy hunt. Some notable things changed and some stayed the same, but along the way, The Lion King ceased being as direct a riff on Hamlet as it was originally, and a casualty of that change was the loss of the " good night sweet prince" line in favor of " long live the king" before Scar kills Mufasa. Hahn wasn't satisfied with the existing Lion King story and insisted that the script be heavily retooled. However, Disney ended up bringing on Don Hahn, who had previously worked on 1991's Beauty and the Beast, in to oversee things as lead producer. The earlier scripts were much more clearly a retelling of Hamlet, and as such, Scar's fateful line before tossing Mufasa down to his death was, " good night sweet prince." That's a lift from the closing scenes of Hamlet, part of what Horatio says to his friend Hamlet as the titular character lays dying in his arms, followed by the also famous line, " and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest." Like many Hollywood films, even some of the most iconic to ever be released, The Lion King went through quite a few script revisions before the final version was settled on. Lion King: Scar Didn't Originally Say "Long Live The King" Before Killing Mufasa Perhaps the most famous sequence in The Lion King sees Scar orchestrate the demise of his brother Mufasa via a fall into a gorge containing stampeding wildebeests, a fall (and stampede) he personally causes, but not before delivering the iconic line " long live the king." However, while fans probably can't imagine the scene any other way, Scar almost said a completely different thing to Mufasa before his death.
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That's not to say that The Lion King is the height of originality, as those who made it readily admit it was influenced by William Shakespeare's immortal play Hamlet, although that's nothing to be ashamed of, as Hamlet has influenced countless films and TV shows. While many still contend that The Lion King ripped off the Japanese animated production Kimba the White Lion - and the stories definitely bear striking similarities - no legal action came from the matter, and it's never really seemed to affect The Lion King's esteem. The Lion King is widely seen as the best Disney movie of the 1990s, and while the decade's animated properties by the company would drop off a bit, that doesn't sap Lion King's greatness.
It's a crowded field when it comes to the title of best Disney animated movie ever made, but in the eyes of many, 1994's The Lion King is arguably the winner, or at least among the top contenders.
The scene in The Lion King where Scar kills Mufasa is famously traumatic for many, but his line before the crime was originally different.