Hamlet_And_The_Lion_King

Hamlet And The Lion King There is no doubt that today's entertainment has lost most of its touch with the more classical influences of its predecessors. However, in mid-1994, Walt Disney Pictures released what could arguably be the best animated feature of all time in The Lion King. With a moral base unlike most of the movies released at the time, TLK placed a children's facade on a very serious story of responsibility and revenge. However, this theme is one of the oldest in history, and it is not the least apparent in one of the oldest works of literature by The Bard himself, William Shakespeare. The work that Disney's TLK parallels is none other than Hamlet: Prince of Denmark, and the film shadows this work so closely, that parallels between the main characters themselves are wildly apparent. This very close comparison has led critics "to compare the movie to Hamlet in the importance of its themes" (Schwalm 1). But with a closer inspection of the characters themselves do we see just how apparent these similarities are. In The Lion King, the role of the young prince whose father is murdered is played by a cub named Simba, whose naivete procures him more than his hamlet, king, scar, simba, one, claudius, characters, pride, both, timon, pumbaa, lion, each, sarabi, prince, literature, another, although, work, time, story, responsibility, queen, past, mufasa, main, between, works, while, upon, own, over, father, direct, denmark, actions