Regular readers know my opinion on the “Lion King is Hamlet” issue. King is killed by his brother, son must go on hero’s journey and eventually regain the crown. Boom, Hamlet. Timon and Pumbaa are kind of like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, other than the fact that they’re his friends and not spies for the bad guy, I suppose … and Zazu is the Polonius character even though he doesn’t have any children, doesn’t end up dead… you get the idea. We focus on the facts that support our case and ignore the ones that don’t. Like politics.
Well, the bombshell from the creators this week is that Scar and Mufasa aren’t brothers. That’s not how the dynamics work in lion prides. They are not from the same gene pool. Mufasa calls Scar “brother,” this is true, but you don’t need me to cite every time a Shakespearean character calls somebody “cousin,” do you?