It's a notion that contains a few crumbs of truth, but also a host of misconceptions.At the risk of painting with too broad a brush, critics — simply by virtue of seeing so many productions in a particular field — are almost by definition a little out of step. Because they see everything (or as much as is humanly possible), they're generally predisposed to look for that which is different, novel or otherwise distinctive.That's a difficult bar to achieve when remaking anything, especially an animated movie that's essentially just being redone using a different animation technique. From that perspective, "The Lion King" is as much a consumer product as it is a movie.Why another "Lion King" some have asked, 25 years later? Because audiences often seek familiar experiences, especially when it means sharing a story with their kids. Whether it's "Star Wars" or Batman, people who enjoyed those franchises in their youth not only tend to still like them, but relish the opportunity to share them with their kids.So is its success — with an estimated $185-million debut weekend in North America, a box-office feast fit for a you know what — a rebuke to critics, or at least, those who panned it, yielding tepid averages on review-aggregation sites? Not really.For starters, it's always dicey inferring a connection between making a lot of money and quality. McDonald's sells millions of burgers, but that doesn't necessarily make them good for you, or worthy of a four-star rating.Second, it's faulty to assume that critics who panned the movie were either rooting against it or felt their negative opinions would dissuade people inclined to see it.Indeed, the reality of modern criticism means writing about films and TV shows that are essentially review-proof, as well as showering praise (occasionally) on smaller projects with scant hope of garnering big crowds.There is, perhaps, an "old man yells at cloud" quality to lamenting the studios' reliance on remakes, reboots and revivals, as some early reviews did. Disney made "The Lion King" for the same reason it did "Beauty and the Beast" and will do "The Little Mermaid" — not to ruin or raid your childhood, but because it thinks it can make a buck off of it. That's hardly new, and as studios try to cut through the content clutter, even less likely to change.Viewed that way, it's possible to accept and even enjoy the simplicity of something like this latest "Lion King" without seeing anything remotely exciting about it, and nothing wrong with trying to temper the expectations of those hoping to be wowed. In fact, critiRead More – Source

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