Talk:The Lion King (1994 film)/@comment-25692211-20151101113021/@comment-25692211-20151114185045

But one thing I think Frozen definetly beats Lion King with is it's message.

Frozen teaches the idea that familial love is just as, if not more true than romantic love, but romantic love is still okay. And it teaches the message in a straightforward way which is done really well, with Elsa and Anna's sisterhood being the thing that saves them both, while still letting Anna get a love interest.

The Lion King has one of the worst cases of a Broken Aesop I've ever seen in a Disney movie. Rafiki teaches Simba that it's okay to make mistakes as long as you learn from them. Simba thus decides to quit running and forgive himself before confronting Scar. Despite Simba's efforts to put his guilt behind him, Scar takes advantage of the fact that Nala, Sarabi, and the other lions still don't know the true circumstances of Mufasa's death to turn them against Simba, which quickly leads to Simba falling prey to his guilt once again. No one rallies behind him until  Scar admits publicly he killed Mufasa. I think the story would have been more powerful if Simba was indirectly responsible for Mufasa's death. Scar would have still organised it, but Simba himself would actually play a role instead of simply being told that he played a role. He's obviously traumatised by it, and we would sympathise with the character more because we know  he  genuinely   didn't mean to do it and want him to get over the guilt. But the fact that we know he's not responsible and that Scar reveals it for no reason other than for Simba to be let off so quickly makes the ending feel cheap.

As said by the great Nostalgia Critic.

When he does go back to face his fears, his fears start to win. Everything he was taught before is suddenly working against him. Nobody even gets behind him, nobody's standing up for him. That is, until it turns out he didn't commit the crime that he thought he did. I guess the moral of the story is "never take responsibility for what you've done because nobody will be behind you unless it turns out you didn't really do it". Yeah, how is this confronting his past? It's a past that never happened, so it doesn't matter. And even when he thought it did happen, the movie didn't support him, almost as if the film was saying if he did accidentally kill his father he deserves to die. Nobody's on his side until he comes out and says "haha wasn't me", and, I'm sorry, that's a serious flaw."