Despite making over $1.8 billion at the box office, the 2019 Lion King remake was not fully appreciated by all audiences. Many critics took aim at the lack of facial expressions. In response to the criticism artist Nikolay Mochkin and Instagram user @jonty_pressinger worked together to redo parts of the movie with deepfake style technology to give the characters more expressive range.
The result has been hailed by some as a success with people asking the duo to remake the entire movie in this style. Others have claimed the 2019 version was supposed to be live action and more realistic; that this attempt to add expression missed the point.
Yes, the original release of "The Lion King" was 25 years ago.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 12 2019, @05:58PM
No, just do an image search for "happy lion" or "sad lion" or "angry lion." You can see plenty of examples of them showing emotion that we would recognize as such. In addition, a lot of that comes from small touches and the eye shape. It isn't the photorealism providing too much detail that is the problem, it is the bad animation that lacks detail that is the problem.