Circle of Life

It's, like, the very beginning, and, um...

Sorry, Mufasa is, like, holding up Simba to the whole world, like, Circle of Life.

It's so exciting.

[laughs] Here she is.

And of course, every one of these characters is designed also by, by the artists over there at MPC and overseen by, uh, the production team working on the film.

Now, if you're familiar with the original Lion King, you could see that this sequence here, the Circle of Life, is one where we really tried to adhere as much as possible to the original shots to let the audience know, who are fans of the original, that we really were gonna take, uh, go to great efforts to, to honor the original.

O- of course, there's a lot of shots in here that are different, but we found that, uh, transposing the 2D shots, uh, to 3D and to photorealism didn't always translate perfectly.

And so there are things like the fruit that gets broken open with the juice inside.

And so we didn't wanna make it, uh, we didn't wanna depart from reality more than we had to.

And so in that case, we switched it for pigments in, um, that were in, in, in different plant life there and things that you would really find in nature, and we use that later in, when Rafiki's actually painting on the tree.

And so this Circle of Life sequence, uh, ending with this big drum boom, uh, that's, by the way, that, I got to play the, the big drum, the base drum in Hans Zimmer's orchestra, and I got to hit that, that drum.

That was my big contribution.

Right.

Imagine if The Lion King didn't open with the explosive, visually stunning "Circle of Life"...

Oh, man

...

And the-

Do they do Circle of Life? The Circle of Life.

Of course.

Of course, and the voices are amazing, and I told you, I, when I was at the Colts game, Simba, the guy who plays adult Simba, uh, in The Lion King, did the national anthem.

We're discussing the landmark Julie Taymor production, The Lion King.

Song is, of course, "Circle of Life."

[singing] There is more to see than can ever be seen.

More to do than can ever be done.

More to find than can ever be found.

But the sun rolling high through the sapphire sky keeps great and small on the endless round.

It's the circle of life.

And it moves us all, through the circle.

Man

... like Circle of Life and Hakuna Matata-

How is there no Lion King?

Yeah, how is there no Circle of Life at all? That's crazy.

Or A Whole New World from Beauty and the Beast.

Or Eye to Eye.

No, but the one.

Circle of Life?

Yeah.

Yeah.

On a path unwinding.

Not bad.

It's the circle, the circle of life.

And like obviously I'm better than the traditional singer, but I'm much better than that.