1990's "The Lion King" (left) and 1960's "Kimba the White Lion" (right)
According to two websites, Disney's hit film "The Lion King" is a major rip-off of a preexisting 1960's Japanese cartoon entitled "Kimba the White Lion."
The similarities include, but are not limited to:
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Both films are about lions
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In the 1990's "The Lion King" a lead character is named "Simba" while in the 1960's "Kimba the White Lion" a lead character is named "Kimba" - only one letter is different in the name
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In the 1990's "The Lion King" the lions were originally white albinos, but changed at the last minute, most likely a vain attempt at hiding the infringements.
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Both films have, "A wise monkey character, hyenas as comic-relief villains, a dead father who appears to his son in the clouds, and an older relative (an aunt in "Kimba" and an uncle in "Lion King") who serves as the main antagonist."
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"The cartoons were so similar that when Matthew Broderick was hired to be the voice of Simba he had assumed he was playing Kimba in a theatrical interpretation of 'Kimba the White Lion'."
Disney is currently immersed in scandals, suicides and financial stress, contradicting its claim of being, "The happiest place on Earth." The company has morality issues, which have landed it in court many times for stealing preexisting copyrighted works and using them for films such as "Nemo" "Pirates of the Caribbean" and "Princess Diaries 2" to name a few. Other problems include criminal negligence at Disney Theme parks that resulted in the deaths of a number of visitors.
Hollywood is a town built on criminal copyright infringement, which is expressly forbidden by U.S. law and international legal treaties that America is subject to, as apart of the Berne Convention.
However, it does not stop Hollywood from ripping off copyrights, then buying off some U.S. judges with stocks, favors and funds, to get away with this abhorrent criminal misconduct, frowned upon in the world.
The FBI has deliberately failed in this area for years, in violation of their Congressional mandate, seeing copyright infringement by Hollywood as a corrupt way to put money in the Treasury, ill-gotten funds into stars' pockets and underserved awards on their shelves. What a disgraceful, dishonest farce.
However, it enters even more terrible territory, when religious copyrighted works are pilfered, profaned and secularized by Hollywood, in bids at criminally gaining undue revenue, in deeds that misuse profits meant to go towards producing cures to cancer and AIDS. The government has placed stars too stupid to write their own work, ahead of dying disease sufferers.
Such conduct produces God's disfavor, not His blessing. It's no mystery why Hollywood has been plagued with an unprecedented, unexplained string of woes, troubles and tragedies.
The FBI still believes thievery, such as Hollywood's chronic copyright infringement of numerous writers' works, the Madoff and Stanford cases and many others like it the Federal Bureau of Investigation have looked the other way to for years, is the way to build an economy.
The FBI clearly has not learned from the 2008 financial crisis that was a wake-up call, which means it is destined to happen again and to greater degrees, for harboring such thievery and fraud, deteriorating the progress of hardworking Americans in the corporate sector actually doing work.
What's the sense of having hardworking Americans productively contributing to the economy each day, while allowing one segment of the corporate sector to run loose with thievery and financial fraud, eating away at the nation's collective progress, via the deterioration of valuable assets - not to mention, destroying the nation's name in the business world.
Disney's The Lion King is a total ripoff of "Kimba the White Lion", a Japanese cartoon.
The plot also closely follows Shakespeare's "Hamlet"
"Kimba the White Lion" was a Japanese manga (comic book) from the 1950s that became a cartoon show (anime) in the 1960s. In addition to having a similarly-named protagonist ("Kimba" as opposed to "Simba") the "Kimba" cartoon and "The Lion King" feature extremely similar characters: a wise monkey character, hyenas as comic-relief villains, a dead father who appears to his son in the clouds, and an older relative (an aunt in "Kimba" and an uncle in "Lion King") who serves as the main antagonist.
Early screenshots from preproduction work on "The Lion King" show that Simba was intended to be an albino, just like Kimba. The cartoons were so similar that when Matthew Broderick was hired to be the voice of Simba he had assumed he was playing Kimba in a theatrical interpretation of "Kimba the White Lion".
Ironically, Osamu Tezuka,the creator of "Kimba" and the popular series "Astroboy", drew from Walt Disney's early work as inspiration for his own artistic style, and he even received permission from Walt Disney to make a manga adaptation of Disney's "Bambi".
The Lion King also shares some plot details with Hamlet. Both Simba and Hamlet are on a quest to avenge their fathers and take back their kingdoms. Both had their uncle kill their father and assume power. Both were visited by the ghosts of their fathers to inspire them to take revenge. Thankfully, the similarities don't extend to the end of the story, otherwise the Lion King would (spoiler alert!) end with Simba, Nala, Simba's mom, and Timon and Pumba all dying.
Comment on #2280 (2) - Apr 12, 2010 05:00 PM
