1994 remains a very special year not only for Zimmer fans, but for all the film music fans and the world of the film score itself. It was with this year that came one of the most wonderful (and my current number one favourite) film scores of Hans Zimmer, The Lion King. The first animated score by maestro Zimmer, this magnificent masterpiece captures musically not only the life of the young future king Simba, but the magnificence of the vast, sweeping lands of Africa and its wonderful flora and fauna. Boasting a most diverse range of instruments in its orchestra, both Western and traditional African, this great score doesn't seem it was composed in just three weeks, which is the truth. Zimmer himself has admitted that he could have perfected everything if he had more time. But what a score he has produced even in this short time! The score not only fits the movie like a charm, but is a most wonderful standalone listen on its own.
Very sadly, this is also one of the worst treated scores in the history of film music. Fans have widely argued that the four short tracks released on the regular soundtrack are just not enough to get a good picture of the score, with three fourths of the wonderful highlights of the film left out. To add insult to injury, not a single second of extra score was released with the 2003 Special Edition soundtrack, which only featured a new (and in my honest opinion, unnecessary) song from the DVD and also a new Elton John remix of the famous Can You Feel The Love Tonight. But the meagre sixteen minutes of score on the soundtrack are a most wonderful experience for every fan of film music!
Despite Hans delivering a great score for us all to relish, it is very sad to see what treatment Walt Disney Records gave to it. Sixteen minutes of heavily edited and cut material from different parts of the movie just isn't the way to go. And so, the fan community has been forced to resort to less than legal methods to listen to the massive amounts of unreleased material on a bootleg circulating around for a while. Sadly, this bootleg not only has less than average quality, but it features terrible mono sound due to apparent improper ripping in many excellent cues, such as the stampede scene.
The Lion King is one of the finest scores by maestro Zimmer and it is nothing less than a disgrace that this is the kind of treament it has got yet even after fourteen years of release of the film. I sincerely hope a music label comes to the rescue of this sadly neglected gem and does justice to it by giving it the complete release it more than deserves one day, as soon as possible.
Overall rating: 5
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