When it comes to Shakespeare adaptation, one movie is usually always up for debate. It also happens to be one of my favorite movies. It was also the first movie I ever saw. And that movie would be The Lion King. I always hear from people that “Did you know that The Lion King is actually Hamlet?” I also hear from other people that “You know… The Lion King really isn’t Hamlet; it’s actually a rip-off of a Japanese manga called Kimba the White Lion.” I have always wanted to see if the movie is an adaptation of Hamlet. So is The Lion King is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet?
Before we can answer that question, we must look at the theory of adaptation as a whole. There are many different schools of thought in adaptation. One school of thought is that an adaptation has to stick with the source material word for word. That there should be no deviation from the original text and it should be quoted word for word. An example of this kind of adaptation would be Kenneth Brannagh’s Hamlet film.
Another school of thought is that adaptation is “anything you can get away with.”(Fortier 2) That Shakespeare adaptations are not just adaptations of his plays, they can be of Shakespeare’s life, of the types of characters he created. That an…show more content… Yes, both are the villains of their respective pieces, but both are very different. For one thing, Claudius feels guilt. After the Mousetrap play, he begins monologuing about his guilt and begins praying for forgiveness. “O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven; It hath the primal eldest curse upon’t, A brother’s murther.” (Hamlet 92) Scar on the other hand, feels no guilt. In fact, he gloats about it to Simba during their final battle at the end of the movie. “I…killed…Mufasaaaa!” (Lion King) Yet, even though these villains are very different, Scar is a Shakespearian villain all his own. He is in more in the league with Richard III than Claudius. He enjoys how evil and monster-ish he