Movie Moment Monday - The Stampede

This is the latest entry in a series in which I present one of my favorite scenes in film history. Each scene will be posted during the first work day of every week, thus making it Movie Moment Monday.

Disney had an amazing run in the 90s. And one of the strongest, if not the strongest, movies they made is The Lion King from 1994.
One of the reasons it's so amazing is its innovative and gorgeous animation. According to the film notes (scroll down to the Technological Innovations section), Disney was experimenting with computer animation on scenes in Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin before they used it in The Lion King.
The most impressive and visually pleasing scene in The Lion King is the stampede scene. In the notes linked above, CGI supervisor Scott Johnston talks about how difficult the scene would have been without using computers.
"Occasionally, there's an effect that the directors want in a film that would be virtually impossible to do with traditional animation techniques," Johnston said. "That's where computer animation can sometimes make a difference. A stampede of thousands of wildebeests would be too laborious to create by hand but animators working with computers can figure out what the behavior of the animal is and replicate it. We can also create all the camera angles that the scene requires and match them to the landscape of the environment."
The animators for this movie were doing things that hadn't been done yet. When you watch this scene you can see the sophistication of the artwork. When the shot scales the wall of a cliff and then opens up on to a field of wildebeests, it's breath taking. It really makes you appreciate the two years it took the animators to create the 2-and-a-half minute stampede.


The Players

Young Simba - Jonathan Taylor Thomas

Scar - Jeremy Irons

Mufasa - James Earl Jones

Zazu - Rowan Atkinson

Shenzai - Whoopi Goldberg

Banzai - Cheech Marin

Hans Zimmer - Composer

The Set Up

First of all SPOILER ALERT if you haven't seen this movie. Second of all, SEE THIS MOVIE if you haven't seen this movie.

To put it briefly, Mufasa is the King and Simba is his young son who is kind of grounded for entering an elephant graveyard which did not please his father. We quickly realize Mufasa's brother Scar is an evil sort. In this scene Scar plans to use his hyenas and a wild pack of wildebeests to get rid of both Mufasa and Simba. His plan is to kill Mufasa and make Simba think it was his fault and then tell Simba to flee.

If you've seen the movie, you know Scar's plan is successful. It's one of the most powerful scenes in any animated movie. The creators really deserve a lot of appreciation for the effort they put in to it. But so does composor Hans Zimmer. Elton John and Tim Rice got a lot of publicity for the songs in the movie, but Zimmer did the score and its as important to the movie, and especially the stampede scene, as anything.

Put together the innovative animation, Zimmer's amazing score and the voice actors' work and you have a scene which will give you goosebumps, make you cry and simply fill you with awe. 'Tis below.

It's still something special after almost 20 years and since it was so groundbreaking at the time, it'll remain impressive for decades to come.