I love both TLK and JEL, but I prefer JEL because it chooses a deep and meaningful theme and follows through with it. I also like how it goes more in-depth on the whole Circle of Life thing. True, they had a whole song dedicated to it in TLK, and Mufasa had his father/son speech, but after that, it's never really mentioned again and it all becomes Hamlet-with-big-cats from there.
TLKs theme is deep and meaningful, but it seems to kind of botch it at the end and not follow through. I mean, it's all about taking responsibility and accepting the consequences of your actions. If TLK had followed through with that, Simba would have acknowledged his mistake, learned from it, and taken the throne. But he DIDN'T really kill his father, so there was no lesson to learn or reason to change, so the whole 'taking responsibility' theme that TLK had been really stressing up to that point was all for naught.
And am I the only one who thought it was REALLY messed up that no one took Simba's side when Scar first told everyone that Simba supposedly killed Mufasa? I mean, were they really going to trust Scar's word over Simbas?
I dunno. I'm ranting. -_-;
