Dark Disney: The Lion King

I'm sure the vast majority of you know that Disney's The Lion King, the company's greatest animated film of all time (I'm sorry, Frozen fans - I loved the movie too, but say it's better than The Lion King and I'll smack you into next week). If you don't know the plot, you have my deepest condolences, because (if you're a student) you had no childhood or you just missed out on a lot in general. But as funny and safari-themed as the movie is, there's a lot of darkness beneath that warm and fuzzy Disney exterior that I certainly never picked up on as a child. Let's discuss some of it, shall we?

1) Those goofy hyenas are sociopaths
Scar's (Claudius's) three carnivorous lackeys provide a great deal of comic relief. They crack dinner jokes, bite their own legs, and shoot the Rowan-Atkinson-voiced hornbill out of a steam cannon. Only that steam cannon was scalding water, and Rowan Atkinson probably got animated third-degree burns and some nerve damage in the deal. And those hyenas were cracking jokes when they were discussing killing and eating the young Simba (Hamlet) and Nala (Ophelia). Five-year-old Brian didn't realize that the funny hyenas were sociopaths who killed for pleasure (and food).

2) Scar's plot
Speaking of the hyenas...Scar essentially turns their clan into his own personal third reich by promising them food and using some pretty awesome chords (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08-uyfp2iPM). As a little kid, I just accepted this: "Alright, he wants to be king. He's going to kill everybody who stands in his way. Makes perfect sense." Except it doesn't. I mean, I want power much more than the next guy, but I don't think I'd be willing to kill my own family to get it. Did Scar always hate Mufasa (Old King Hamlet)? There must have been something that sent him over the edge.  Scar almost certainly loved Mufasa at some point, and it's clear in the movie that Mufasa genuinely cares for his younger brother. But at some point before the movie, something happened to Scar (without Mufasa's knowledge) that turned him against his brother. It's actually quite disturbing, when you think about it. This, of course, eventually culminates in Mufasa's death and Simba's banishment and self-loathing, which I find a great deal harder to watch now than I did when I was younger.

3) "She's gonna eat me!"
Are we just going to ignore the time Nala tried to kill and eat Timon and Pumbaa (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern)? Their movie role is a bit different, as is hers - after Simba's banishment, the fast-talking, sarcastic meerkat and big-hearted, flatulent warthog take him under their wings, and he becomes their brother in everything but blood. Then Nala, his childhood friend and betrothed, shows up (Scar's excuse for a regime decimated her usual hunting grounds) and chases down the guys who saved his life with every intention of killing and eating them. Simba saves them, of course, and she becomes their friend (this is still a Disney movie), but still...and then, at the end, Scar gets eaten alive by his own servants. Remind me, how was this movie rated G?