Be Prepared

In the Lion King, there are animals who act like people (on Broadway it’s people acting like animals acting like people, which is just a little too meta for me). Animated films frequently assign human traits to animals to avoid some of the messier aspects to the circle of life, but Lion King really has to go all out because there aren’t any humans. So we get things like lions falling in romantic love rather than the aggressive nature of an actual lion in heat. We see antelopes acknowledging their place as prey rather than living in constant fear of a predator attack. And we see prairie dogs functioning as an intelligence network. But there’s one major system missing in the Pridelands: a legal system. And I submit to you that the oversight of not managing a system to investigate lawbreakers was a major factor in the primary conflict of The Lion King.