The Lion Guard: Battle for the Pride Lands

I found out that last month, the season 3 premiere of “The Lion Guard” started with another hour-long movie titled “The Lion Guard: Battle for the Pride Lands.” I watched this today On Demand and I have to say, it was a nice special that had some nostalgic touches for people who watched the first two “The Lion King” movies and perfectly explains the events that occurs in the second film.

The basic story of this is that The Lion Guard has grown and matured while protecting the Pride Lands from another attack that is made by the animals from the Outlands. The members include Kion (Max Charles), Bunga (Joshua Rush), Fuli (Diamond White), Beshte (Dusan Brown), Anga (Bryana Salaz) and Ono (Atticus Shaffer). Kion and Simba (Rob Lowe) make a plan to have all the best warriors of the Pride Lands join the Lion Guard in defeating Scar (David Oyelowo) once and for all. All of this is being reported to Scar by Ushari (Christian Slater) and Janja (Andrew Kishino), although Janja is having second thoughts about the Lion Guard, remembering what Jasiri (Maia Mitchell) once said to him.

For those who are fans of this series will definitely like this special. You have great cameos in here from the original movie, like Mufasa (Gary Anthony Williams), Nala (Gabrielle Union), Kiara (Eden Riegel) Rafiki (Khary Payton) and his apprentice Makini (Landry Bender), Zazu (Jeff Bennett) and Timon and Pumbaa. Other familiar voices will be John O’Hurley (who you might remember from “Seinfeld” and host of “Family Feud”), Common, Phil LaMarr and Michael Dorn.

Another added touch on this special is that it shows how Scar got his nickname and how he got his Scar. I’m not going to give that away because that would be spoilers.

Overall, I would say that if you have seen the past two specials of “The Lion Guard,” then you should see this one. It nicely picks up from the second special and you will really love this one, especially for those who are fans of “The Lion King.” I think this series is running strong, despite that I haven’t seen any episodes, but only the specials. I want to wait a bit before I see the live action remake to see how horribly they did that.

Thank you for joining in on today’s review, stay tuned this Friday for the continuation of “Russell Crowe Month.”