If you had told me that, a month into my college experience, I would be sitting alone in my dorm room in front of my laptop, headphones on, sobbing profusely as I watched a children’s animated film, I would have…well, yeah, I would have thought that was pretty probable. My love of Disney (and Pixar too!) animated films is no big secret, so I was overjoyed when I was handed The Lion King on Bluray to review. With the ever more stunning visuals and sound that Bluray offers, as well as a few extras that are as wonderful as you might expect, this new version of the timeless classic deserves a spot in every collection, no matter the age.

It had been an egregiously long time since I had seen the film, so although I was familiar with the story and its major elements, I had forgotten how wonderfully they were executed. The lions rule over the Pridelands led by Mufasa (voiced by the illustrious James Earl Jones), and his son Simba (voiced by Jonathan Taylor Thomas and, after awhile, Matthew Broderick) is the heir to his throne. Mufasa’s brother Scar (voiced by Jeremy Irons), however, is desperate to take power, and so concocts a scheme to simultaneously eliminate both Mufasa and Simba. Making it look like a tragic accident (of which Simba appears to be the cause), Scar casts out Simba, telling him to never return. Simba must accept his past and the role he played in it before he can allow himself to return to the home and throne he abandoned.

While watching the film again, I was staggered, as I always am, at how incredibly powerful animated images can be. Even though these are not human characters, even though they are simply drawings on a page, they contain such raw and universal emotional intensity that one cannot help but be moved by them. Each and every audience member feels Simba’s warring emotions and can see the great stress the opposing forces of responsibility and fear are having on his psyche. Even though animating styles have progressed so far since 1994, there have been few if any films that have captured that innate humanity expressed by those lions.

That’s not even mentioning the songs, either, which are so perfectly integrated into the story that it’s hard to imagine the narrative progressing without them. Songs should not just be inserted into a story, but rather woven in—a character only starts to sing (in theatre, at least) when the emotions he or she is feeling are too great to simply be spoken, and if the emotions are truly enormous, the character starts to dance, as well. The songs in The Lion King (composed by the incredible Elton John) are some of the best examples of this in a modern musical, each one conveying a different emotion—“I Just Can’t

Wait To Be King” is pure excitement, while “Be Prepared” exudes pride and envy, which are of course Scar’s defining characteristics. The dialogue is natural, never stilted or dumbed-down in any way, even though the movie’s target audience doesn’t have two digits to their age. It is a simple story, at its heart, and doesn’t need complex language to be told properly, so complex language isn’t used. It is streamlined and wonderful, in every way.

One of the fun things I found on this much later viewing of such a classic movie was looking at the credits, which is so chock full of recognizable names that I was stunned. I knew none of them during my first viewing, of course, so it was like discovering an old friend. The fact that Nathan Lane voices Timon was both shocking and utterly unsurprising at the same time, and the fact that Rowan Atkinson (of Mr. Bean fame) voices Zazu made me laugh outright. And while Elton John wrote the individual songs for the movie, the greatest shock for me came when I saw that the actual score was composed by Hans Zimmer, most well-known for his scores of Inception, The Dark Knight, and Pirates of the Caribbean. These little surprises made the experience a fresh one, and immediately reminded me that Disney movies are not meant to be viewed only once, as a child, but repeatedly, over the course of a life, when one has an utterly different perspective on their meanings.

Speaking of retrospectives, while the full range of special features is quite lengthy, ranging from Sing-Along Mode (sure to be a family favorite) to the standard reel of deleted scenes and blooper takes, perhaps the best thing on the disc is the inclusion of something called The Lion King: A Memoir—Don Hahn. Hahn, who was one of the producers of the film, crafted a little retrospective on what it was like to produce a film of this magnitude, and it is truly full of Disney magic. It is a perfect reminder of the perpetual potency of Disney animation, and one that I shall certainly take to heart. It wasn’t my first viewing, and something tells me that it definitely won’t be my last, either.