(CNN) The new "The Lion King" hews closely to the original, standing apart with its visual realism, using computer animation to approximate the look of a nature documentary. Yet amid a golden age of that genre, as the Disney blockbuster heads toward a big opening weekend, it also reminds us how talking and otherwise anthropomorphic animals tend to be more commercially popular than the real things.

As viewers of nature programming know, the actual jungle is fascinating but also tends to be ruthless, brutal and a lot less cute when it comes to battles for survival and dominance. Real lion kings hunt the youngest and weakest members of herds, occasionally kill cubs to ensure their own mating rights and aren't as monogamous as Simba appears to be.

Like its predecessor, "The Lion King" conveys a message about the natural order as King Mufasa explains the "circle of life" and the thorny matter of lions eating their neighbors -- garnishing that meal, as it were, with several spoonfuls of sugar. Director Jon Favreau has cited the documentaries of naturalist Sir David Attenborough as a source of inspiration

Even so, the long history of what might be called Disney-fied nature programming -- even that shot using actual footage -- has regularly included ascribing human qualities to animals, built around the notion that they are a lot like us, only faster and furrier. That often involves giving names and personalities to lions, tigers and bears.

The popularity of nature programming has traditionally relied on crafting stories. As Slate noted in a 2015 article , titled "Why Wildlife Documentaries Insist on Making Animals Seem Human," "It's now almost impossible to make a wildlife documentary without a dose of anthropomorphism," conceding that producers "are probably right to assume that few people want to sit in a theater and watch animals doing animal stuff for two hours; viewers need to emotionally invest."

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