(CNN) As "The Lion King" counts up receipts from a big opening weekend while still licking its wounds from negative reviews, you can almost hear the familiar murmurs -- that critics are "out of step" with the audiences they profess to serve.

It's a notion that contains a few crumbs of truth, but also a host of misconceptions.

At the risk of painting with too broad a brush, critics -- simply by virtue of seeing so many productions in a particular field -- are almost by definition a little out of step. Because they see everything (or as much as is humanly possible), they're generally predisposed to look for that which is different, novel or otherwise distinctive.

That's a difficult bar to achieve when remaking anything, especially an animated movie that's essentially just being redone using a different animation technique. From that perspective, "The Lion King" is as much a consumer product as it is a movie.

Why another "Lion King" some have asked, 25 years later? Because audiences often seek familiar experiences, especially when it means sharing a story with their kids. Whether it's "Star Wars" or Batman, people who enjoyed those franchises in their youth not only tend to still like them, but relish the opportunity to share them with their kids.

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