Disney's taxidermized IP is brighter and livelier in Mufasa: The Lion King

The worst (and far and away the most profitable) of the pre-pandemic cycle of pointless Disney remakes, Jon Favreau’s The Lion King swapped out the colorful and dynamic animation of the original for tediously unimaginative photorealism, turning the cartoon musical into a drab safari of blank-eyed, celebrity-voiced African wildlife. How a filmmaker as accomplished as Barry Jenkins ended up directing the inevitable follow-up (and bringing along some of his key creative collaborators from Moonlight, If Beale Street Could Talk, and The Underground Railroad) is something of a mystery to this critic, but the result is clearly an improvement: a brighter, livelier, more visually appealing piece of digitally taxidermized IP.

Whether Mufasa: The Lion King represents the best possible use of Jenkins’ considerable talent for conveying mood and character is, however, a different matter, beginning with the obvious problem of the plot. Despite some surface similarities to Hamlet, the story of The Lion King isn’t exactly Shakespeare: The wise king Mufasa (boomingly voiced in both the original and the Favreau remake by the late, great James Earl Jones) is murdered; the evil uncle Scar takes over Pride Rock; Mufasa’s son Simba returns to overthrow Scar; the animal kingdom rejoices and everyone lives happily ever after. Even by the standards of the Disney Renaissance, it’s rudimentary stuff.

Mufasa: The Lion King is, thus, a prequel to a story that doesn’t need one, focusing on the backstories of Mufasa (Aaron Pierre) and Scar (or “Taka,” as he’s called throughout the movie). We first meet the young Mufasa as a cub whose parents regale him with stories of a verdant utopia called Milele. Separated from his family in a flood, he ends up washing up in the territory of a pride of English-accented lions. Taken in by the huntress Eshe (Thandiwe Newton), he grows up alongside Taka (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), the son of the lazy, pretentious king Obasi (Lennie James), as his best friend and adopted brother. (Making Mufasa and Scar something other than blood relations is a retcon, though it at least explains why they have different accents—not that anyone has ever wondered.) Eventually, trouble arrives in the form of a band of murderous white lions led by Kiros (Mads Mikkelsen), the self-declared king of all liondom, and Mufasa and Taka set off for parts unknown, hoping to reach Milele. 

Along the way, they meet a young lioness named Sarabi (Tiffany Boone) who’s also on the run from Kiros and his crew, as well as a couple of other familiar characters: the secretarial hornbill Zazu (Preston Nyman) and the mischievous mandrill mystic Rafiki (John Kani). Between songs and chase scenes, the script (by Jeff Nathanson, who wrote Favreau’s Lion King, two Rush Hours, and one of the later, lesser Pirates Of The Caribbeans) follows well-trod paths, briefly stopping for familiar messages about outsiders, suspicion, and finding one’s family. There’s a framing device in which we see an elderly Rafiki telling the story to Kiara (Blue Ivy Carter), the young daughter of Lion King protagonist Simba, though it’s mostly an excuse to include the comic-relief inter-species couple Timon (Billy Eichner) and Pumbaa (Seth Rogen). 

Throughout, Jenkins’ virtual camera rarely stops moving as it swoops, sweeps, and circles around the digital scenery with stylized flourishes of slo-mo and the occasional dreamy close-up. (A favorite move, which Jenkins pulls out again and again throughout Mufasa, is to have the camera bob and float in and out of water.) The musical numbers are much more distinct and colorful than in Favreau’s Lion King (which managed to suck the fun out of the original’s memorable Tim Rice and Elton John-penned songs). The problem is that the songs themselves—written by Lin-Manuel Miranda—are lackluster, and Jenkins’ whooshing camerawork can only go so far. 

There is, of course, a bigger conceptual hurdle, the elephant (and lion and warthog and giraffe) in the room: the animation. Lacking the anthropomorphic elasticity of their hand-drawn counterparts in the original film, the animal characters of Favreau’s Lion King appeared, paradoxically, both lifelike and lifeless, their voices never matching their limited facial expressions. Simply put, there are only so many ways that a realistic lion can move or emote, and Jenkins never overcomes the tech-demo dullness he’s inherited. Ironically, he may be more hamstrung by conventions of realism in this all-digital production than in his own live-action work; the moments of transcendence and presence that are his trademarks never come. 

The present era has produced more fruitful pairings of indie director sensibility and corporate intellectual property (e.g. Barbie), as well as some worse and more misguided ones. One could even make the argument that Jenkins has made a fundamentally better film than Favreau while working with inferior, less elemental material. But that doesn’t change the fact that Mufasa is, ultimately, compromised by its studio formulas in terms of both story and style. Presumably a lot of people will go see it. And maybe when it fades from public consciousness, the diminishing nostalgia of The Lion King will be harvested again to feed another generation of Disney executives. It’s the circle of life.

Director: Barry Jenkins

Writer: Jeff Nathanson

Starring: Donald Glover, Seth Rogen, Billy Eichner, John Kani, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, Aaron Pierre, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Tiffany Boone, Mads Mikkelsen, Thandiwe Newton, Lennie James, Anika Noni Rose, Blue Ivy Carter

Release Date: December 20, 2024