Mufasa: The Lion King is a first for Disney’s ongoing series of live-action adaptations. As the only direct sequel to one of these films and the only one to feature an original story, it seems like it should have an easy time justifying its existence. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.
Contrary to popular belief, Disney’s live-action remakes are not all shot-for-shot remakes of their animated counterparts, with a few of them actually being superior to the originals. While the prevailing feeling toward them is to instantly bemoan them as unjustified cash grabs, many of them have been fantastic, easily justifying their existence thanks to expanded storylines (Peter Pan and Wendy), groundbreaking visual effects (The Jungle Book), or flat out being better than the original (Pete’s Dragon). Even the live-action remake of The Lion King, while not the most original, delivered a stunning-looking adaptation.
This is all to say that Mufasa: The Lion King shouldn’t be judged off the bat as a needless sequel. Telling the origin story of Mufasa (Aaron Pierre) and Scar (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), the film tosses us into an adventure in which Scar’s pride adopts Mufasa. However, when a pride of albino lions led by Kiros (Mads Mikkelsen) kills the pride, Mufasa and Scar (known as Taka at the time) run and meet up with Sarabi (Tiffany Boone), Zazu (Preston Nyman), and Rafiki (John Kani) as they make their way toward a mythical promised land.
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The parallels between the original film’s story and this are obvious and played into, but, unfortunately, that means the movie struggles to separate itself or define its reason for being. Too often the film is dragged down by inserting explanations for where things come from that no one actually cared about. Do we really need to know how Rafiki got his cane or discover that Pride Rock was created during an earthquake? It’s contrivances like these that make the film feel far too beholden to what came before than anything truly original, an irony considering this is the first actual original film put out by Disney’s efforts.
It is also a shame because Barry Jenkins does incredible things with his CGI lions, delivering a fully “animated” film that feels like it was actually shot by humans. Visually, Mufasa is like nothing we’ve seen before, even its predecessor, and that is almost entirely thanks to Jenkin’s directorial vision and his instance of using VR to actually block out and even “film” some of the scenes. It offers a nearly surreal directorial style as his indie, low-budget style comes up against the big-budget effects. For that alone, one could argue that the film’s existence is justified, but if you’re not a movie nerd, then that’s still a pretty hard sell.
Of course, you can’t have a Lion King movie without some singing animals, so Disney pulled in Lin Manuel-Miranda to write a few songs for the film. It is, sadly, another instance of the movie lacking justification, though. While Manuel-Miranda’s songs are technically fantastic and catchy, they seem woefully out of place in a film that’s leaning as hard as a movie with talking lions can into realism. The musical numbers are few and far between, so when they do kick in, they feel out of place. Unlike the classic songs, which elevate and expand on the story in both the original and the live-action remake, these simply seem to be there to redundantly express things that the screenplay and Jenkins have already done better.
This is all not to say that Mufasa isn’t an entertaining, bib-screen spectacle. There is thrilling action throughout and, buried under the lame attempts at giving an origin story to everything, a heartfelt story of sibling love and jealousy. It would be hard to come out of the film without having enjoyed the ride, but it’s hard to not wonder why it needed to be ridden at all. Mufasa: The Lion King is a film struggling to find a reason to be here, and despite the best efforts of its director, it never truly does.
Mufasa: The Lion King is in theaters now.
Published: Dec 20, 2024 08:01 am