MUFASA: THE LION KING - Mark Reviews Movies

Mufasa: The Lion King, Disney

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 20, 2024

For what it's worth, the lions are more expressive in Mufasa: The Lion King, a prequel to the 2019 computer-animated remake of the 1994 original film. This one's predecessor suffered from the question of its very existence. Why would anyone take a widely regarded classic of hand-drawn animation and transform it into an impressive but empty demonstration of how far computer animation has come? This one suffers from a similar query. Is there really anything special about the rise of the eponymous character to power on an African savanna to justify another excursion into this world of photorealistic re-creation?

With director Barry Jenkins at the helm of this follow-up, one wonders if the filmmaker pushed the animators to ignore the goal of realism to some extent. The characters play better this time around, if only because we can recognize distinct emotions on their faces throughout the movie. It means something when a young Mufasa and his adoptive brother actually smile while playing and singing across the wild.

Sure, the song itself is forgettable, especially compared to the ones from the '94 film that the remake also used, and we really are talking about the bare minimum of recognizing some emotive spark behind the characters' digital faces, beyond some notion of there be feeling behind the digital eyes. The bare minimum is better than the last effort, at least, so we should take what we can get from these tech experiments.

The animation remains an obvious accomplishment of the form, if only because most of the characters and all of the backgrounds do look quite real (I wrongly assumed the backdrops of the 2019 movie were the real deal, and hopefully, one can forgive the error five years later, since they are very, very convincing). The characters move like the actual animals they're replicating, with a tangible physicality and a genuine sense of weight. It'd be easy enough to praise the visual effects and animation yet again, and maybe it'd be appropriate, too, given that the movie itself tries so hard to copy and call back to its dual originators.

The most apparent component of that is the origin story's framing device, which takes place in the aftermath of the previous movie. Simba (voice of Donald Glover) leaves his daughter Kiara (voice of Blue Ivy Carter) in the care of his old pals, warthog Pumbaa (voice of Seth Rogan) and meerkat Timon (voice of Billy Eichner), while going to tend to his wife Nala (voice of Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, who has two whole lines). With the cub frightened of an approaching storm, shaman mandrill Rafiki (voice of John Kani) decides to tell the story of how her grandfather became king of the Pride Lands.

While the comic-relief duo keeps interrupting, screenwriter Jeff Nathanson gives us a dreadfully serious story. In it, a young Mufasa (voice of Braelyn Rankins) seems to be orphaned by a violent flood, and is almost eaten whole by the leader of a different pride of lions. Growing up into an adolescent (voiced by Aaron Pierre), Mufasa ends up being chased across various environments by the practically genocidal Kiros (voice of Mads Mikkelsen), a pale-furred lion who wants to rule as much land and as many lions as possible.

Joining him in the escape and the journey to find a paradise beyond the horizon are a semi-eclectic crew of familiar characters. There's lioness Sarabi (voice of Tiffany Boone), who sees Mufasa as the born leader he is. There's her assistant, the hornbill Zazu (voice of Preston Nyman), as well as a younger Rafiki (voice of Kagiso Lediga), who has been exiled from a tribe of baboons for having too many visions that come to pass.

The most important supporting character, of course, is the brother, named Taka (voice of Kelvin Harrison Jr.) but clearly to be known by a completely different name before the story ends. Part of Timon and Pumbaa's constant interjections is to point out that they know who Taka really is, and since the movie is so stuck in only showing us characters and situations we already know, it's not much of a guess to figure that out before they do, too.

The plot here does become an extended chase, as Taka starts to be envious of his adopted brother, Mufasa and Sarabi fall for each other, and we learn how Rafiki got his walking stick and that plateau above the Pride Lands forms. One understood why the remake leaned so heavily into nostalgia, since it was a remake, of course, and the blueprint of proven material was almost a necessity to make us feel anything about watching real-looking animals with stiff faces become caught up in high melodrama.

With more freedom for these characters to show emotion and a story that's free to imagine almost anything for the future king of the flashbacks and an epilogue to the previous tale, this one becomes almost as married to that sense of nostalgia, too. Mufasa: The Lion King feels narratively flat, which is too bad, considering that the characters seem so much more alive this time.

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