There’s a lot of reasons I was ready to hate Mufasa. The 1994 Lion King is one of the best animated movies Disney ever made…only to tarnish its legacy with the pointless 2019 cash grab, which I despise a little more every time I think about it. And to follow that up, they make this prequel with Barry Jenkins, last accepting an Oscar for Best Picture for Moonlight, and crafting the living poem If Beale Street Could Talk then taking us through The Underground Railroad. Jenkins shouldn’t be slumming in these Disney waters, taking away that brilliant creative mind to make the feathers on Zazu’s body look good for like 4-5 years. So as the movie started and I tensed up ready to pounce, something…strange…started happening. Mufasa, dare I say, Grinched my heart 3 sizes this day.
Little Kiara (Blue Ivy Carter) know about her dad Simba’s (Donald Glover) story many times over now. But with both of them away during a storm, Kiara is afraid she’ll never live up to the pure royal bloodline she comes from. Timon (Billy Eichner) and Pumbaa (Seth Rogen), can’t console her fears, but our elder monkey Rafiki (John Kani) can, recounting the story about her grandfather Mufasa (Aaron Pierre) and his brother Taka (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), and what happened before Simba arrived on the scene.
Another big red flag for Mufasa: the CGI used in these movies has been pretty terrible up to this point. And I wasn’t feeling any better with how Jenkins admits this tech was a struggle to wrap his head around. But, the pro that he is, he powers through, and does the best he can with this inherently flawed medium choice. Jenkins razzle dazzles us with the incredible African vistas, giving us a Motown song worth of high mountains, low valleys, and wide rivers, all different colors, with the beaming, majestic sunlight painting the giant landscape in that gorgeous brown-yellow. With the occasional animal like cloud appearing to tell us something big. Animals talking is inherently weird too, so for many of those sequences we’re constantly on the move, as he distracts us with the real movements of an animal so we’re not staring at say a warthog cracking jokes or a hornbill delivering British dialogue to two American lions. Like us, Jenkins would rather see the story move along with his animals in it, keeping them jumping on rocks or walking through the plains; they’re always doing something keeping the movie’s energy high for the families in the audience.
But Mufasa’s big surprise was how well thought out Jenkins’s story for him and the other Lion King characters was. It’s a reverse Last Jedi situation, where Taka and Mufasa are in switched roles when they meet each other. However, Jenkins’s understanding of how prides work helps him land his key message: leaders are leaders because they earn their place, not because of their birthright. Expanding out, family is the other key part of this Lion King’s tale, specifically how not all families have to look or be the same. Mufasa is in constant conversation with these two ideas as his story continues. Like all good leaders, our hero lion isn’t driven by power: he’s driven to help and care for others, as he searches for his own family. The other key story piece here is the diverging, more tragic tale of Taka. While Taka makes choices that turn him into the lion we meet at the beginning of 1994’s Lion King, all of them are understandable in the moment. Jenkins knows The Lion King is based on old Shakespeare tales, so he uses old storytelling ideas to help explain how each lion ends up where they do. It’s clear, powerful feelings kids and families will understand. Along the way, these emotions are snuck into a rousing pretty fun chase across Africa, saving a big climactic battle for the end. Barry earns that big third act action sequence, and had me roused forward in anticipation of a battle I already knew the conclusion to, a testament to the near impossible feat he pulled off with Mufasa.
So congrats Barry Jenkins, you did it! You navigated all the treachery This Lion King had to offer and pulled it off for the most part. I hope you take the garbage truck of money you now have and bombard us with all sorts of amazing movies and TV shows rolling around in that creative magic inside your head. While you’re doing that, I’ll be yelling from the top of my lungs “JUSTICE FOR SCAR!!!”