Review: Mufasa: The Lion King

Whether or not we needed a sequel-slash-prequel to The Lion King is up for debate; whether it needed to be told using photo-realistic CGI animation is a lot easier to judge. An epic fantasy story about anthropomorphic animals requires an expressive storytelling medium to fully encompass the heightened emotions and conflicts driving events; the visuals here, while impressive on a merely technical level, aren't up to the job.

Put another way, the framing device for what is basically Mufasa: Rise to Power is that it's a story being told by Rafiki (John Kani) to Kiara (Blue Ivy Carter), daughter of the OG Lion King Simba (Donald Glover). So even in-universe, it's a kids story... one in which at least four named characters die and a whole bunch of others also get bumped off off-screen. 

Which is fine, except that because it's all photo-realistic there's a constant struggle (one the film mostly loses) to figure out a non-realistic way to kill off the multiple cast members that have to die. There's a lot of cutting away from characters in situation that seem pretty survivable, only to have them never be seen again. Bad guy Kiros (Mads Mikkelsen) keeps on saying "you killed my son", presumably to make it clear that his son is in fact dead.

The high body count is especially striking because - unlike the first film - most of this story could be told without stacking up the corpses. After being separated from his family by a flood while a cub, Mufasa is befriended by Taka (Kelvin Harrison Jr). Taken in by his pride - though Taka's father, local king Obasi (Lennie James) isn't a fan - we quickly get two main plot drivers: Mufasa wants to get home, and Taka wants to prove himself to his father.

Then Kiros and his pride of "outsiders" turn up and the killing begins, just to make things even more dramatic. Considering Taka's cowardice is a major character point it wouldn't be hard to just have him run away (especially as his brother Mufasa already has motivation to leave). It's hard not to think that the main reason for the constant murders is that the first film is based around a big memorable death and so the follow-up has to bump up the stakes.

That's not to say this would be a better film without the killing, but if you're telling a story that's based around constant murder - only you don't want to show any murder - you're setting yourself a pretty tricky line to walk and Mufasa doesn't do a great job of it. Maybe if you don't want your audience noticing that your predator main characters are never shown eating, don't have a supporting character make a big joke about scarfing down bugs and insects.

Director Barry Jenkins can't do much with his relatively expressionless characters but the visuals are otherwise solidly impressive and sometimes striking, while Lin-Manuel Miranda's songs aren't going to displace the originals any time soon (as the film itself acknowledges). 

As with all prequels, knowing how things will end undercuts a lot of the tension, though this manages to sidestep that a little by focusing heavily on Taka's journey from happy and fun-loving cub to the sullen and beaten down Scar we all remember (hint: it involves a girl).

It's not really a problem that the title character is the most boring character in the film, though it does give the story the air of political propaganda: Mufasa was the best at everything, which is why he was the best choice for king. At least Kiros gets to point out that the "circle of life" is just predator and prey. Once again a Disney bad guy speaks the truth.

- Anthony Morris