Disney’s newest film Mufasa opens with Simba and Nala expecting their second cub. So Simba enlists old friends Rafiki, Timon, and Pumba to watch his oldest daughter, Kiara.
Kiara is afraid of a rainstorm, and so Rafiki decides to tell her the story of her grandfather.
Mufasa was separated from his family in a tragic flood, but was eventually found by Taka, another cub whose mother, Eshe, adopted Mufasa as one of her own—over the objections of the king, Taka’s xenophobic and homophobic father.
A tribe of even worse white lions wants to kill all competing prides and take the land from its rightful owners, so Taka and Mufasa leave to find the mystical land of Milele. They meet a ragtag group along the way including Sarabi, who Taka falls in love with, Zazu, and Rafiki. Along the way we see frequent cutbacks to Rafiki telling the story, so we can hear Timon and Pumba’s commentary.
Mufasa is a well-plotted follow-up to 2019’s The Lion King. If you are the kind of person who likes to cite trivia about Lion King 1 ½ or The Lion Guard, you will enjoy this dive into the lore of that universe. If you want to hear your girl boss mantras read in a deep bass voice and come out of a CGI cat, you’ll find lots of opportunities to shout, “You go … lion.”
But for me, until the truly rousing finale, it fell flat, even joyless. I should mention the visual appeal of the film. In design, this is a follow-up to 2019’s CGI Lion King. But the director does try to lean into more stylized choices. The animal faces are more expressive, and the art direction is more stylized and colorful. Realism wasn’t the primary goal. Sometimes I thought it worked, sometimes, I thought it made it worse. But this film is trying new things visually. The cinematography also borrows a lot from the GoPro camera. I can see why a director might try to embrace the thrilling energy of those shots, but the film went to that well a lot, and it often made it harder to follow the action.
The music, unfortunately, was neither memorable nor rousing, except when it borrowed the score from the original. Writing this, I can’t recall a single melody.
The larger challenge is that the movie really embraced the tropes of prequels. If you’ve been just dying to know how Rafiki found a stick in that weird shape, your question will be answered. It reminded me a lot of Solo. It provided a lot of fan service, the plot was clearly cleaned up by top notch professionals, but it felt so beholden to old plot points it would get schlocky to get there. We had four moments where Taka held the paws of Mufasa looking down from a cliff, in an homage to the murder of Mufasa in Lion King. And the line “all the light touches” was referenced three times.
But perhaps the bigger problem is that they were so reverential of their IP, the film did nothing of interest. There was no story because there was no character growth.
Prequels can work when we know where a character is going, then we meet them as someone completely different, and then we are credibly shown how they changed. Take Cruella as an example. But this film treats Mufasa as too sacrosanct. He can’t have an interesting change because it would mean him starting as something less than ideal.
And I think that’s what makes me the saddest about this movie. This film has lots of rich themes for families to teach children. Mufasa is a stray destined to become king. He must be adopted into his tribe and then gain the attributes needed to become a king. He does this by following a hope toward a promised land. When he arrives, he defeats the enemy through building a community and processing his trauma.
That’s a great structure for a story. And the speeches given say it’s what we should have seen. But the film never actually showed us the beats of the story it wanted to tell. Mufasa never grows into anything. He simply has super powerful smell and hearing. And the animals of the Pride Lands rally around him instead of the evil white lions because he gives a speech with internal rhyming.
If I wanted to watch a 2024 prequel movie about male friendship where one goes on to become a great leader, and the other betrays him, I’d check out the far superior Transformers One. If you want to watch a stirring, photo-realistic 2024 Disney movie about great cats and their growth and family drama, check out the fantastic Tiger. And if you want to take your kids to see an epic musical in theaters this weekend, check out Moana 2. Mufasa, just doesn’t add anything.
If you do go, I’d ask my kids about what it takes to really become a king. I’d ask them about the power of hope and faith, and who we know makes that possible. I might ask them how you would have responded if you were Taka and got the bad news he received, and ask them why so many people make bad decisions in those situations.
Two out of five stars. Mufasa opens in theaters nationwide on December 20, 2024.
The post Does “Mufasa” Live Up to the Lion King Legacy? A Critical Take first appeared on Meridian Magazine.