‘Mufasa’ is a ‘Lion King’ prequel built to rule the box office
By Ty Burr
The other weekend, I was visiting New York City and I happened to pass through Times Square, that packed crossroads of international tourism, entertainment capitalism and undocumented immigrants wearing unsanctioned Mickey Mouse costumes.
Surrounding the crowds from on high were immense video billboards, almost all showing scenes from the movie “Mufasa,” Disney’s new live action “Lion King” prequel.
The effect was a little alarming, like being in a modern Colosseum with the lions looking down from the stands and the humans huddled in the ring, waiting to be devoured.
As with everything Disney, resistance is futile. “Mufasa” has been planned, produced and packaged down to the last pixel and the least tie-in opportunity; it is a brand extension that exists to repurpose old intellectual property with new technology, to introduce a fresh generation to said IP and to make an immense profit while setting the stage for further reworkings of the original film’s narrative DNA.
But it’s also a movie, or what we used to call a movie back before they became theme park add-ons. So is “Mufasa” a good movie?
Honestly, it’s hard to tell. It’s an origin story - a patriarch’s journey - that has been brought to the screen with diligence, hundreds of elves at South Asian computer workstations and classy names who bring their own brand identities: director Barry Jenkins (“Moonlight,” “If Beale Street Could Talk”), composer Lin-Manuel Miranda (“Hamilton”), vocal cameos by Beyoncé and Donald Glover. These are imprimaturs of pop-culture quality purchased for that very reason.
The film’s framing device sets up the wise old mandrill Rafiki (voiced by Dr John Kani) telling the tale of how Mufasa (Simba’s father) came to be king of all the animals.
His audience is the late ruler’s little grand-lion Kiara (Blue Ivy Carter, daughter of Beyoncé and Jay-Z), hungry for diversion while dad Simba (Glover) and mom Nala (Beyoncé) are away on business.
Also listening in are the duo of Pumbaa the warthog (Seth Rogen) and Timon the meerkat (Billy Eichner), whose laboured comic interruptions will amuse the kiddies but weary the parents.
The inventive energy of 1994’s “The Lion King” - let alone its 2019 CGI remake - seems very far away in these sequences.
But the original was a cartoon and “Mufasa” strives for photorealistic digital animation, every follicle and fern rendered with computerised fidelity. Disney’s current business model is giving a CGI makeover to the crown jewels from the studio’s animation heydays and selling them to us all over again.
“Mufasa” at least has the grace to offer audiences a fresh story but children and parents may find it surprisingly difficult to tell one exquisitely rendered lion from the next.
In this telling, the young hero Mufasa (Aaron Pierre) is separated from his parents in a flood and adopted as a stray into the pride of King Obasi (Lennie James), whose son and heir is a shifty little bugger named Taka (Kelvin Harrison Jr.). The two adolescent lions bond but Mufasa is clearly a born leader, courageous and humble and Taka is a prat.
The appearance of the Outsiders, a band of vicious white lions lorded over by the expansionist King Kiros (Mads Mikkelsen), bodes ill for Obasi’s pride and sends Mufasa and Taka on the run for the possibly mythical realm of Malele.
They’re accompanied by a fierce young lioness named Sarabi (Tiffany Boone) and the young Rafiki (Kagiso Lediga), who offers up potted Zen aphorisms and is the mellowest character here. (So why can’t they make a movie about him?).
Every so often, the animals stop for a song and the energy plummets. Miranda’s lyrics are clever enough, but his tunes just aren’t catchy and the musical numbers feel out of joint with the perilous journey of the rest of the movie. Typical is “Bye Bye,” enthusiastically sung by the villainous Kiros - just before his lions slaughter some of the other characters.
The action sequences are considerably better and they give the crowd what it wants in spectacle: a plummet over a high waterfall, a stampede of raging elephants, a traverse across a snowy mountain pass and lots and lots of lion fights.
Some of those are pretty scary - a handful of tinier audience members bailed for the lobby with their parents at the screening I attended - and one fight delivers a blow to the traitorous Taka, who will be henceforth known as … well, you didn’t hear it from me.
Those kids who’ve recently binged the original “Lion King” or its remake will doubtless go home satisfied, as will the generation of adults for whom the 1994 film remains a foundational catechism from thousands of childhood video replays.
“Mufasa” will hopefully hold them for another 30 years or until Disney green-lights a holographic AI cyborg version of “The Lion King,” whichever comes first.