‘Mufasa’ Is a Failure That Doesn’t Even Have Good Songs

Ask the average person to imagine ‘90s Disney and their mind is bound to conjure images of the so-called Disney Renaissance, an era filled with lush Broadway-inspired numbers and fantastical 2-D tales that solidified the studio’s place in modern animation. But beneath that esteemed veneer was a whole bunch of weird supplementary material. Disney’s smattering of low-budget direct-to-video prequels, sequels, and mid-quels dogged every turn-of-the-century hit, presaging our modern IP glut.

Those films were designed to be chucked into a weary parent’s shopping cart during a grocery run. Yet they somehow share plenty of DNA with Mufasa: The Lion King, which premieres Dec. 20, a multi-million-dollar blockbuster helmed by a Best Picture-winning filmmaker.

If one was feeling extremely generous, they could loosely compare the bare-bones structure of Barry Jenkins’ 2019 Lion King follow-up to The Godfather: Part Two—yes, it’s a sequel, but a bulk of the runtime is dedicated to the family patriarch’s backstory. Mufasa improves upon the previous Lion King remake, but even then, it reads more like a more expensive version of its direct-to-video counterparts.

Like the 1998 Lion King sequel Simba’s Pride, Mufasa introduces Simba and Nala’s precocious daughter Kiara (Blue Ivy Carter), who has been stashed with babysitters Timon (Billy Eichner) and Pumbaa (Seth Rogen) for a stormy afternoon. Luckily, good old Rafiki (John Kani) turns up to entertain the trio with the titular king’s origin story. Contrary to what you’ve assumed for the past 30 years, Mufasa wasn’t born into nobility—he actually created his own monarchy through the power of goodness, apparently.

Separated from his parents as a cub during a flood, young Mufasa (voiced by Braelyn Rankins as a child and Aaron Pierre as a young adult) is plucked from the perils of wilderness life by a posh princeling named Taka (Theo Somolu and later Kelvin Harrison Jr.) who welcomes him as an adoptive brother even after his contemptuous father dismisses him as a “stray.”

When the brothers are on the cusp of manhood, their pride faces an outside threat in the form of a pack of ghostly white lions (ironically, Disney has vehemently denied rumors that the original Lion King was inspired by the manga series Kimba the White Lion). Led by the sadistic Kiros (Mads Mikkelsen), “the outsiders” seek to conquer other pride lands no matter the bloodshed. Their deadly arrival sets Mufasa and Taka on a search for refuge with Kiros hot on their tails, and, well… if you’ve seen The Lion King, you can probably guess the rest.

The original film uses Shakespearean and biblical archetypes as shorthand. Introduce a good yet doomed king, let a conniving black sheep dethrone him, then have the king’s prodigal son return to take what’s his. Throw in Elton John bops, and you’ve got a hit! Try to craft a feature-length origin for these archetypes and you run into trouble. James Earl Jones’ Mufasa is such a commanding yet tender-hearted father that the shattering of Simba’s childhood innocence upon his death is still a gut punch. Pierre, who has the unenviable task of embodying Jones’ singular gravitas, brings a believable warmth and charisma to young Mufasa. That doesn’t change the fact that, apart from a change in title, his character arc has nowhere to go—he starts a decent lion and ends a decent lion with a crown.

Scar, with his untapped villain origin story, has the most character potential, but even his growing envy and resentment toward his brother are hastily explained through a rushed love triangle with the boys’ travel companion, Sarabi (Tiffany Boone). In doing away with the flamboyant, queer-coded villainy of Jeremy Irons’ Scar, this version is more a sanded-down incel than anything else.

The film doesn’t give its characters nearly enough memorable songs, either. Lin-Manuel Miranda, whose absence was felt so keenly in last month’s Moana 2, assumes songwriting duties. Unfortunately, Mufasa is sorely lacking a viral Miranda showtune like Moana’s “You’re Welcome” or Encanto’s “We Don’t Talk About Bruno.” Apart from the playful Mufasa and Taka two-hander “I Always Wanted A Brother,” most of the movie’s songs barely clock in at two minutes, fizzling out before making any kind of impression.

Jenkins, at least, emerges from Mufasa largely unscathed. An Oscar-winning auteur is an unexpected choice for a Disney IP prequel, but the filmmaker manages to sneak his lyrical, achingly intimate style into smaller moments, like the reflection of a lion cub’s face in a stray raindrop or the framing of two lovers separated by a pane of prismatic ice. At least Disney has given up on making its photorealistic lions look fully naturalistic, granting Jenkins’ characters an anthropomorphized range of emotions that their 2019 counterparts sorely lacked.

Because of the many meta quips from the film’s animal sidekicks, Mufasa offers just enough variety to keep kids (mostly) engaged across its nearly two-hour runtime. But in the grand circle of life, this particular lion’s story was better left to the imagination.