The Lion King never really needed the live-action remake treatment from Disney. However, they’re coming back with similar movie technology for Mufasa: The Lion King, a confusing title, yes, but an interesting movie nonetheless. This time around, we’re not retreading the story of Simba, but we’re learning about the story of Mufasa. Barry Jenkins directs this time around and you can tell there’s been an upgrade in the director’s chair. Jenkins seemingly just knows where everything goes at the right times and to make it resonate with an audience more. When you’ve got somewhat uncanny valley-looking lions and other animals running around, you have to make it emotional or it won’t work.

As for the story, we get a double whammy of the usual Disney story for kids about them being separated from their parents. Yes, it makes sense, every parent and child’s worst nightmare is to be separated from one another. The frame is that Rafiki (John Kani) is telling Kiara (voiced by Blue Ivy Carter) about how her grandfather became King and the trials and tribulations along the way. Simba (voiced by Donald Glover) and Nala (voiced by Beyonce) are off to do an ancient ritual in a far-off land, so Kiara misses them and is scared.

The story originally starts with Timon (Billy Eichner) and Pumba (Seth Rogen) having to look after Kiara, but Rafiki takes over when they also get scared of the massive storm overhead. We meet Mufasa (Aaron Pierre) and his parents Afia (Anika Noni Rose) and Masego (Keith David), they’re lamenting a lack of rain and thinking of a dream-like place that’s like paradise. Suddenly the rain starts and a great flood carries Mufasa away to a far off land. He wakes up to another cub talking to him, Taka (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) and his mother Eshe (Thandiwe Newton) save Mufasa from crocodiles. Taka is the heir to a royal bloodline of Obasi (Lennie James) a prideful, but lazy, lion king. Eshe takes Mufasa in as her own and Taka and Mufasa grow up together.

From there the inciting incident of the movie actually happens. It takes quite a while to get through all of the story onboarding in the beginning. Audiences are thrown a lot of information and characters right off the bat, but there’s even more coming. Mufasa: The Lion King does a lot of juggling when it comes to the characters, and sometimes it fails at giving them all something decent to work with.

Mufasa and Taka are split up from their pride (once again) due to an attack by an outside band of larger lions led by Kiros (Mads Mikkelsen). Kiros is ruthless and in the attack, his son dies. But wait, it doesn’t stop there, we also meet Sarabi (Tiffany Boone), Rafiki, and Zazu (Preston Nyman) as Mufasa and Taka are heading toward what they believe is paradise.

They’re tailed by Kiros the entire way through different terrain as we learn what makes Taka into who he is, and we learn how Mufasa became the King.

The Bad Of Mufasa: The Lion King

With all of that storyline stuff out of the way, what works and what doesn’t work about Mufasa: The Lion King. For starters, if you’re not into the CG-styled characters and world, you won’t care much for the film. The visuals are stunning to look at, they’re painstakingly crafted, but yet, they have a style that feels like it’s divisive. Some points the animals show emotion really well, like they’re motion captured, and at other points, they look like lifeless husks, and it’s kind of creepy.

There’s also the issue of it being an origin story for characters that we already really know and love. Mufasa and Scar are well known, we have two movies about them in both versions of The Lion King. It’s not as interesting to see how Taka becomes Scar and the ways they picked feel a bit loose. Scar really starts hating Mufasa because he stole his girl? That’s the best we could come up with? The other reason being Mufasa “stole” his right to be the King, and Scar has lost all the teachings that his mother gave him about being humble and righteous.

The other big sticking point was that Kiros is a weak villain. Sure, the story is all about Mufasa and Taka and how their relationship evolves and changes, yes. But, when your villain’s motivation to do the things he does is just “I’m an evil lion, I want to be King”, it doesn’t resonate as well. Add into it that he’s just kind of dumb and gets outsmarted at every turn and you have a villain that doesn’t pull weight.

What About The Songs?

The songs this time around are original and don’t make too many callbacks to the original soundtrack. They’re also not as memorable but they do the job. Hearing Kiros sing about how he makes people go “BYE-BYE” is kind of hilarious. The songs didn’t really stick in my head after the movie was over, but across the course of the film they’re fine.

What really matters about Mufasa: The Lion King is that adults and kids will enjoy the film. For kids, they’re going to love it. It’s thrilling, but not too thrilling. There are emotions and adult feelings, but not too much. For those reasons, I can recommend the film to families looking for a movie to watch this holiday season. It won’t make adults going along for the ride roll their eyes and everyone ends up happy. However, for those who already didn’t like the live-action remake of The Lion King, you might not like this one.

Still, Mufasa: The Lion King has moments of greatness that are split with pacing issues, a weak villain, and a bit too many characters to juggle around. Barry Jenkins makes a prequel that’s much better than the previous live-action Lion King that you can still enjoy.

Mufasa: The Lion King releases in theaters on December 20th, 2024.

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