REVIEW: Mufasa: The Lion King – Another Soulless Cash Grab from Disney

Written by on 24th December 2024

“Live-action adaptation”—a phrase that Hollywood seems to be in love with but sends shivers down my spine. It only reinforces the fear that original IPs and stories are all but dead in cinema. No matter how cherished the originals are, most modern reimaginings fail to capture the magic of animation or what it achieved for these films. The Lion King is not only one of the darkest and most emotional animated films ever made, but one of the darkest and most emotional films, full stop. It’s just a shame that both the 2019 version and now this have tarnished that legacy.

Mufasa: The Lion King is the perfect example of clinging to a story for as long as possible—when, in fact, it might be better to just let go—and milking it for all it’s worth. This film serves as a prequel to the remake of the 1994 animation. However, given how advanced the technology is, I find myself agreeing with critics—I’m not entirely sure how to define it. Is it live action? Is it animation? Or is it photo-realism? Perhaps a mixture of all three is the safest bet.

Here, we follow the origin story of Mufasa (Aaron Pierre), an orphaned cub who is rescued one day by a fellow cub named Taikai (voiced by Kelvin Harrison Jr.), the next in line to the throne. The two embark on a journey to find a sacred land that is believed to be nothing more than a myth. Along the way, they encounter various characters, including Mads Mikkelsen’s villainous Krios, who seeks the throne for himself.

As I have already alluded to, I find the concept of live-action films rather frustrating and pointless. None have been as angering as when it was announced that The Lion King would receive the same treatment yet this was entirely unsurprising as the film grossed one point six billon dollars at the box-office. The dilemma that they have primarily faced is that neither of these new Lion King films has been able to even remotely tap into that darkness or emotion because of how realistic it looked which is odd to say. Animation is, perhaps, cinema’s greatest source of emotion, yet because the characters just look like ordinary animals, it cannot produce the same magic the animated could.

It is the equivalent of watching a nature documentary instead of something that is fantastical. Part of you does have to just sit back for a moment and address, talk about and highlight what they are able to achieve here. From a purely visual perspective, it is remarkable how far cinema and technology has come and heaven only knows where it will go. The CGI was the only real selling point of the 2019 version and is again here. But, I’m afraid to say that this is not good enough. In order to make something that is as significant and special as The Lion King is, you need so much more than that to make it work other than ”oooh, doesn’t that look pretty”.

Mufasa does look even better than the last, but that is not what I care about. If I were to be completely and brutally honest, I was bored within thirty minutes of this when I very quickly realised it would just be the same thing again (this was in fact already pre-determined when I first saw the trailer for this) and I do think it is worse this time around. The biggest issue previously was how unexpressive and bland the faces were, especially for a story that is so sad.

Photo credit: Disney

To a certain extent, some improvements have been made here, but nowhere near enough to make a meaningful difference. Among the past live-action adaptations, there have been a few exceptions—Jon Favreau’s 2016 version of The Jungle Book and Andy Serkis’s Mowgli proved that it can be done successfully. Before the film started, the trailer for the upcoming adaptation of How to Train Your Dragon was shown, which was rather unfortunate, as it looked far superior and demonstrated just how capable technology is today.

Moana 2 suffered from several issues, one of the biggest being the absence of Lin-Manuel Miranda—none of the songs were particularly memorable. Miranda, who is behind the music here, was clearly busy with this project instead. His songs are catchy and energetic, and I do enjoy his style of music; it remains one of the few bright spots. However, this new obsession with adapting all of Disney’s greatest classics feels like nothing more than greed. If you can’t improve upon the original—which very few, if any, have managed to do—why bother?

2/5


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