Mufasa, He Who Became the Lion King (SPOILER-FREE)

Mufasa: The Lion King released to theaters on December 20th this year. Though it’s said to be better visually than the live-action remake The Lion King (2019), the story falls flat. It’s hovering around the same rating wise.

Mufasa is premised as such: “Lost and alone, orphaned cub Mufasa meets a sympathetic lion named Taka, the heir to a royal bloodline. The chance meeting sets in motion an expansive journey of an extraordinary group of misfits searching for their destinies.”

Since this review is spoiler-free, I will be vague on details!

The biggest positive I can give this movie, before I dig into all my negatives, is the animation and facial expressions. When they first remade The Lion King, many complaints were focused on the lack of facial movement of the characters, leaving them stagnant. This is remedied in Mufasa, where their lips and eyes give way to emotion. I’ll also say that the animation was gorgeous with all of the movement and backgrounds. I’ll always prefer 2D animation over 3D, but I was happy to see these improvements. Though, it felt like they were more focused on showing animation prowess than weaving a story.

Let me get the obvious out of the way. This is not Mufasa and Scar’s story, at least not how the lore originally went. I was optimistic despite that since Disney was trying to make a movie uniquely instead of copying a story line; however, they failed. Instead of keeping a cohesive focus, they jumped around too fast and didn’t explore any of the plots with enough depth.

What’s more important is how they fumbled the plot. The transitions between scenes were confusing, rushed, and sometimes made no sense. I’m not sure how children could even follow along as I struggled to. They barely gave explanations for how certain events happened and left out scenes that might’ve clarified it. Plenty of times, fellow writer Gabby and I’s mouths dropped open in disbelief and not in a good way.  Frankly, they made it worse with the constant interjections back to Kiara listening to Rafiki’s story and added comments from Pumbaa and Timon.

Which brings me to another annoyance from the movie. Pumbaa and Timon were constantly breaking the fourth wall, whether directly nudging the audience or talking about doing things humans do. Some people might find this funny because it’s “relatable” and silly, but for me all it did was shatter the realism of the animals. I practically groaned every time they came on screen. It might’ve been fine if it was only Kiara and Rafiki–Kiara herself was adorable–but they had to include their comedic relief duo of course.

The music only slightly served to make the movie better. They’re catchy and made me laugh for the most part. Unfortunately, the soulful, emotional songs of the original movies are traded for the bouncy, child-like tunes of Lin-Manuel Miranda. It’s nothing against him specifically, but I feel like the songs struggled against the seriousness of the plots.

While we do see Taka turn into Scar by the end with his slick, backstabbing ways, the change was too sudden. You’ll have to watch it to find out what I mean but I generally disliked the reason he becomes a “villain.” Overall, I think Mufasa was my favorite character because of the complexity they gave him. Taka and Sarabi bring up the second and third places. Every character was underdeveloped though, even the main ones.

What is going to happen now? How does this lore effect the future of “live-action” Lion King movies. It would follow that The Lion King 2: Simba’s Pride would be next on the docket, given the introduction of Kiara. Yet, Kion was introduced too. Will they change up Simba’s Pride to include the brother alongside the sister or stay true to Kiara and Kovu’s story? Or will they throw that out all together and focus on Kion?

If they do Kiara’s story, I find myself wondering if they will use the leftover albino lions as the “outsiders.” As much of a letdown as Mufasa was, I’m willing to find out what they’re doing next… if not for entertainment sake.

My advice? Wait until this comes out to streaming services, unless your kids really want to see it.

Bonus: If you’ve ever seen the “boys raised by mom vs boys raised by dad” meme, that’s all you need to know about this movie.