When Disney announced Barry Jenkins as the director of the live-action sequel to The Lion King, I was both excited and apprehensive. After the 2019 film, which I found one of the most abhorrent and awful things I have seen, it would have taken a director of Barry Jenkins’s stature to possibly get me intrigued. However, it is also sad as an auteur with his quality feels like he is wasting his potential and would his authorial style pierce the thick film of the Disney studio system. Particularly his iconic identifier of the Barry Jenkins shot, an intense close-up of the subject looking into the screen, using shallow focus to make the shot even more powerful.
Jenkins’s prequel follows Mufasa on his journey to Pride Rock, or as the film calls it, Milele. A forever land that will provide hope and safety. In a tale, told by Rafiki to Simba’s daughter Chiara, Mufasa gains a found family of outcasts as they must defy the odds to survive. This includes Mufasa’s adopted brother, Taka, who is born to be a king but is outshone by Mufasa as he lives up to his name’s meaning – King. Meanwhile, Mads Mikkelsen’s villain, Kiros, a white lion on the hunt for vengeance and on the hunt to become the one true lion king.
In many ways, the film is Barry Jenkins’s Spartacus. A film where he has entered into the studio system, like Kubrick’s Spartacus, Mufasa is lacking in much of the visual style we have come to expect in Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk. It is missing the elongated strings of Nicholas Britell’s scores, the bright lights of blue and purple in urban areas, or the dreamy quality of his films which ooze love and tenderness. That is to be expected of course, after all this is a film about lions, not humans, but Jenkins’s visual style still struggles to seep through. He, like Kubrick before him, feels suppressed by the studio system, unable to fully use his stylistic tendencies to make the film feel truly personal. However, it is nevertheless Disney’s best looking Live Action remake, with Jenkins still showing visual prowess behind the camera.
What is surprising, however, is the competency in other areas. This is a tale of broken brotherhood, and whilst the film is called Mufasa, it is Taka who the film absolutely nails. It is his arc more than Mufasa that is the more intriguing. A tale of being unable to fulfil your destiny and being outshone. The turn towards the end, where Taka becomes Scar is truly warranted and adds greater depth to the original film both in live-action and animated form.
The film, however, can be stunted in its pacing, intercutting back to Timon and Pumba, probably for comic relief, but this was completely unnecessary. The soundtrack by Lin-Manuel Miranda also felt unnecessary, as if the songs were shoehorned in. Whilst I was also desperate for the Barry Jenkins shot to appear, and there were definitely moments where it could, for the most part, Jenkins’s visual iconography is missing from the film apart from some nice flourishes such as a dolly zoom to echo the original film, and a much more colourful and well-lit film.
Overall, Mufasa: The Lion King has to be Barry Jenkins’s most underwhelming film, with his visual style drowned out by the corporate machine. However, the film is also some of the best of Disney’s live-action films, with an original story that adds layers to the original and gives a gripping story of found family and broken brotherhood.
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