- Released: December 18, 2024
- Directed by: Barry Jenkins
- Running time: 2h
- Rating 3.5/5
Synopsis
Rafiki tells Kiara the backstory of Mufasa and Scar, how these brothers grew apart.My Thoughts
Okay, so here we go. My most hyped movie in quite some time. As you know, I absolutely love the 2019 version of The Lion King, so I was super hyped when Mufasa was announced.
In this movie, Rafiki tells Kiara how Mufasa as a cub got separated from his parents by a flash flood, and met up with a another cub named Taka, who is set to be king of his pride in the future. Taka's family took in Mufasa and raised him, yet Mufasa kept showing more promise than Taka. When a group of white lions attacks the pride, Taka and Mufasa are sent off on their own to find their home in a promised land called Milele. The two journey and soon pick up other friends along the way, including Sarabi, Rafiki and Zazu. But Taka is slowly starting to grow apart from Mufasa, especially when the latter keeps overshadowing him. It all comes down to a showdown with the white lions in the Pride Lands, which will be led by Mufasa.
The movie overall I do consider solid, but yes, I do have a few qualms with it. One of my main gripes is the most obvious: the pacing. This movie feels like it's going on lightning speed sometimes with almost no time to let things sink in. It's not that the story they're trying to tell is bad, the opposite in fact. But when there's almost no time to breathe and scenes go by in the blink of an eye the impact is lessened significantly in some cases.
For example, we barley get to know Mufasa's family (his mother Afia and father Masego) aside from one song, after that he instantly gets separated from them. The same applies to Mufasa once he joins Obasi's (Taka's father) pride. Their time together there goes by so fast that we never really get a good impression of the characters there, or the relationships they have with one another. Even Mufasa's brotherly bond with Taka is super rushed and gets very little focus later down the line. This in turn leads to Taka turning against Mufasa feeling rushed and forced.
Forced. That's another flaw I want to bring up. Because of the lightning pace of the movie, some plot points just kinda feel like they come out of nowhere or like the story is trying to force things, resulting in some things not feeling very natural. This applies to things such as Taka's betrayal, but also Mufasa becoming a king. I never really saw him as a very "kingly" character during this movie. Sure, he has the sixth sense lionesses seem to have and has a few good ideas and is a decent leader, but nothing about him really screams "this guy is absolutely worthy of being the best king the Pride Lands has ever seen". He just feels like a good guy with good leadership skills and ideas, but he never does feel all that royal to me.
There's also the whole fact that Taka blames his parent's death on Mufasa and starts to work together with Kiros (the leader of the white lions), yet the deaths of Obasi and Eshe is 100% Kiros' fault and not Mufasa's at all. So again, this feels rather forced. Same goes for the feelings Taka has for Sarabi coming kinda out of nowhere, and then it suddenly playing a huge role in his betrayal.
I think overall that this movie is just kinda biting off more than it could chew, which leads to these forced plot points and the rushed pace. This easily could've been a movie duology or a miniseries and I think it would've worked better. There are genuinely good ideas here and it definitely is an epic story, but it just couldn't be told properly in the runtime of a two-hour movie.
That said, I do have a lot of compliments for the movie as well. It definitely improved on some aspects of the 2019 movie for example. The movie is a bit more colorful and less drab, the animals emote clearly this time around and I also love how the animation and sound design can get quite a bit "lion-y" sometimes, with stuff like little huffs and lifts of the lips and flicks of ears and flexes of the claws and grunts and growls. Even the trying-to-be realistic 2019 movie didn't have the lions move and sound quite this leonine.
I also really like the villain this time around. Sure, Kiros isn't the most interesting villain out there and his motivations aren't very deep (he wants to rule the prides and wants revenge for his son's death), but it is nice to just have a genuinely evil character in a Disney movie again after they've been dropping villains in their animated movies a lot lately. He isn't misunderstood, he isn't a shitty twist villain, he doesn't get a last-minute redemption. He's just a genuinely evil and sadistic lion and I'm here for it.
The plot outside of Mufasa's story (Rafiki narrating to Kiara, who is nervous because her parents are out in the storm) was also genuinely pretty heartwarming and their interactions were really sweet. The story ends with Nala giving birth to Kiara's brother, which was cute, too. My only complaint about these sections would be Timon and Pumbaa. I liked these characters fine in the 2019 movie, but their comedy got a bit obnoxious in this film, especially when they keep interrupting the main story for some shitty Timon and Pumbaa gags. I really wish the framing device could've just been Rafiki and Kiara because they are genuinely great together, I really didn't need the comic reliefs to come in so often just to be annoying.
The relationship between Taka and Mufasa, despite the advertising, surprisingly feels kinda shoved aside after the first third. I've sorta touched on this earlier in the review, but I just want to expand on it a bit more. It really seems that, once Mufasa joins Obasi's pride and grows up, the focus becomes more so on him and his interactions with other characters (Eshe, Rafiki, Sarabi) than Taka. Taka is still there, don't get me wrong, but he kinda just gets third-wheeled by the story. Which does work in the context of the plot alone, but it does lessen the impact of his betrayal against Mufasa. Because the duo doesn't feel like two close brothers like the story is trying to make them seem early on, the betrayal doesn't leave a huge impact. We all knew it was inevitable (Taka had to become Scar in this prequel, obviously), but since the movie heavily advertises Taka's and Mufasa's bond as brothers the fact that the movie doesn't really deliver much on this early on just lessens the impact of the betrayal and their relationship.
But I do want to make it clear that, despite my qualms, I genuinely did like this movie and I might go see it in theaters again. I just think it's a flawed movie that probably should've been a miniseries or a duology. It's main flaws really are just trying tell too grand a story and do too much in too little time. But, again, I do like it a lot still. It's just a flawed but still rather good movie.
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