'Mufasa' Review: 'Lion King' Prequel Is Disney's Best Movie Of 2024 (By Default)

Barry Jenkins' visually spectacular prequel is closer in spirit to Disney's "better than they need to be" mid-2010s tentpoles than their recent nostalgia-chasing rehashes.

Barry Jenkins’ visually spectacular prequel to The Lion King and closer in spirit to Disney's "better than required" mid-2010s tentpoles than their recent nostalgia-chasing and comparatively timid follow-ups and rehashes.

Mufasa: The Lion King (2024)
Rated PG (for action/violence, peril and some thematic elements)
118 Minutes
Directed by Barry Jenkins
Written by Jeff Nathanson
Produced by Adele Romanski and Mark Ceryak
Cinematography by James Laxton
Editing by Joi McMillon
Music by Dave Metzger and Nicholas Britell
Songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda
Starring - Aaron Pierre, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Tiffany Boone and Mads Mikkelsen
Opening theatrically on the week of December 20 courtesy of Walt Disney Studios

Barry Jenkins’ Mufasa is closer in quality to Jon Favreau’s The Jungle Book than to Jon Favreau’s The Lion King. First, by allowing the animals to emote this time, the film’s protagonists get to *act.* It’s a happy medium between the illusion of photo-realism and something more anthropomorphic, resulting in a far more compelling and entertaining adventure than what we got in 2019. Second, since this is a prequel to The Lion King (either version) and not a Gus Van Sant’s Psycho-style rehash of the 1994 animated flick, Jenkins and writer Jeff Nathanson can tell something resembling an original story. The story they choose to tell is a simple hybrid of Prince of Egypt by way of Disney’s Tarzan and (ironically) Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur. Still, it’s a framework on which to hang some frankly forgettable songs amid a visually beautiful and occasionally cinematically clever adventure literally intended as a fable for children.

The established Lion King supporting characters, Timon, Pumba, Zazu and Rafiki, feature in the film’s present-tense framing device, as the latter entertains and distracts Simba and Nala’s young daughter (Blue Ivy Carter) amid a rainstorm by telling her the story of how and why her grandfather and not the lion eventually known as “Scar,” would become the king of Pride Rock. The picture, running a busy 118 minutes, gets off to a strong start as young Mufasa (initially voiced by Braelyn Rankins and eventually voiced by Rebel Ridge breakout Aaron Pierre) seemingly loses his parents in a wrenching natural disaster that doubles as a “Look what we’re going to give you” set piece. By the way, not only did the picture look as good as expected in Imax, but the 3-D was among the more natural and organic approximations I’ve seen in a while outside of (obviously) Avatar: The Way of Water and the reissue of Coraline.

To be fair, both before and after Avatar, the tech worked better for animated flicks like The Polar Express than for live-action tentpoles like (to use a positive example) Amazing Spider-Man 2. But yes, this is a beautiful Imax 3-D movie. Mufasa is rescued from the raging rapids by young Taka (Theo Somolu and then Kelvin Harrison Jr.), who always wanted a brother. The first act sees the traumatized Mufasa bonding with his adopted brother and mother (Thandiwe Newton), only for his second home to become disrupted. Kiros (Mads Mikkelsen, of course), the tyrannical leader of a pride of white lions known as “The Outsiders,” arrives with conquest on his mind and bloodshed in his heart, which leads to Mufasa and Taka being sent off to find a new home just as… metaphorically speaking… Krypton explodes. This is all in the first act, and it’s a busy and engrossing bit of setup and storytelling.

Mufasa declines once the brothers embark on their Wizard of Oz-like journey. That includes picking up colorful characters we first met in their older Lion King forms, as well as a young Sarabi (Tiffany Boone) who will (in classic Fight Club fashion) *ruin everything*. Jokes aside, the “torn apart over a woman” story thread is hinted at in the original, and it’s not like the film blames anyone other than Taka for Taka’s downfall. After the comparatively thrilling first act, we essentially spend the rest of the movie on a road trip as we A) watch certain bits of Lion King lore get added to the proverbial collection and B) wait to see how Taka’s moral downfall will play out and what the consequences might be. Alas, I cannot make the same Wicked jokes I did with Transformers One, although it shares alongside Kraven a token similarity to Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins.

I’ve joked for years about how this might be the Godfather Part II (or Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again) of Disney follow-ups, and… it’s not far off (“I know it was you, Taka. You broke my heart!”). Cheap shots I can’t refuse notwithstanding, there’s a lot of last-minute table-setting in the final reel, not unlike X-Men: First Class. And, yeah, as is sometimes the case with these retroactive retcons, the eventually adult Mufasa comes off as jaw-droppingly naive or indifferent regarding how this film ends and what happens in the next one. Beyond Michael Corleone’s advice about keeping your friends close but your enemies closer, I kept thinking of the Wakanda Forever dream sequence where Killmonger asked Shuri if she had the stones to take care of business. Bemusingly enough, this Lion King prequel feels even more “inspired” than the original Lion King (or the first Black Panther) by the corporate struggle laid out in DisneyWar.

None of this reinvents the wheel, and I’d argue that Jenkins came aboard partially to secure big studio money to retell these oft-revised myths and stories through the prism of an African-set franchise with “non-white faces.” Not only are “The Others” (themselves outcasts who reacted to their traumas by lashing out) explicitly white lions, but even Takala stands out from Mufasa and his pride by virtue of being much lighter-furred. If there are cultural touches and artistic choices that this 44-year-old white guy from Akron, Ohio, didn’t catch, well… I would hope so. That’s not to say that the picture feels transgressive or challenging. Nor does it need to be. Back when adults saw grown-up movies in theaters, we didn’t need The Santa Clause or Freaky Friday to be “the movie we need right now.” However, Mufasa is the first big Disney film of the year that doesn’t feel afraid of its own shadow.

Compared to the timid likes of Deadpool and Wolverine, Inside Out 2 and Moana 2, Mufasa: The Lion King is, at the very least, a large-scale, big-budget, visually impressive tentpole that seems more concerned with what it offers in terms of present-tense entertainment value and thematic relevance than what it reminds you of or merely doesn’t offer that might set off the Online Troll Brigade. Although, deep sigh, the film’s ideas about aligning with those unlike you to beat back a common enemy may qualify as politically courageous following Bob Iger’s recent path-of-least-resistance capitulation. At best, that’s about avoiding potentially “out-of-context shocking” reveals during the civil discovery process – Happy 10th anniversary to the Sony Hack! Either way, it’s not exactly an example of “No, you move.” To be fair, Disney has been playing “Do as I say, not as I do,” at least since they announced intentions to swallow Fox Studios whole in late 2017.

Movies aren’t real, and entertainment companies cannot be expected to act in accordance with the values expressed in their films and shows. But, again, considering how they and Netflix positioned themselves as the progressive social consciousness of mid-2010s big-budget pop culture, is every mid-2020s Disney biggie now going to feel as self-critical as Dumbo? For those lucky folks who can still enjoy Zootopia (still great, in a vacuum) as much in late 2024 as they did in early 2016, Mufasa: The Lion King is what it promises. It’s an unnecessary franchise extension mostly concerned with needless past-tense lore. Nonetheless, it is constructed and delivered with eye-popping talent and skill alongside exactly enough melodramatic oomph to make it a painless and often enjoyable coming-of-age adventure. “Halfway decent and not entirely predicated on nostalgia” may not be a high-water mark, but that makes it, by default, the best movie we’ve gotten from The Walt Disney Company in 2024.