The Lion King 2019 may have ruled the box office with a gigantic $1.6 billion worldwide gross, but it was largely considered a fruitless exercise in giving a masterpiece of animation a coat of Uncanny Valley paint while extending the narrative with needless drama and a mediocre new ballad and calling it a day.
Unfortunately, the frankly offensive eyesore was a massive hit, so here we are with the latest of Disney’s inevitable sequels and spin-offs to their egregious run of live-action remakes, despite the likelihood that almost no-one has sat through the “original” again since hate-watching the 2019 revamp in the cinema.
Beginning a short while after the death of Scar (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor), there’s peace in the Pride Lands once more and Simba (Donald Glover) and Nala (Beyoncé Knowles-Carter) have their first cub, Kiara (Blue Ivy Carter).
Having never known her grandfather, Mufasa (James Earl Jones, now played by Aaron Pierre), Kiara is desperate to hear her family’s history and sits down with eccentric mandrill Rafiki (John Kani and Kagiso Lediga) with Timon (Billy Eichner) and Pumbaa (Seth Rogen) to learn how he became king.
It turns out Mufasa was not born to lion nobility (whatever that means) but was, in fact, lost as a cub and reluctantly taken in by Obasi (Lennie James), whose son Taka (Kelvin Harrison Jr) is destined to become the king of their pride.
Mufasa and Taka quickly strike up a tight bond, but their community is threatened when a pack of white lions known as the Outsiders, led by Mads Mikkelsen in full Scar-mode as Kiros, begins to ravage their territory.
With a plot that’s only slightly elevated beyond a straight-to-DVD Disney sequel from back in the day, subpar songs and a severe case of Prequelitis, Mufasa: The Lion King is a slight improvement over the destable first film but is by no means a necessary endeavour.
What marks Mufasa apart from the original is visionary director Barry Jenkins at the helm, who attacks his first blockbuster output with a more painterly and cerebral sensibility than Disney journeyman Jon Favreau.
There are genuine attempts at visual artistry here, with some ambitious and vibrant compositions that nevertheless fall short of a piece of Planet Earth B-roll David Attenborough forgot to narrate. Best known for his stunning dramas Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk, earlier moments with Mufasa and Taka try to evoke those same feelings of tender love and friendship but are lost within a layer of foggy and off-putting effects.
It also has the advantage of not being beholden to recreating iconic moments from the original (which, it turned out, was almost every shot) in almost-but-not-quite-convincing photorealistic animation, resulting in a familiar yet unpleasant itching of the brain’s nostalgia lobe.
Later, the dramatic turn of Taka (whose real identity is so telegraphed I was stunned when the third act tried to pass it off as a twist) pulls from Othello in the same way The Lion King masterfully mirrors Shakespeare’s Hamlet, but its childish morality and paper-thin revenge plot falls far short of the 1994 original’s epic poem feel.
You can also all but guarantee you won’t be humming any of the instantly forgettable songs from Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, who balks at the admittedly unenviable task of composing a love song as sweeping as Can You Feel the Love Tonight or a villain theme as catchy as Be Prepared.
Mufasa also leans so heavily on Hans Zimmer’s stirring score it almost tricks you into thinking the goosebumps you might be feeling are related to the film itself, before you realise you’ve just been watching a CGI monkey climb a CGI tree against a CGI sunset for five gruelling minutes.
Endless references and allusions to the original film also grow tiresome extremely quickly. Scar’s iconic “long live the king” moment is evoked multiple times, we get the origin story of Rafiki’s walking stick everyone was apparently crying out for, and Timon and Pumbaa are more irritating than they’ve ever been, constantly interrupting the narrative with winks to the audience and to belt a few bars of Hakuna Matata.
Had this been released in 2D animation back in the 1990s as a sequel to the original it would have been perfectly servicable entertainment for toddlers and pre-teens, but Disney’s creativity is clearly wearing thin with this one.
Given Wicked, a still flawed yet infinitely better musical with memorable songs and real-life, actual people singing and dancing for our pleasure is currently still playing on the big screen, save yourself the headache and Mufasa a miss. Hopefully Jenkins puts his undoubtedly hefty Disney salary to good use.
Mufasa: The Lion King releases in UK cinemas from Friday, December 20.