Mufasa

So…two my favorite animated films of all time are The Lion King, and The Lion King 2. The music is phenomenal, as are the stories and I rewatch both of them incredibly regularly. So when I heard that Lin Manuel Miranda was doing the music for Mufasa I was extremely excited. Mufasa is another one of those “no one asked for this” kind of movies and I feel like it exists only to tell the story of how Scar got his name. But we truly didn’t need a whole movie for that, a little mystery never hurt anyone. Now the reason that the 2 main Lion King movies are so successful is not just because of the music but it is also because their stories are literally Shakespeare. The first Lion King is Hamlet, and the second is Romeo and Juliet. Every single time they have tried to expand this franchise without using Shakespeare it's been bad. Lion King 1 ½ was an embarrassment to film, and the show on Disney Jr. is…a show. So we went into Mufasa skeptical at best.

Okay first things first; there is 0 reason that this movie wasn’t animated. I am not really sure what Disney’s obsession with live action is, but they need to cool it. This movie would have been immediately 10X better if it were animated.

Second of all I love Lin, he was literally the only reason I was excited to see this movie but the music in this movie was not his best work. Now there were a couple of good songs but for the most part his lyricism specifically felt really off with this one. The music itself is very in line with the rest of the Lion King music and it felt authentic. The other problem with the music was that it didn’t feel organic or natural placement wise. There was a straight up musical theatre “we are about to sing now” pause before one of them. It just felt really forced, honestly (and I can’t believe this is coming from me) I don’t think the film needed music, and it probably would have been better without it.

Then we have the framing device; Rafiki, Timon and Pumba are telling Kiara a story to distract her from the storm. Now this would be fine IF we didn’t keep cutting back to it. The story would finally settle in and find it's flow and then we would cut back to the framing device. That is HORRIBLE storytelling. In one of the greatest films of all time, The Princess Bride they use the same framing device and in an hour and a half they cut back to it a grand total of twice, maybe three times. However in Mufasa we cut back to the framing device 6-7 times…it's bad. Also every time Timon talks and it's not Nathan Lane it pisses me off.

Then we have the story itself. Taka and Mufasa growing up together was fine. Setting off on their own was fine. I didn’t have any major problems until Sarabi comes into the picture. Taka literally fights to have Mufasa as his brother and then betrays him for a girl? Could we get anymore cliche and boring? This would have been better if we had sewn the seeds of jealousy a lot earlier. We needed to see Taka starting to build animosity towards Mufasa back when they were with their parents, then as they are traveling, THEN when the Sarabi thing happens it makes sense. And Mufasa didn’t need to know that Taka betrayed him, I think that if it was something that he just never found out and then Scar is always out to get him it is much more impactful and more in line with the original story.

I mentioned up top that one of the reasons Lion King 1 & 2 are so good is because they have brilliant music and a Shakespearean story. This very easily could have been a Richard the Third kind of story and they just chose not to do that, it was a bad choice.

Let’s talk about the voice acting…or lack thereof. For some reason Taka was super British, Jeremy Irons is British sure but Scar isn't. We seem to have forgotten the ACTING part of voice acting. People are getting hired for these roles and then just talking, like themselves. There is no character, there is no connection, there is no actual acting involved in voice acting anymore and it is extremely disappointing.

Overall I was beyond disappointed. It was bad. Nearly every decision they made was wrong. The music was subpar and it's placement made it worse. The narrative was cliche and underdeveloped and it was delivered in an incredibly choppy way. I give it no more than a 4/10, it had so much potential and I’m really upset about it. Now time to watch Lion King 2 to flush this experience from my brain.