Director Jon Favreau's 2019 CGI remake of Disney's beloved 1994 animated hit The Lion King was a terrible idea—but it's hard to convince a corporation that an idea was a terrible one when it also grossed $1.6 billion at the worldwide box office. It was a terrible idea because we'd all had 25 years to see the way in which conventional animation worked better for this story—allowing the animal characters to have personality and facial expressions when singing the classic songs, and softening the conflicts between lions so that they didn't feel like outtakes from a particularly brutal National Geographic documentary. CGI was the wrong tool for the job and we all knew it, because we'd seen the result of using the right tool for the job.
The inevitable prequel, Mufasa: The Lion King, is at least in theory a less-terrible idea than simply remaking The Lion King, because it doesn't force that direct point of comparison. It throws elements from direct-to-video sequels like The Lion King 2: Simba's Pride and The Lion King 1-1/2 into a blender with The Ten Commandments and emerges with the origin story—told in flashback by Rafiki (John Kani) to Simba's cub, Kiara (Blue Ivy Carter, scion of Beyoncé and Jay-Z)—of the revered grandfather Kiara never met.
We learn that Mufasa (Braelyn Rankins as a cub, later Aaron Pierre) was separated from his parents during a flash flood and rescued by Taka (Theo Somolu, then Kelvin Harrison, Jr.), son of the lion king Obasi (Lennie James). There Mufasa is raised as an adopted brother to Taka, with whom he eventually flees into exile when a marauding band of white tigers (led by Mads Mikkelsen's Kiros) invades their territory.
The set-up leads to plenty of adventures in which the lion brothers gather a misfit band of familiar characters, including a young Rafiki (Kagiso Lediga), future lion queen Sarabi (Tiffany Boone) and fussy bird Zazu (Preston Nyman), interspersed with the framing narrative that also includes Pumbaa (Seth Rogen) and Timon (Billy Eichner) as Kiara's babysitters. The connections with the original story are always evident—they create a running joke from not-quite-naming the character Taka will eventually become—and underlined at regular intervals. And in the way of such things, the nudges tend to become kind of exhausting. Sure, it's slightly less expected to get a reference to Julie Taymor's stage musical of The Lion King, but must we get a parade of "ah, so that's how Rafiki got his walking stick" and "oh, that's how Pride Rock was formed?"
(Answer: Yes. Apparently, we must.)
The shame of it is, Jeff Nathanson's screenplay has a perfectly solid idea at its core, though it takes most of the two-hour running time to get there. Bailing on the idea of bloodline patrilineal monarchy, Mufasa suggests that being a leader is earned, as we see our hero rally different animals into a coalition against predators. The allegory to contemporary politics might be obvious to some grown-ups—I'll be shocked if some grumpy conservative commentator doesn't refer to it as Antifa: The Lion King—but it's still a nice idea to convey to young audiences that there are different strengths that make one worthy of being followed.
That's the good news. The bad news is that photorealistic CGI animals for a family-friendly story remains a profoundly terrible creative choice. Director Barry Jenkins does impressive things with the story's action elements, crafting some exciting chases, escapes and battles, but he's still stuck with what this creative format does to the characters. No attempt at giving these critters human smiles can evoke the same personality as hand-drawn or even stylized CGI animation, and while the new songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda are good ones with his distinctive sound, the musical numbers all fall flat when the animal mouths uttering them can't show us real emotion. And if you can tell the difference in certain scenes between the character design of Sarabi and the character design of Mufasa's mother, well, good eye, I guess.
So maybe Mufasa: The Lion King will rake in another billion-plus. If so, Disney will probably continue to take away the lesson that audiences care about this art form, rather than that audiences care about these characters as introduced in another, much better art form—one where they felt more real than photorealism can possibly duplicate.