Scar’s Supervillain Origin Story – Mufasa: The Lion King
This weekend, I decided to undertake the misfortune of catching up on Mufasa: The Lion King. For once, I didn’t see one of these remakes in the theater, which was glorious. But I let my curiosity get the best of me and watched it on Disney+ now that it’s free. The marketing for Mufasa: The Lion King led me to believe it was a mishmash of the animated Lion King, the 2019 live-action abomination, The Lion King II: Simba’s Pride, and weirdly, The Lion Guard animated series. This is all true, and the framing device also gives some Godfather Part II energy. To be clear, this is not a compliment; it’s just the concept, not the quality, that is similar. I caught at least one reference to the Lion King Broadway musical and a line pulled from Simba’s Pride. Disney seemingly tries to convince die-hard fans that Mufasa is a good movie and bore everyone else to tears. Let’s discover how that worked out for them.
Mufasa: The Lion King finds Kiara (Ivy Blue Carter) lonely and afraid as Simba (Donald Glover) and Nala (Beyoncé) retreat to a cave to give birth to another cub. Timon (Billy Eichner) and Pumbaa (Seth Rogen) are charged with watching the Princess during a storm, and they all end up in a cave with Rafiki (John Kani) so he can tell Kiara about her grandfather, Mufasa. This takes us to baby Mufasa (Braelyn Rankin) with his first set of parents (Keith David and Anika Noni Rose). They sing about lion heaven, which, apparently, is a literal place, and then they’re separated by a flood. Mufasa is saved by a cub named Taka (Theo Somolu). Still, Taka’s father, Obasi (Lennie James), wants to kill and eat Mufasa. Taka pleases his mother, Eshe (Thandiwe Newton), by letting Mufasa win a race, allowing him to live and stay. However, as an embarrassing caveat, Obasi makes Mufasa remain with the females despite Taka’s wish to have Mufasa as a brother. With the females, Mufasa learns to hunt and hones a mysterious ability to smell minute details. This is important later as he can smell Nala’s geographic point of origin. Please don’t ask me to explain this; I don’t understand it, I don’t like it, and it actually creeps me out a little bit. Once the boys are grown, white lions led by Kiros (Mads Mikkelsen, wasted as usual on inferior material) become a problem. Kiros’ son chases the boys, and Eshe and Mufasa kills him in self-defense. This finally kicks off the plot, as Kiros wants vengeance and to be the only Lion King. I’m not joking. Nala, Rafiki, and Zazu end up with the brothers on the way to Milele (Lion Heaven on Earth) because every aspect of The Lion King must be explained and set up.
This will be slightly different from a movie review because the movie isn’t brand new. I didn’t see this in theaters, and for your sake, I hope you didn’t, either. I won’t worry about spoilers because you either already saw this or don’t care. I also don’t think you can fully appreciate how simultaneously insane and boring this is without some of the details.
***SPOILERS***
The dialogue in Mufasa is terrible. Rafiki has a couple of decent nuggets of wisdom, but otherwise, this film’s screenplay is misguided and self-important. Multiple times in the movie, you can tell writer Jeff Nathanson thought he did something. Several characters pontificate on the circle of life, “outsiders,” and even being kicked out of your own tribe/family/whatever. What is being missed is that the well-remembered lines in The Lion King are meaningful and simple. Characters don’t need to give long-winded speeches on the importance of working together or what it means to be King. It’s boring and far less effective, both emotionally and just for the story itself. Rafiki’s, “Oh yes, the past can hurt. But you can either run from it, or learn from it,” Nala feeling like Simba is back from the dead and pretty much everything Mufasa says in the original worked because they were well-worded but straight to the point. In Mufasa, Mufasa gives a Return of the King-style speech to rally all of the animals of Milele to fight Kiros’ lions. Who is this for? I can’t imagine a child sitting still or even caring about what’s happening, and it’s not well-written or acted enough to impress an adult audience. This is more of a nitpick, but in the beginning, the only time Simba and Nala are in the movie until the very end, they keep calling each other “my love” and seemingly magically communicating across the Pride Lands. I know there was some whimsy and suspension of disbelief in the animated movie, but I can’t get with this.
The more light-hearted dialogue in the movie is bad, too. Seth Rogen and Billy Eichner were bad choices for Pumbaa and Timon in 2019, and they still are now. I actually like Billy Eichner (but not Seth Rogen), but I just don’t think anyone else can play these characters besides Ernie Sabella and Nathan Lane. They go for obvious, unfunny jokes like saying “Hakuna Mufasa” and commenting on how Timon was portrayed in the Broadway musical. That would be nonsense to kids, and unfunny to anyone else. Mufasa’s screenplay reaches for obvious franchise references like “Lion King” and “Circle of Life” constantly. In the end, Mufasa’s birth mother even says, “He lives in you,” about his dead father. This is the title of a song originally from the 1995 album “Rhythm of the Pride Lands” in celebration of the original Lion King film. The song went on to be included in the Broadway show and, later, The Lion King II: Simba’s Pride. The character of Kiara is also from Simba’s Pride, and her baby brother is presumably Kion from The Lion Guard. There’s also way too much foreshadowing of things we already know about. Three times in this movie, Scar grabs Mufasa by the paws and ultimately pulls him up. We know this is how he eventually kills him, but I don’t understand why the film wants to harp on it. Mufasa is obsessed with the better things that came before it and doesn’t know what else to make of itself.
And yes, I said Mufasa finds his birth mother. With some slight changes, Mufasa puts its title character through the same basic arc as Simba in The Lion King. This franchise can’t seem to stop cannibalizing itself. It’s also hard for me to believe that Mufasa, Scar, and Sarabi all had such traumatic childhoods, in addition to Simba and Nala in the first film. Doesn’t anyone just have a normal upbringing without their parents getting murdered in this universe? Taka/Scar’s father even threatens to eat Mufasa. I know the movie needs a plot (if it has to exist, which it doesn’t), but this feels tedious and difficult to believe. Simba and Nala’s love story was never the strongest part of the movie or among Disney’s better romances, but Mufasa and Sarabi are really bad. We already know they get together, but even the events in this movie are so obvious from a mile away. Mufasa saves Sarabi’s life but lets her think it was Taka because Taka is in love with her. Once she realizes the truth, they share a forgettable ballad as Taka glares in jealousy. The second-hand cringe of Taka’s rejection is the only part of Mufasa and Sarabi’s story that provokes any reaction in the viewer. That being said, I didn’t want a Scar/Mufasa/Sarabi love triangle. Who wanted this? And Zazu belongs to Sarabi, who seemingly knows everything and is always right. She rejects Taka for his inability to listen to her or something. Mufasa only understands women because he was solely raised among them, which is also how he developed his smelling superpower. Even though Scar is the cunning one, Taka is shown as dumb and clueless in this love subplot, while Mufasa is evidently the ultimate chick magnet.
The music is the only aspect of Mufasa: The Lion King I thought would probably be good. Lin-Manuel Miranda was working on this instead of Moana 2 (which is also horrible), and I figured Mufasa must be the superior project then, right? Wrong. Most of the songs in Mufasa are repetitive and forgettable. I just watched the film yesterday, and I only remember “I Always Wanted a Brother” and “Bye Bye.” “Bye Bye” isn’t exactly what I would call a good song, but it has been haunting me. Thank you, Mads Mikkelsen, for never being boring, even when you’re in an otherwise horrible movie. Kiros isn’t an interesting, funny, or threatening character, but you can hear Mads putting the work in. And I’ve never heard him sing before! He isn’t bad, although, like I said, I don’t think “Bye Bye” is a great song—just an unfortunately catchy one. There’s a joke early into Mufasa about how long people have been singing “Hakuna Matata,” and I think they, unfortunately, put a magnifying glass on yet another area where this movie is lacking. When you don’t stop talking about better stuff, it only reinforces how inferior your product is. Mufasa’s only genuinely great musical motifs are re-recycled from The Lion King and the first live-action remake.
Mikkelsen doesn’t provide the only good performance, either. I love Keith David, and while he’s way too good for this, it was nice to hear him all the same. He and Anika Noni Rose play Mufasa’s parents, which is interesting since they played Tiana and Dr. Facilier in The Princess and the Frog. Beyoncé, who plays Nala in this, wanted the role of Tiana but refused to audition, believing she would automatically get the role. Her Dreamgirls co-star, Anika Noni Rose, ultimately got the role. Kelvin Harrison Jr. sounds like Jeremy Irons near the film’s end, around when he betrays Mufasa to Kiros. I was conflicted about this choice, but I think I like it. It can’t have been easy to do this voice, and it shows that at least someone working on this film cared about something. David Oyelowo didn’t sound like Irons’ Scar performance in the first live-action one, so you could argue this creates inconsistencies. But the movie is already so bad I don’t think that matters.
Mufasa: The Lion King is a chore to sit through. It took me two increments of about an hour, and I’m surprised I finished it. There are ideas I would normally like here, like the scene where Rafiki calls Mufasa his brother. Rafiki spent the movie searching for his real brother, so in a better movie, this would be a satisfying payoff. The idea of found family is just slapped onto this mess to make sense of it, I guess. However, I don’t like everything the movie (tried to do). Kiros questions the Circle of Life, like it’s a common phrase the animals all believe in, like part of a religion or something. I don’t like the attempts at deconstruction, but I also didn’t get the impression this idea was so prevalent. In the end, the animals all team up out of nowhere, with the giraffes yelling that they stand with Mufasa. It’s messy, poorly set up, and impossible to care about. I didn’t think Mufasa would be good, but I expected a more competent production with better music. In short, I expected the bare minimum and was still disappointed. Even now that Mufasa is free, you should skip it.
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