Mufasa: The Lion King (2024)
★½
This review may contain spoilers.
there is a pretty interesting film here, under the layers we find a story about Childhood Trauma and how it affects us, how we can either grow from it learn to accept the things that we have, or retreat in that trauma and look for ways to get even with it, there are feelings of being lost in a world that is massive, feelings of sudden abandonment and what it is like to feel that complicated feeling of feeling abandoned but also realize it wasn't in there control that you got swept away with the current, there are feelings of parental neglect as a parent stows his ideals of the perfect son and verbal assaults him until he is what he wants him to be, like there are some dark concepts hidden under this thing that if given the proper time could turn this story into something really special and really speak to the outsiders that the film is clearly trying to target
- James Laxton the D.O.P. did a great job with this thing, there is some great imagery here, there are a couple of shots with the white lions sitting on the tree with the pink / red-ish sky which is pretty nice to look at, there are a couple of shots underwater that are pretty cool to so much dynamic depth is found in these shots of the film, there are some really nice SnorriCam shots of the lions faces and actors that kind of reel you into the character that are pretty nice, things like the underwater shots, where the water changes a tint of blue to a almost pinkish red that couldn't be done in a real camera that are nice little effects.
- the wind section in this thing in particular is really good, very dynamic sounds coming from that section, is that a weird thing to note? like there are a couple of spots where all the focus is given to them and they need to carry the tension of a scene and they do it pretty well.
- In "Brother Betrayed" has a nice beat and rhythm to it, I like the melody to it as well, nice beat and movement.
- there are a couple of distorted bass hits and drums, that are really cool.
- there is this really weird phonon with the dolly zoom that happens pretty early on in this film, it's less impactful than it is in the original and it's because of build up, but when it happens it is mirror when Simba is loosing his parents, so the camera move feels cohesive and story wise makes complete sense, it just the build up and where we were at tension in both films that makes the difference here, but interesting because conceptionally and logically it was the right move to make, but man was it confusing.
- this is going to sound kind of mean but at one point in the film Pumba says tell a story about us and not about all this childhood trauma or something to that degree I don't remember the exact quote but it is curious that they mention this because the story that is in front of us is pretty broken up and like not exploring the childhood trauma of Mufasa in the slightest, we get hints that what he is going through is tough but we don't really see him to sad over his parents death or anything, like he is sad and we see him sad say he still feels his parents next to him but we never see it expanded on in the lion king we get pretty big moments where Simba is looking for feeling after his dad's death, it was a weird thing that I noticed.
- being an outsider is clearly a intended theme, from it being said but also the other pride being literally named the outsiders, the film contests these thoughts by saying you can be the kind of outsider who learns from the things that happen to them and grow or you can hold grudges and get revenge that you feel you deserve, of course these are never as simple as I am stating but the thoughts are there.
- from what I could tell the film was trying to explore this thought "Sometimes when the people most like you don't love you, it is a hurt that can cause the greatest pain, and this pain can lead you to hate everything." which is a very interesting thought to explore in a lion king prequel considering that in the original he is learning from the past and not running from it anymore, which makes the duality of Mufasa and Scar here pretty cool and actually kind of comes full circle into the first lion king movie in some pretty unique ways that not only build on it but expand our knowledge but it falls flat, it's almost like we are missing huge chunks of the story, or like an editor went in and cut all the moments of space to keep the kids attention.
- the thing is the betrayal that happens at the end is really hard to empathize with and not like if you empathized with it you are wrong for having that feeling because it does work conceptional and the beats are there, they feel stilted but they are there, it's more of the betrayal is built off of him being in love with Sarabi but we don't really know this Sarabi and more to that we don't really know this Taka and Mufasa, betrayal has to take a larger form than just a feeling of distrust between two characters, but more to that in order for us the audience to feel empathy for Taka, the betrayal needed to come from there friendship more than his relationship to Sarabi, it helps to use that as a vehicle to explore that thought but it needs to come from that thought. heartbreak does hurt and when your best friend starts dating someone you like it can feel like a big betrayal but when the character doesn't know anything about Sarabi and only idealizes her it feels a bit weird, this idea can be fixed with a few more lines from his dad that expand on this thought of him being like you can lie for your own benefit, while said towards the beginning a lot of the dad's lines are the thoughts that need to be explore but not explore said and then not expanded on.
- not intentional but kind of, this story is told with CGI lions and so they all look pretty similar, so when we meet his parents early on there unique but also they kind of look similar to everyone else, when he loses them the film creates this unintentional feeling of the world being giant and feeling lost in a giant world where all adults look pretty similar because all the lions look pretty similar, again I am not sure if this is intentional but it is interesting.
- for all intense purposes this does feel in line with Barry Jenkins filmography as the things that it is exploring do line up with what he is exploring in his films which in the most basic terms comes down to your past does not make you who you are today.
