It’s what you would expect from Walt Disney Animation Studios whose success was built on a reputation of technical innovation and excellence. The original Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was the world’s first full-color, fully animated feature film back in 1937. It was a milestone. Three years later, Fantasia became the first feature film released in stereophonic sound.
Over the years, Disney continued to release blockbuster animated film classics. More recently, the original, traditionally animated The Lion King (1994) earned $763 million at the box office. The dazzling digital remake in 2019 earned over a billion dollars worldwide. The franchise became an even bigger gold mine for Disney, with the 1997 Broadway Musical adaptation of the movie, still running, which earned almost $2 billion.
Disney was not done cashing in on the success of The Lion King. The studio invested an estimated $200 mllion in the production of a prequel, Mufasa: The Lion King, released on December 20th.
It is a fitting addition to the Lion King saga, wasting no time establishing all the technical wallop and visual impact that state-of-the-art digital animation can deliver. The opening scenes are breathtaking, not only in scope and scale, color and detail, but in the exhilarating, soaring freedom of the “camera.”
Since there are no traditional, physical cameras in animation, “camera moves” can be whatever the animation team imagines. We can float or zoom through imaginary space in ways that are impossible in live action movies, despite the most advanced developments in Steadicam and drone technology.
The moving, gliding perspective afforded by digital animation can take audiences to thrilling new levels of visual experience. Recent releases like Moana 2 and Mufasa: The Lion King are prime examples.
They underscore just how far digital animation has evolved since the release of movies like Toy Story back in 1995.
The detail is mind-blowing, particularly with the rendering of the animal characters -- their fur, their musculature, their eyes and whiskers. It’s all photo-realistic, as is their posture, movement and physicality.
The lighting effects embellish the verisimilitude of the characters and their environments. Everything looks astonishingly real, almost hyper-real due to the level of perfection. You could honestly say that the visuals and effects alone are worth the price of admission if you’re someone who loves movies.
The looming question with Mufasa: The Lion King was whether the story could live up to the blockbuster success of the earlier films. Disney knew the kind of epic story that Lion King fans were expecting, and they delivered. It’s an extension of the Lion King story that introduces Simba’s young daughter Kiara, who spends a stormy night in an African cave with Timon, Pumbaa and Rafiki hearing the story of her legendary grandfather, Mufasa, the original Lion King.
It is a backstory tracing Mufasa’s childhood adventure, as well as an origin story outlining all the characters and events that shaped his life and his triumphant ascent to the Lion King throne. The screenplay is cleverly written, immensely entertaining and powerfully dramatic in the final reel.
What perhaps falls short of expectations is the musical score by the very talented Lin-Manuel Miranda. As it turns out, Elton John is a hard act to follow. His unforgettable score for the original film is part of pop culture even now—30 years after the release of the original Lion King.
Moreover, songs in Mufasa: The Lion King almost feel like an awkward interruption of the story throughout the film. While musicals are a strange mix of songs popping up in the middle of conventional dialog, the classic movie musicals somehow find a way of making it work, with subtilty and grace. That is not the case here.
While Mufasa: The Lion King may have fallen short of opening week expectations at the box office, it will assuredly find an audience, gain traction and take its rightful place in the regal realm of The Lion King.
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