The original title of the third part of The lion king is The Lion King ½. It is reminiscent of the crazy titles that received the absurd humor sequels of Grab it as you can (Grab it as you can 2 ½ and Grab it as best you can 33 ⅓), and although the Spanish translation was not as accurate, the film was still the same. The play of The Lion King 3: Hakuna Matataas we saw it direct to video just 20 years ago, was as far-fetched as retelling the entire story of the first lion king from the point of view of Timon and Pumbaa. Who, breaking the fourth wall as if they were a Deadpool and Wolverine of the savannah, they also served as narrators.
Mufasa: The Lion King It is obviously a more serious film. That doesn’t stop, however, Timon and Pumbaa from frequently interrupting Rafiki’s story by asking why they don’t appear in this story—Mufasa’s origin story, to be exact—and even making jokes about a stage musical where Timon It turns out to be a rag doll. Rafiki’s story is addressed to Kiara, daughter of Simba who was the protagonist of The Lion King 2: Simba’s Treasureanother direct-to-video sequel. Mufasa It is, therefore, related to two films that Barry Jenkins wants to vindicate. “They are undervalued,” says the director of Mufasa in conversation with elDiario.es. “They are very funny films, especially for the biggest fans, and they are part of the legacy of The lion king”.
Jenkins, based on Jeff Nathason’s script, is excited to think that this type of references will be captured in the same way by viewers “from Chile, from Portugal, from Korea…”. That’s what it’s like to work on something as big as The lion kingeven with the particularity that Mufasa It is not exactly a prequel to that film released in 1994 from which they would start Simba’s treasure and the buffoonery Hakuna Matata. Instead part comes straight out of the remake that Jon Favreau directed in 2019 and that until the arrival of Inside out 2 This same year it was the highest-grossing animated film of all time. Even though this lion king was labeled as another one of those remakes in live action of animated classics that Disney has been involved in for some time.
This is how strange are the wickers that Jenkins has worked with in Mufasa. And so shocking, considering that this American filmmaker comes from indie and not long ago he was known to the general public as the guy who had taken the Oscar from La La Land with moonlight.
A full stop
“It was so different that I found it exciting, invigorating,” Jenkins says of the contrast of Mufasa with his previous feature films. “Nathason’s script surprised me a lot. Because everyone knows The lion king. Before I started making films I already had a relationship with these characters, and I found what Nathason wanted to do with them very interesting. I decided instantly that I would do it.” Jenkins then joined the group of prestigious directors who had worked on productions of this type for Disney before him: Guy Ritchie with Aladdin, Tim Burton with Dumbo o David Lowery, responsible for stimulants Peter and the dragon and Peter Pan & Wendy.
Lowery’s case may fit well with Jenkins’, since just as the signer of The green knight knew how to imbue these projects with his authorial vision, Jenkins realized that Mufasa It was not as different from his previous films as it seemed. “I don’t think Nathason was thinking about me when he wrote the script, but I guess Disney wanted to send it to me because they saw similarities with my previous work,” Jenkins explains. “So the script excited me as a fan of those characters and it wasn’t until later, when I was working on the film more deeply, that I perceived these similarities: the idea of abandoned children and the chosen family.”
“Also good parenting as opposed to bad parenting. The way Mufasa and Scar grow up and are alternately driven to be the best and worst versions of themselves.” Mufasa tells the youth of Simba’s father, murdered by his half-brother Scar to the trauma of an entire generation in the 90s. This gigantic flashback It involves telling his relationship with Scar (originally Taka) and how it went awry as both, as orphans, had to learn to survive away from their family. History seeks, then, an unusual dramatic volume that Jenkins was able to take to his field, once he had already triumphed with works like the aforementioned moonlight either The Beale Street Blues: all of them narratives of vulnerable and traumatized people.
I don’t work for Disney, I’m just a storyteller, but I was very inspired by how novel this was going to be. Its originality and, I have to say, the degree of freedom it implied
Barry Jenkins
— Filmmaker
“It all seemed very deep to me, it was worth exploring,” Jenkins insists. “I also thought that this complexity would connect with the children’s audience if we treated them with respect.” The effort of Jenkins and Nathason weaves correspondence with the creative impetus of The lion king nineties: a film that, after all, was freely inspired by the Hamlet of Shakespeare. Right from here Jenkins felt at home again, because to voice young Mufasa in the original version he turned to an old acquaintance: Aaron Pierre, a promising performer who this year we have seen in one of the most powerful productions on Netflix (Rebel Ridge by Jeremy Saulnier), and who had previously starred in a series by Jenkins himself, The underground railway.
Meeting Pierre again The lion kingAt the same time, he rediscovered Shakespeare. “I discovered Aaron when he was representing Othello in London,” he reveals. “And I knew he would do a great job. “He is an incredible actor and also one of the most beautiful human beings in the world.” On the other hand, and despite many similarities with his work that he found in the script, Jenkins admits that the greatest incentive was how different it is. Mufasa regarding previous reviews of Disney animated classics. “I don’t work for Disney, I’m just a storyteller, but I was very inspired by how new this was going to be. Its originality and, I have to say, the degree of freedom it implied.”
Despite its nods to the pre-existing consequences of The lion king —never taken culturally very seriously due to their affiliation to VHS—, Mufasa tells something original, wanting us to review our experience of well-known history from it. It necessarily inhabits a terrain more fertile to surprise than remakes recent like that of The little mermaidalthough we should not be fooled either: Mufasa still knows what keys to hit, and how to remain a recognizable show.
Jenkins’ big challenges
At first glance the presence of Lin-Manuel Miranda (hamilton, Charm) as composer: Mufasa is another of the many musicals that have taken over the billboards in recent months, maintaining the challenge of The lion king Favreau’s idea that his hyper-realistic (and certainly expressionless) talking animals convey some kind of euphoria with their songs. The resulting numbers are, in effect and necessarily, as little dynamic as those of The lion king 2019. As five years ago there were extremely beloved songs available to hide it, Mufasa and Lin-Manuel Miranda have taken great care in preparing the new setlist.
That is, the added songs are not those of Simba’s treasure —one of whose themes, He lives in youachieved such notoriety that it was included in the successful Broadway musical—, to instead be articulated as narrative and conceptual successors to the pieces by Tim Rice and Elton John. “Lin is very intelligent when it comes to conceiving his musicals, and he trusted that music could be a tool to deepen the characters.” That’s why Miranda was absent from the soundtrack of Moana 2but here he has been able to sign willing imitations of Get ready, it’s the night of love either I’m going to be the lion king (themes converted into Bye Bye, Tell Me It’s You and I Always Wanted a Brother). “The music elevated the story we were telling,” says Jenkins.
As for his role as director, the main challenge was, of course, working for the first time in his career with laborious CGI animation. Jenkins reveals that the biggest difficulty, then, was having “total control” over what appears on the screen. “You tell people what you want and they do it all. For example, a stage full of moving water, in which I can decide where the characters are placed to find the most powerful image possible. The director of moonlight He points out that this is “the difference between capturing an image and creating an image.” “I wasn’t interested in creating an image,” he says, “so I tried to separate my work from the total control that CGI gave me, to maintain certain principles.” live action within the technology used.”
How did he do it? “We physically recreated everything we could: the sets, the lighting on our performers.” In this way Pierre and company integrated “a montage where we knew what they were saying and how they said it.” “Then the camera, thanks to the suits motion captureI could make a first draft of the animation in real time. As if we were drawing with the bodies of the actors,” explains Jenkins with notable enthusiasm. “We capture it in real time, in real space. Thus the camera was able to have a very intimate and cinematic relationship with the movements of the characters. “So we dealt with this strange digital process and made something with more texture and life.”
All so that, when they were already concluding the film, the film team Mufasa learned of the passing of James Earl Jones in September. Jones had dubbed the adult Mufasa in both the 1994 and 2019 versions. “It was impossible to make the film without thinking about him, so we decided to honor him as soon as possible and pay our respects,” says Jenkins. Mufasa It thus begins with a message “in memory of James Earl Jones” that serves as an eloquent illustration of the nostalgic nature of the film and its reverence for the past: almost as much as that image that moved a lot with the remake of The lion king and he found a young Simba checking how his claws could barely begin to occupy his father’s footprints.
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