In “Mufasa,” a prequel to the animated classic “The Lion King”, Disney offers a satisfactory explanation that fills in the backstory of the original story in a very mediocre fashion.

“Mufasa” arrived in theaters December 20, 2024, releasing 20 years after the original movie “The Lion King,” and follows the upbringing of Taki, later revealed to be the future villain of the original, Scar, and his adoptive brother Mufasa. 

While the movie does its job of offering the audience a backstory for the original and the conflicts between Mufasa and Scar, it executes this in a bland and oftentimes awkward manner. 

This choice to portray the movie in this way almost completely branches itself off from the older audience. While this does allow for a younger audience to understand the movie much easier, “Mufasa” should have been able to do this while keeping the older audience interested. 

The original movie does this perfectly. “The Lion King” is simple and easier to understand, which gives a younger audience much to enjoy. This is exemplar in the characters of Timon and Pumbaa, who appear briefly in “Mufasa,” with their fun song about having no worries, “Hakuna Matata”.

This element of humor was clearly added to the original to give it a little more charm and to also give children a funny song to sing along and listen to. 

However, the original does not strictly appeal to a young audience and commonly portrays deeper and more complex themes while also giving the audience many meaningful quotes from the ever-wise voice of James Earl Jones, who played Mufasa. 

This balance between a goofy mood made mostly for children and a somewhat more serious mood made for an older audience allowed for the movie to be popular and memorable.

“Mufasa” fails at this balance. 

The movie attempted to recreate the charm of the first by hiring Lin-Manuel Miranda to write the soundtrack for the movie.

This was one of the movie’s biggest mistakes.

While Lin-Manuel Miranda is undisputedly a great writer, having written the world-famous Broadway play “Hamilton” and even having success in other Disney movies like “Moana,” however his work in “Mufasa” is some of his worst.

Unlike the original where the songs were more general and had a simple, memorable chorus, the songs in“Mufasa” only serve the purpose of describing the actions of the characters. This makes the songs seem awkward and boring. 

This got so bad throughout the movie that multiple of these songs went viral on various social media platforms for their awkward, and most of the time clumsy feel. 

“Mufasa” also fails at the balance seen in the original because of its very linear and easily predictable plot. 

Since the movie is a sequel, all of the major plot points are already known by the audience, however, that does not excuse the lack of much else in the entire movie. 

This lack of substance is shown mostly with the villain and his sub-standard motive. As one of the only plot points that is not in the original movie, the character of Kiros (a white lion and leader of a pride of other white lions) is a static and completely evil character whose motive is only greed. 

Unlike the original villain of Scar who is broken and put in the shadow of Mufasa, Kiros simply is a ‘bad guy’ and has no reason to be evil, but still is. 

The few enjoyable parts of the movie are when the audience gets to see the backstories for beloved characters from the original like Sarabi, Rafiki and Zazu. However, these reminders of the greatness of the original cannot hope to drown out the mediocrity of the rest of the movie.