Over the past decade and a bit, too many of us have had cheap fun wondering, not entirely fairly, how Avatar became the biggest franchise on earth while leaving no significant cultural imprint. A better question might be: what happened to all the people who propelled the 2019 version of The Lion King to $1.7 billion at the box office? Mention the title and nine out of 10 people will still think of the more traditionally animated 1994 original.
Anyway, such a smash was always sure to generate a follow-up. And the folks at Disney have persuaded Barry Jenkins, director of Moonlight, to bring Oscar-winning class to the project. Not that you can easily tell. This is an efficient enterprise with a hungry cash-box where its soul should be.
The photorealistic animation does things nobody could have imagined 15 years ago. Serengeti looks like Serengeti. The crocodiles look like crocodiles. Remember when the digital animators couldn’t do water? They can now.
And, of course, the lions look like lions. Too much so. Time was, when developing anthropomorphic family entertainment, Disney would dress the bears up in funny costumes and have them strum Sherman Brothers songs on the ukulele. Now the expressionless, often indistinguishable beasts look like supporting players on your average nature documentary. There is little character, no visible emotion, just endless show-offy technical competence.
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Never mind those classic Disney cartoons. We are here closer to the company’s live-action TV shows from the 1960s that played narration over live-action footage of cougars to create a pseudo-story. They have spent half a century getting back to much the same dull place.
As the title lets on, we are dealing with the origin story of Simba’s father. Following a touching tribute to James Earl Jones, who voiced this Mufasa in both previous films, we join Pumbaa and Timon, irritating warthog and meerkat, as they take Kiara, Simba’s daughter, to hear the yarn from Rafiki, the wise mandrill.
It seems that, as a cub, Mufasa became separated from his parents and, after tense negotiations, was adopted by the grudging lion Obasi and the accepting lioness Eshe. Initially he is good pals with Taka, his cowardly adoptive brother, but, following various fallings-out, they end up as increasingly flinty rivals. What separates them in the end? Think back to Baloo discussing women with Mowgli in an earlier, better Disney animation. “Forget about those. They ain’t nothing but trouble.”
There is a sense that this boring film feels it has secrets to keep about who is going to turn into which character from The Lion King, but anyone who got through the paragraph above without dozing off will have a pretty clear idea what is to become of Taka. This is a film so keen on too-explicit origin stories that it finds a way of explaining how a certain unremarkable geological feature from the first film developed. Until all that comes to pass we must make do with Mads Mikkelsen voicing a demonic Danish lion who sees a possible collaborator in Taka.
Voice work is competent from the likes of Thandiwe Newton, Lennie James and, always and probably forever, John Kani as Rafiki. The songs from Lin-Manuel Miranda are little more than adequate. The attempts to impose a moral structure on the natural world are no less gimcrack than they have always been. In the closing act, our heroes, attempting to win over giraffes, wildebeest and antelope, venture a variation on a durable Martin Niemöller verse. “First they came for the lions, but I did not speak out because I was not a lion,” they almost say. Ponder that as said lions get their eyeteeth around your tasty baboon flanks.
In cinemas from Friday, December 20th
