With Mufasa: The Lion King The prequel to The Lion King is now running in the cinema, which was re-released in 2019 as a photorealistic animated remake of Disney’s popular animated classic. Five years later, we travel back in time to Simba’s father to learn more about Mufasa’s career. As an orphaned young lion, he is adopted by a pride that also includes the little lion Taka. They become best friends. But in the future, Taka will be called Scar.
Interview: Mufasa director Barry Jenkins on his Lion King prequel
Disney’s Mufasa was directed by Barry Jenkins, who won an Oscar in 2017 for his film Moonlight. The filmmaker revealed in the interview what parallels there are between the stories of a young African American coming of age and the coming-of-age story of a lion cub and what changes were important to him compared to Jon Favreau’s mega-success.
Moviepilot: The first few times Disney asked you to direct Mufasa, you said ‘no’.
Barry Jenkins: Yes. But I should clarify that I said ‘no’ without reading the script first. So I condemned the film before I even knew it. This was probably very similar to the reaction many had when they heard that I
would make this film – as a director who many people tend to see at festivals like the Berlinale.
But I belong to a generation that grew up with blockbusters. The generation of directors before me, like Spielberg and Coppola, grew up in a time when films like Jurassic Park didn’t exist. We, on the other hand, grew up with films like The Lion King, Terminator, Aliens and Independence Day. Our DNA as moviegoers may be different than our DNA as filmmakers. But sometimes a remarkable project comes along that combines both voices.
What made you decide to read the Mufasa script after initial hesitation?
I live with filmmaker Lulu Wang, who made The Farewell. She made it clear to me that it was a lame excuse to reject the project without working on it. If I had read it and said ‘no’, that was fine. But the other way around would just be cowardly.
She didn’t know the script herself. Only I was allowed to do it [mit entsprechender Sicherheits-Technologie] view. Once I read it, I found it enormously appealing because no one could tell me it was great. So I allowed myself to see all the wonderful things in it that overlapped with my previous work.
What was it about Mufasa’s story that attracted you to the film?
For me it was a scene [nach circa 40 Minuten] in the Mufasa and Taka [also der spätere Scar] running away together towards the sunset. They set off on a journey to a place that they don’t know if it actually exists. We all know what happens to these two characters later, and we still didn’t know what to expect at that moment.
I’ve always been someone who didn’t want to accept that everything is as it appears on the surface. The script made it clear to me in the first 40 pages that everything we had assumed about Scar and Mufasa for 30 years had much more nuance and context. I was interested in exploring this. Especially when the audience already has such strong feelings for the characters. It was great to play with.
So you wanted to explore the hidden behind the known. Did you wonder in 1994 why Simba’s uncle in The Lion King has a scar and is also called Scar?
No I haven’t. It made perfect sense at the time: He was a guy with a scar and his name was Scar. But then you start to think: How did he get his scar? That’s a question that this film answers. Why is he called Scar? There are now answers to that too.
What people didn’t ask back then was why Scar is the way he is. Jeremy Irons has [im englischen Original] did such a fantastic job as a speaker that you know: what Scar does are not mistakes, but decisions. This provided the perfect template for my film to tell the story of how he came to these decisions.
I prefer to focus on my characters: What is the most chaotic and beautiful version of a character dynamic? […] The first film was very much about great fathers: Mufasa is the perfect dad. You assume he became that way because of his own father, but then you see a different version in our film and it’s turned on its head.
We’ve already seen great fathers in the Lion King universe – now we’re seeing impressive motherhood. But also what it can do to a child who doesn’t have a father like Mufasa. […] I learned a lot about matriarchy and patriarchy in Leo, which becomes important at the beginning and end of the film. But revealing more would be a spoiler.
This time there is a lot more happening visually in the animals’ faces than in the first part. How much discussion has there been about this shift in where the line should be between photorealistic images and human facial expressions?
When I joined Mufasa, the very first tests were all about how far we wanted to go and how far we didn’t want to go. There is a point at which the animals’ facial muscles physically cannot contort any further. But I felt that some of the expressive possibilities in the first part had not been fully exploited. So we explored that.
All the animators from the 2019 film were there again and were able to build on their models. The lions in the previous film had very nature-based, realistic faces. But a film like this is made for people. So we had to find the right mix to make the animal faces not human, but still make their emotions readable in a human way.
Do you remember a specific scene in Mufasa where you had to backpedal because you overdid a facial expression?
Yes! For example, once something funny happened in a cave scene with Timon and Pumbaa and I knew immediately that it was too [Simbas Tochter] Kiara would find it funny. So I had my team create a really big smile on her face. But after several months we agreed that we had gone too far: it was too extreme and ridiculous. It was the way a human would smile, not a lion child. So we had to scale it back.
[…] I got a dog at the start of this film and it sometimes looks like Kiara and sometimes it looks like Mufasa. He also has a very simple smile.
Do you already know what for you? as a filmmaker to Mufasa?
Sleep. When I get home, I really need to sleep.