Humanizing a character close to a god has been fun for Barry Jenkins, but there were many doubts. “It was undeniable that the only reason I didn’t want to do the movie was because it was Disney,” he says. “That doesn’t make any sense”
Tell the story of origins of Mufasa It has taken Barry Jenkins four years of his life. It was what was needed for a project like this. “My partner loves gardening,” says the director. “The first year we moved we redid the garden and we had tomatoes and they were amazing.” His face when he remembers the flavor is one of pure enjoyment. “Then she went away for work and the second year we didn’t have tomatoes and the third year they were crap. I got angry. She told me: ‘This takes time’. This movie was something like that.”
He December 20 It will be discovered whether Jenkins’ harvest tasted as good as those first carefully tended tomatoes. That day it opens in theaters Mufasa: The Lion Kinga film that tells the childhood and adolescence of the father of Simbawhich will forever change the way the character is seen in the animated film. The prequel uses the same style that Jon Favreau used in the 2019 remake of the classic. Disney: through hyperrealistic images. Here, unlike the version from five years ago, the story is totally unknown.
“Better than the 2019 version”: early reactions to ‘Mufasa’ praise the “visually dazzling” prequel to ‘The Lion King’
For Jenkins, bringing a character like Mufasa down to earth, closer to a god than a human, has been “fun”. “Is he a human being or a god?” he asks. “He’s a human being, of course, but when you can see how this human was shaped it makes everything much more interesting and for a child it makes it much more attainable.”
Disney Image from ‘Mufasa: The Lion King’
As he adds:
That part was fun, but it’s weird, you feel like you’re beating up your idol, but you’re not doing it, you’re showing the life he lived to become the person he is.
To tell the story of Mufasa’s origins is, by obligation, to also tell that of Scar. The villain of The lion king He was also a teenager and, before receiving the scar that gave him his nickname, he called himself Take. Curiously, finding the voice of Simba’s future enemy, Kelvin Harrison Jr., was much easier than finding Mufasa’s, Aaron Pierre.
“You’re trying to show what a god’s voice sounded like when he wasn’t a god,” Jenkins explains of the process. “You also have to add the quality of, ‘This voice, one day, will be that of a god.’ It’s very complicated, and when you have actors audition, they try to project the voice of a god. You tell them, ‘No. No. You’re a kid now.’ That’s the thing. Nobody is born like this. You have to earn the right to speak with that voice“.
An atypical director for a Disney film
Disney Image from ‘Mufasa: The Lion King’
Before accepting Disney’s offer, there were many doubts. Also prejudices. “It wasn’t a resounding yes,” Jenkins acknowledges. “It was very interesting because There was a part of me that didn’t want to read the script.. I assumed that there was nothing in it that was worth it for me to make it for the type of films a filmmaker like me is expected to make.”
The news that Jenkins was going to take over Mufasa It was, to say the least, surprising. Independent film director and producer, his film Moonlight (2016) took him to the Oscars. The story of the life of a gay black man with an abusive mother garnered eight nominations – Jenkins sneaked into the directing category – and won three statuettes: Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor for Mahershala Ali. El blues de Beale Street (2018) and the series The underground railway (2021) are other of his projects. As a producer he has signed films such as After sun (2022) y Never, almost never, sometimes, always (2020).
Despite reluctance, Jenkins dared to read the script. Mufasa and something changed in him. “It was undeniable that the only reason I didn’t want to do the movie was because it was from Disney,” he admits.
As he explains:
The only reason I was hesitant to make a movie like this was because of what people would say about a filmmaker who makes movies like Moonlight’ making ‘Mufasa.’ That doesn’t make any sense. So I decided to do it
Although it seems that Mufasa It has been quite a long-distance career for Jenkins, the truth is that the director has a much tougher experience. The underground railwaythe adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer-winning novel, was much more difficult. “It meant a lot to me”says the filmmaker about the fiction available on Prime Video. The story follows Coraa young woman who discovers something incredible deep in the United States as she fights to escape slavery.
“With this film it took four years, but we had all the resources we could need”compares Jenkins. “With the television series, something happened with the budget just before we started filming. We never had the resources. That led us all to be a better version of ourselves to find a way to make a series with the same quality, but with fewer resources.
Disney Image from ‘Mufasa: The Lion King’
It wasn’t just getting rid of what people will say that led Jenkins to Mufasa. “I’m getting older, so there are fewer opportunities to do this“, he points out. He is 45 years old. “EThis was a big risk. Enormous. There was nothing that assured me that I could make a film this way.. There was no certainty that I could make a great movie with these materials because this is a very wild way to make a movie. It’s very different from the other films I’ve done. “Maybe I was at a point in my career where I needed to take that risk.”
In the end, you learn something from everything. “The lesson I have learned is that taking that risk makes me a more passionate filmmaker. It made me feel young”he says while laughing. “It’s not that I’m not young, but it made me feel extremely young because I had to become a child to learn all these tools again. I think that was the lesson, to always find a way to be a child, to be a ‘amateur”.
