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Directed by Oscar winner Barry Jenkins, the prequel, which follows the anthropomorphic lion cub in his quest for royal legitimacy, is surprisingly decent.
Disney had to be forgiven for a slag concerning the precedent Lion King all digital, copied from its animated predecessor on celluloid paper: its devilish mythological story, openly inspired by the Old Testament and various plays by Shakespeare, gave a little too much credit to the blood-right monarchy.
Like a mea culpa in reverse, this prequel unfolded a generation earlier assumes a revisionism a priori of good quality since we discover that the good king Mufasa, whose film tells us about his youth and passage to adulthood, is in fact an adopted commoner. Lost, a lion cub, while he journeys with his parents towards a land of plenty, Mufasa is taken in and raised, thanks to the insistence of their son Taka, by King Obasi and Queen Eshe. But condemned to overshadow this adopted brother whom he surpasses in every way, he will create doubt in the king and exasperation in Taka. Pursued by Kiros, cruel pack leader and pretender to the throne, the two brothers will begin an initiatory journey which must lead to the coronation of the most just and deserving of the aspiring monarchs.
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Rather than reestablishing a cosmic order through the return of the natural heir, Mufasa must therefore triumph by asserting his place – social, ecological, political – in the great whole of the savannah. A true democrat or pre
