You expect certain things from a Barry Jenkins project: beautifully tender characterisation; poetically-presented stories of Black lives; some of the most gorgeous images ever committed to film. What you don’t expect from a Barry Jenkins movie, typically, is talking lions. That all changes with Mufasa: The Lion King. His next feature film is a photoreal-animated prequel to Jon Favreau’s 2019 The Lion King, digging into the backstory of Mufasa and Scar (or, Taka, here voiced by Kelvin Harrison Jr.), complete with all-new songs from Lin-Manuel Miranda. Quite the departure, then, from Moonlight, If Beale Street Could Talk, and The Underground Railroad.
Or is it? As Jenkins tells Empire, even Mufasa is in line with his previous work. “The script told the story of two families,” he explains in the Gladiator II issue. “The family that’s created between the characters we come to know as Scar and Mufasa, and the other family that Mufasa builds and grows over the course of the film. Those two things were hyper-related to the past work I’ve done — especially these two guys trying to negotiate with one another and figure out the true state of their friendship, their brotherhood.”
It’s not just the narrative throughlines that are distinctly Jenkinsian – it’s the outlook and ideas presented. A Barry Jenkins project tends to be, in some way, about family – blood or chosen. “In building a family, [Mufasa] learns to grow beyond his own barriers, his own personal experiences,” Jenkins says. “Through engaging with people, seeing how other people function in situations that might be terrifying to him. Just like all of us, he learns by being within a community, not being outside of it.” Get ready to see a Barry Jenkins movie unlike any you’ve seen before.