LE MONDE'S OPINION – WHY NOT

Among the many Disney productions, we can't help but be transfixed by the evocative power of The Lion King (1994), the studio's most profitable animated film, which has an ever-renewed loyalty of audiences to the diverse variations that have been produced since. It is also a (rather prodigious) musical, playing continually since 1997, as well as a live-action adaptation, a mix of live-action and computer-generated imagery, released in 2019 and a huge public success. Let's try to draw the recipe for success. First, there is the intense Shakespearean plot that re-enacts Hamlet in the middle of the African savannah: fratricidal war, power struggles, betrayals. Then there are some of the most heady songs in the Disney repertoire ("Hakuna Matata"). Finally, there is a gallery of characters (Simba, Zazu, Timon and Pumbaa) with whom the audience is invited to forge an almost indestructible emotional bond.

We suspected that, determined to exhaust the nostalgia vein to the bone, the studio couldn't avoid thinking about a prequel going back to the origin of the saga. This was done with Mufasa, directed by American Barry Jenkins (Moonlight, 2016), a film that revisits the legend of Simba's father, tragically killed by his evil brother, Scar –the height of childhood trauma, much like the death of Bambi's mother. This origin story is taken up by the friendly baboon Rafiki, telling Simba's daughter Kiara about her grandfather's life.

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