The trend of Disney re-makes of their classic animated films has become a, shall we say, contentious thing within the fandom.  While some animation fans are happy to see these classics re-imagined in a live action, plenty more are not so happy.  The argument is that Disney is not adding anything new to these movies, and that their creation is purely for a cynical cash grab.  While there is merit to those arguments, I for one try to judge each of these remakes on their own.  The best remakes are the ones that can justify their existence, and make the case that a live action version of a classic animated film is there to compliment it rather than overshadow it.  Disney, for the most part has been all over the place with their re-makes.  Of the movies, I would say one is an improvement over the original (Pete’s Dragon), while quite a few are just as good (Cinderella, Jungle Book) and some that are not better but were decent in their own way (The Little Mermaid, Aladdin).  But, then we have the re-makes that absolutely fail at being anywhere near the same league as the originals (Alice in Wonderland, Beauty and the Beast, Pinocchio, Dumbo).  But this trend of Disney “live action” remakes hit it’s pinnacle with the release of 2019’s The Lion King.  Pinnacle in terms of box office yes, with a world wide gross of $1.5 billion, but also pinnacle in it’s absolute worthlessness.  I ranked the film as the worst of the year, and that was because I thought it represented the worst of the remake trend under Disney; a pure copy and paste job that paled against the original in every way and was the most blatant cash grab that I had ever witnessed from Disney, which is saying a lot.  So, you can imagine that I had a lot of worries and resentment on my mind when I learned that Disney was preparing another film in the same world of their Lion King remake; a prequel centered around the character of Mufasa.

I get why Disney was doing this.  Shareholders were pleased with the box office results of the first Lion King remake, and they wanted Disney to do it again.  It didn’t matter that the first remake was critically panned (including from yours truly) and that it didn’t even register in awards season.  The billion dollar gross was what mattered, so Disney was looking to find a way to follow up their mega-hit.  But, what direction would they take.  There were direct-to-video sequels to the original 1994 Lion King, but those films aren’t as beloved, so doing yet another copy and paste job wasn’t seen as ideal.  They would have to go a more original route.  Unfortunately for Disney, the director behind the first Lion King remake, Jon Favreau, had already moved over to the Lucasfilm side of the company to work on The Mandalorian series on Disney+, along with a slew of many other Star Wars projects in the pipeline.  This was going to leave him unavailable for some time, so a new director was needed.  Surprisingly, Disney went far outside their stable to look for a new director, and they found the unlikeliest of filmmakers to fill that role.  Barry Jenkins was considered to be an art house filmmaker, having made a name for himself writing and directing Oscar winning films like Moonlight (2016) and If Beale Street Could Talk (2018).  Going into the new decade he was deep into production of his ambitious mini-series for Amazon Prime, The Underground Railroad, when Disney approached him with the prospect of working on their follow-up to The Lion King, and he was surprisingly receptive to the offer.  After gaining a strong reputation as a prestige director, was he gambling that good will by taking on what many saw as a corporate cash grab, or was he seizing an opportunity to bring his artistic style to a bigger canvas that would have broad appeal with worldwide audiences?  It would all depend on if he could elevate this story beyond it’s predecessor and create something that both creatively satisfied himself as well as fulfilled the obligation that Disney had entrusted him with.  And so, the result is the prequel backstory of Mufasa: The Lion King.

When Simba (Donald Glover) and Nala (Beyonce) must leave Pride Rock for a day, they entrust Timon (Billy Eichner) and Pumbaa (Seth Rogen) to babysit their daughter Kiara (Blue Ivy Carter).  A sudden storm causes the trio to seek refuge in a cave, where they also find Rafiki (John Kani) meditating.  In order to help calm the rattled lioness cub and her companions until the storm passes, Rafiki begins to tell the story of how Kiara’s grandfather, Mufasa, became king.  Young Mufasa (Braelyn Rankins) is washed away by a river and separated from his family.  He ends up many miles away in the territory of another pride of lions.  Their cub prince, Taka (Theo Somolu) helps save Mufasa from the perils of the river and brings him to the pride’s nesting grounds.  Taka’s mother Eshe (Thandiwe Newton) takes Mufasa under herwing, but the father Obasi (Lennie James) doesn’t trust Mufasa because he is an outsider.  Many years pass, and grown up Mufasa (Aaron Pierre) and Taka (Kelvin Harrison, Jr.) have become as close as brothers.  The peace of Obasi’s pridelands is shattered however when a pack of white lions invade.  While protecting his adoptive mother, Mufasa kills one of the male white lions.  The dead lion turns out to be the son of the white lions’ king, Kiros (Mads Mikkelsen), who now has a vendetta against Obasi’s pride as well as for Mufasa himself.  In order to secure the bloodline of the pride, Obasi sends his son and Mufasa away for their protection.  Forced to seek out a home of their own, Taka and Mufasa venture into the wilderness.  Mufasa convinces Taka that they should seek a vast green valley called Milele which he remembers his mother talking about when he was little.  On the road, they encounter other travelers, including the lioness Sarabi (Tiffany Boone) and her bird companion Zazu (Preston Nyman), as well as a young Rafiki (Kagiso Lediga).  But, their journey is not without more peril, and Kiros and his minions are following their tracks every step of the way.  Can they stay ahead, and does the presence of Sarabi drive a wedge between the Mufasa and Taka that shatters their brotherhood?

Given my distaste for the first Lion King remake, I didn’t have a lot of high hopes for this prequel.  My interest did perk up though when I learned that Barry Jenkins was tapped to direct.  Jenkin’s involvement could indeed bring some much needed depth and character to what otherwise was a soulless corporate product.  But, was Disney going to let him cook, or was he going to be another promising filmmaker swallowed up by the machine.  The expectations were already low, and my hope was that the movie wouldn’t be any worse than the first film.  And thankfully, it isn’t.  At the same time it’s also not a whole lot better either.  Mufasa: The Lion King is an improvement in many ways, but it also suffers from a lot of problems that are just inherent in the presentation itself.  Let me start with the positive, in that it is refreshing that this movie is not just another copy and paste job like the last movie.  The Lion King remake was one of the laziest big studio films that I had ever experienced, because it was a purely shot for shot remake, minus all of the soul that you get out of traditional animation.  I’ll talk more about my issues with the animation later, but at least story-wise it was refreshing watching this movie and not knowing what the story beats would be from scene to scene.  Now, the story was a still a tad bit on the predictable side, but at least they were building from scratch and not with the same exact script from another movie.  It’s a risk taking on a prequel, because you ultimately know the destination it’s heading towards.  But, the backstory of Mufasa is something that Disney has never really explored much in any media, so if there was any fertile ground to mine out of this franchise, this is where they found it, and Mufasa is a compelling enough character that the movie does manage to justify it’s own existence, merely by finally giving us something we haven’t seen yet out of this world.

Where the film falters though is in it’s inconsistent execution of the story.  The biggest flaw of the film is it’s framing device.  The film pulls away from Mufasa’s story constantly to remind the audience that they are being told the story second-hand by Rafiki.  I have a feeling that this was a studio mandated addition to the film that Barry Jenkins was forced to put in there, just to break up the seriousness of the movie’s tone in order to inject more kid friendly comedy to stay with the shot attention spans of younger audiences.  Each time these cutaways would happen in the film, it would grind the movie to a halt, and rob the movie of any dramatic heft.  And the cutaways to the present would be excruciating too, because it involved very unfunny comedy relief from Timon and Pumbaa.  Seriously, I hated this framing device so much because of what it was doing to the story proper.  Even worse, they were making meta jokes about The Lion King movie, the Broadway play, and Disney in general that felt horribly out of place in this world and just seemed like a desperate ploy by Disney creatives to make themselves look more clever than they really are.  They should have just let Barry Jenkins work with the story he was given and not feel the need to spice it up with pop culture puns.  You could cut out all of these cringey interstitials and the story would’ve flowed so much better.  It may not have been the greatest story ever told, but the tone wouldn’t feel all over the place and you would get a more cohesive experience.  It’s where the film felt like it was compromised the most.  While watching it, I found myself managing to appreciate the story when it found it’s groove, but then I’d grow frustrated again every time Timon and Pumbaa butted in.  It’s the worst instincts of studio interference sabotaging whatever kinds of improvements that this movie was attempting to make in response to the first movie’s mistakes.

Overall, Barry Jenkins does attempt to bring some improvements, but it also feels that he had his hands tied.  But there were just some things that were also impossible to fix in general.  The photorealism of the movie is still a major problem, because of how it robs the character out of the animation.  I talked about this a lot in my original “live action” Lion King review here, but this film too suffers from the lack emotive animation that the traditional style can offer.  When you use traditional, “cartoony” animation, you can give everything from humans to animals to even appliances expressive facial emotions.  This goes a long way towards helping an audience connect with these characters on an emotional level, because the animators are able to display emotion purely through expression; conveying things that dialogue along can’t deliver.  When animating with photorealistic animal characters, you lose that creative license because animals like lions don’t have a wide array of facial expressions in real life.  A lion’s face is emotionless by nature, and trying to get that kind of character model to emote in a movie like this while still maintaining that photorealism just doesn’t work.  The animators try to push expressions just a little bit more here compared to the first film, but the movie still can’t quite get there.  It doesn’t help that Jenkins is also a novice when it comes to animation, so he isn’t able to push the medium beyond it’s comfort zone.  There are some impressive shots of landscapes in this movie, and I do appreciate the diverse amount of locations that Jenkins tries to bring into this world, including a beautiful passage through snow capped mountains.  But the photorealistic presentation also just keeps things feeling impersonal when it should be awe-inspiring.  The thought that kept crossing my head throughout the movie was that all of this might have made for a better movie if it was a prequel to the original animated movie and animated in that style instead.  It may not have been as good as that 30 year old classic, but it would have had a lot more character to it than what we got here.

The film is also a mixed bag in terms of the vocal performances.  For one thing, I really was not digging the shoehorned way that the orginal film’s cast was brought into this movie.  It just reminded me about the waste of talent that the first remake was.  Donald Glover still sounds unremarkable as Simba, and I think Beyonce just gets one line total in this entire movie (and still manages to be one of the top billed stars).  Billy Eichner and Seth Rogen were especially grating this time around and really wanted them to shut up every time the movie cut back to them.  But at the same time, I thought the movie had some strong performances from the newcomers.  The best performance by far comes from Aaron Pierre, who had the unenviable task of playing Mufasa.  He had enormous shoes to fill, as he’s tasked with taking over the role from the late great James Earl Jones, an actor so iconicly tied to the role of Mufasa that he voiced him twice, both in the original and the remake.  Pierre manages to pick up that mantle in a way that is respectful to Jones’ performance, but also allows for the actor to make it his own.  I also viewed Kelvin Harrison Jr.’s performance as Taka to be a far better take on the character that one day becomes the villain Scar than Chiwetel Ejiofor’s phoned in performance in the original remake.  Of course, both still pale compared to Jeremy Iron’s original performance.  Speaking of villainous turns, Mads Mikkelsen reliably brings some appropriate menace to the character of Kiros, and helps the somewhat one-dimensional villain stand out just a bit better.  One other thing that this movie has going for it is that it features a new score of original songs from Lin-Manuel Miranda; Disney’s current in-house hit maker.  While the songs here are passable, they aren’t quite as strong as Miranda’s other recent work and certainly no where near the quality of Elton John’s work in the original animated classic.  But, at least Barry Jenkins has a voice cast here that’s capable of singing and doing the Miranda songs justice.  You don’t have to listen to Eichner and Rogen mangle “Hakuna Matata” anymore.

Whatever issues Disney still has with their production of live action remakes, none of them are going to be solved by the results of Mufasa: The Lion King.  Certainly bringing Barry Jenkins on board to direct this movie was a bold move, but even a great filmmaker like him can only do so much to lampshade the problems that are inherent in the production to begin with.  I can see the kernels of the more enriching story about destiny and finding yourself through adversity that Barry Jenkins was trying to strive for in his telling of Mufasa’s story, but I also see all of the meddling from Disney executives who seemed to get cold feet from this more mature storyline and tried to shoe horn in more stuff for the little kids.  The most redeeming thing about this film is that it has more originality to it than a straightforward remake.  Barry Jenkins doesn’t use any pre-built template here and tries his best to craft something new. In some fleeting moments, he succeeds, and the movie actually rises above it’s mediocrity.  But too often, you feel the cynicism of the studio trying to milk this franchise out of all the money they can get from it.  My hope is that Barry Jenkins is able to use this exercise to grow as a filmmaker and make something bold and ambitious for his next film.  The worst case is if it ruins his reputation and he just becomes a director for hire in the future, no longer driving his own artistic style but rather just finding the work that he can get.  He’s a very unique voice, and it’s a risk for someone like him to work within the machine like he’s doing here with Mufasa.  I give him credit for trying, and you do see flashes of creative brilliance here.  But Mufasa just has too many flaws that hold it back.  It is an improvement over the first remake, but I argue again why they don’t just take this story and apply it to the original animated style.  That’s where this story truly belongs, and I feel like The Lion King’s place is less in a real world aesthetic and more in the realm of escapist fantasy that hand drawn animation can provide.  Stop trying to strip away the color and animation out of this storyline and let this Lion King truly roar.

Rating: 6/10

Disney Animation has gone through a bit of a reversal of fortune over the last 5 years.  After experiencing a resurgence in the 2010’s thanks to the like of mega hits such as Frozen (2013), Big Hero 6 (2014) and Zootopia (2016), Disney was back in top form in the animation world and were looking for big things in the decade that followed.  They finished the decade strong in 2019 with Frozen II (2019) which grossed well over a billion and a half dollars at the global box office.  But, things were upended by the Covid-19 pandemic the following year.  Raya and the Last Dragon (2021) which was slated for a Thanksgiving 2020 release was pushed back into the following spring, and given a hybrid streaming and theatrical release due to the theaters not being fully re-opened at that point.  It was more than what Disney’s sister studio, Pixar, received as their movies just went straight to streaming with no wide theatrical plans.  Raya did about as well as it could given the circumstances, but it was miniscule box office compared to what Frozen II pulled in.  Later that year, Encanto (2021) fared better, but was still short of the $100 million threshold that Disney had before surpassed quite regularly.  Not only that, but Encanto became a bigger hit on streaming than it did in theaters.  The following two years weren’t any kinder to Disney’s box office woes.  Their next film Strange World (2022) was DOA upon it’s release, and Disney’s ambitious 100th anniversary celebration film Wish (2023) was a failure with both audiences and critics.  For a studio that was once the envy of all of Hollywood, they were now in a bit of a crisis mode.  And animation fans were beginning to worry, because Disney had long been the gold standard for quality animation and their success would help uplift the industry as a whole.  The lack of success for the animation studio could ultimately lead the corporate side of the company to invest less on newer projects and instead shift their priorities into more streaming and less theatrical

A lot of the problems for the studio stem from the fact that their slate of films during this pandemic period were all original projects that had no prior built in audience familiarity, and solely had to be sold on the Disney name alone.  If things were running as smoothly as they were in the 2010’s, then these original titles could have had better luck at the box office.  But with everything thrown into rebuild mode post-pandemic, the Disney brand alone wasn’t going to salvage these movies.  In the end, only Encanto emerged as a modest enough hit for Disney.  The failure of Strange World and Wish combined has especially put Disney in a bind.  Pixar itself experienced the same downward trend, though their misfortunes were also self made by Disney’s misguided plan to shove them straight to streaming for 2 whole years.  But thankfully Pixar was able to reverse their misfortunes this summer with their first, much needed hit of the decade with Inside Out 2 (2024).  Now the highest grossing animated film of all time, Inside Out 2 reveals a strategy moving forward that may save Disney Animation too, though it’s one that’s unfortunate for the sake of progress in the medium.  While Pixar has also put out a string of original films, their salvation was found in the release of a sequel to one of the their biggest past hits.  For Disney, they may need to rely upon safe bet sequels to help salvage their reputation for a while, at least until they can prove to the corporate side that Animation is a medium of filmmaking that is still worth investing in.  But what movie sequel would work in this case?  Well, for Disney, the best barometer for knowing what sequel to make came from how their past films have been performing since release on their new streaming platform Disney+.  And one film in particular that has consistently outperformed the rest, and has become one of the most viewed movies not just on Disney+ but on all streaming platforms in general, is the 2016 hit film Moana.  Hoping to bank on Moana’s high profile with fans in order to generate some much needed box office momentum for the studio, Disney has quickly rolled out Moana 2 for this Thanksgiving weekend.  The only question is does it live up to it’s predecessor, or is it already lost at sea?

Moana 2 takes place a few years after the events of the original.  Moana (Auli’i Cravalho) has been sailing from island to island searching for signs of other tribes that populate the numerous islands of the vast ocean.  While her search has proved to be fruitless for the most part, she does find a pottery fragment on one deserted isle, proving that there are other tribes still within reach.  She returns back to her home island of Motunui, where her mother and father Tui and Sina (Temura Morrison, Nicole Scherzinger) both still reside, plus her baby sister Simea (Khalessi Lambert-Tsuda).  While sharing her findings, she is sent a message from her ancestors about a sunken island named Motufetu that once connected all the ocean currents together and was destroyed by a vengeful storm god named Nalo, thereby keeping all the people of the ocean separated.  Moana now seeks to find Motufetu, and assembles a crew to sail with her, heading towards an island that no mortal can find.  On her boat, she has brought Loto (Rose Matafeo), a crafty shipbuilder; Kele (David Fane), a disgruntled old farmer; and Moni (Hualalai Chung), a resourceful historian, as well as her animal companions Pua the pig and Hei Hei the rooster.  While neither she nor her crew have any idea where this mythical island may be, she does have a good idea of someone who might; her old friend, the demigod Maui (Dwayne Johnson).  Unfortunately, Maui himself has been imprisoned by one of Nalo’s enforcers, the demigoddess Matangi (Awhimai Fraser).  Can Moana rescue her powerful ally and get him to use his mighty fishhook to lift Motufetu out of the sea in defiance of Nalo’s curse and help reunite all the islanders that have been walled off from one another?

Moana 2 has a lot of pressure riding on it, given the state of Disney Animation at the moment, as well as the high expectations of an audience that treats the original as a beloved classic.  Sequels can always be a gamble, even when they are safe bets when it comes to audience familiarity.  One thing that should be noted about this movie is that it didn’t start out as a film at all, but rather began it’s production planned as a mini-series for the Disney+ platform.  It was only at the 11th hour that Disney decided to re-work the program into a single film.  It makes sense, because given the enormous popularity of the first movie both in theaters and on streaming, that having a theatrical roll-out would be more beneficial in the end for the project.  This is definitely a huge reversal of Disney’s pandemic era plans, which put streaming above all else.  You have to wonder if Disney left a ton of money on the table by going all in on streaming rather than building their brand up again through theaters.  The downside though is that bringing something from streaming to theatrical has it’s drawbacks too, as the quality of the product might take a hit.  Going from a story meant for multiple parts and trying to force it into a theater friendly run time under 2 hours is a difficult task, especially late in the game, and I would be lying if I said that some of those issues are visible in the finished film that we do get.  But, does it make the overall movie bad?  Not at all.  While it is far from perfect, and also less successful than it’s beloved predecessor, it still manages to function as a solid entertaining adventure.  If the movie has a fatal flaw, it’s that the truncated story feels like just that; something that was planned to be much larger in it’s original plan, but was reduced to just the bare minimum in it’s switch to theatrical.

The film definitely misses some of the key ingredients of the first movie.  For one thing, it doesn’t have the deft guidance of legendary filmmakers at the helm anymore.  The original Moana was directed by Disney Legends John Musker and Ron Clements in what would be their final film for Disney Animation before their respective retirements, culminating over 30 years of work at Disney that included classics like The Little Mermaid (1989), Aladdin (1992), and The Princess and the Frog (2009).  Moana 2 has an entirely new team of directors behind it.  Given the difficult transition that this movie faced, I do think the new directors Jason Hand, Dana Ledoux Miller and David Derrick Jr. did a commendable job of trying to make the film live up to original.  While they don’t have the same level of experience as Ron and John, they still keep the overall vibe of Moana’s next chapter feel tonally consistent.  While the episodic nature of the film belies it’s original format, and at times feels underdeveloped, there are still plenty of exciting big moments that have that right epic heft to them.  An encounter with a giant clam in the middle of the ocean is an especially impressive moment that certainly feels right at home on the big screen.  One of the things that definitely helps this movie is that it maintains the same screenwriter Jared Bush, who just recently was announced as the new Chief Creative Officer of Disney Animation after the departure of Jennifer Lee.  Bush never looses the thread of the story, even as he had to cut down so much of the original plot in order to re-work this into a film.  The movie puts it’s focus on Moana and her journey, which is what the film needs the most, although character development is unfortunately minimal, as she doesn’t grow much as a character here compared with the original.  It’s essentially just a further adventures kind of story and nothing too groundbreaking apart from that.  Still, the movie doesn’t reflect poorly on what had been built before.  It’s just more of the same.  That may be enough for some, but it will probably also disappoint many other audiences too who are expecting something that blows them away like the first movie did.

One of the other unfortunate aspects of the film where it falls short of the original is in the music.  The original was blessed to have the talents of Lin Manuel-Miranda working as the songwriter, just fresh off of his record-setting run of the Broadway musical Hamilton.  His songs for the original Moana have likewise become huge hits for Disney, earning their place on the charts as well as becoming standards in many people’s go to play lists.  The new songs written for Moana 2 are not what I would consider awful, but they are far from memorable like the Lin Manuel-Miranda songs.  The new songs were written by newcomers Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear and are at best serviceable to the story, but they definitely won’t be anyone’s new favorites in the years ahead.  But, even if the songs are subpar, the performers are still giving it their all when performing them.  Auli’i Cravalho particularly remains as powerful a singer as she was in first film.  The sequel thankfully sees her return to the role, along with all the other voice actors from the original.  One of the things that definitely helps Moana 2 in the overall picture is just how good Moana and Maui’s relationship remains enjoyable to watch.  Auli’i and Dwayne Johnson may not have recorded their lines together, but their characters’ chemistry is still just as strong as ever, and both are great to listen to throughout the whole movie.  Johnson even gets some surprisingly heavy moments to work with in this film, and he does a remarkable job there too along with all of his humorous moments.  The downside of the re-working of the film is that all of the new characters feel like their development got heavily truncated.  The characters themselves are not particularly bad, but their purpose in the story just feel superfluous with all their scenes left on the cutting room floor.  The worst example of a character that got especially truncated is the character Matangi.  It feels like she was being set up to be much more of a villain in this story than she ends up being.  She even gets what sounds like a villain song.  But, not long after we first meet her, she just as quickly disappears, and we don’t even see her at all in the climatic third act.  The Moana/ Maui dynamic still thankfully carries the weight of the film, but it does feel like a lot was lost in transition with all of the other characters, and that’s unfortunate given that a few of them could’ve developed into something really interesting.

One thing that definitely doesn’t feel underwhelming about the movie is the animation.  Even when it was under development as a streaming series, Moana 2 was always going to be worked on by the same team at Disney Animation that works on all their theatrical films.  The character animation is especially on point, as Moana, Maui and all the other islanders all remain wonderfully expressive.  I also love what they do with the animals too, especially  Hei Hei, whose realistic chicken like movements still remain hilarious in the context of the movie scenes that he’s used in.  But the movie also ups the ante a bit from the first film with regard to it’s sense of scale.  The aforementioned encounter with the giant clam is an especially harrowing moment, as is the climatic confrontation with Nalo at the very end.  The stakes definitely feel higher as a result, and the animation team makes it all look very impressive.  The only downside is that Moana 2 loses the more cinematic widescreen presentation that the first film had in favor of a more streaming friendly 2.00:1 aspect ratio.  The film still feels big, but the widescreen format might have also helped to reinforce that feeling on a big screen a bit more.  At the same time, there are some great animation touches throughout.  While the songs themselves are forgettable, the staging of them is still spectacular.  Matangi’s song in particular has some great trippy visuals thrown in, with a lot of the colors going wild in that sequence.  Maui’s song is also visually dazzling, although that one isn’t as uniquely visual given that it echoes a lot of the same style as his song “Your Welcome” from the first Moana.  It’s not exactly a huge step ahead in animation from anything else Disney has made recently, but the last time Disney went experimental, we got Wish, so it’s not exactly a bad thing right now for Disney to keep doing the things they are good at while they rebuild their brand.  And in terms of the animation here, the execution is key and Moana 2 is undoubtedly beautiful, if familiar, achievement for the Disney Animation team.

I get the feeling that people will be mixed with their feelings on this film.  Sure, the movie delivers on everything we’d expect for another adventure with Moana and Maui, but it doesn’t deliver on anything more than that.  It is the very definition of a safe sequel; it does the bare minimum without contributing much more.  It’s chopped up storyline may also frustrate people expecting to find a more engaging plot as well.  For many critics, this will be regarded as a disappointment.  For me though, I am filtering this mostly through my experience with Disney movies as a whole.  Is it a downgrade from the first Moana?  Objectively yes, but not by a lot.  For me, I did still have a good time watching it, mainly because I like the characters and the performances that the actors put into them, especially Auli’i Cravalho as the titular heroine.  As long as they got that right, along with some stunning animation, I would still put this as a movie I would recommend.  I certainly thought it was lightyears ahead of the soulless Wish that we got last year.  And as far as sequels to Disney movies go, this is also a big improvement over the disappointing Frozen II.  It does enough stuff right to make it serviceable companion piece to the first film, even if it falls short as a successor.  The movie definitely leaves room open for another sequel, and my hopes is that by developing it from the beginning as a theatrical film that they’ll avoid the pitfalls that befell the project in it’s late transition from series to movie.  Regardless of what I think or what other critics think, this movie is almost certainly critic-proof and is going to make a ton of money over the holidays.  And that in the end is what Disney was hoping for; banking on the familiarity of the Moana brand to help boost this new film in theaters.  The downside is that Disney may become too comfortable with sequels driving their creative output instead of original films.  But, if Moana 2 can help reverse the fortunes of the studio, then maybe they might be able to balance new titles along with more sequels in the future.  That the hope anyway.  For now, it’s a worthwhile trip across the seas watching the further adventures of Moana on the big screen, and it’ll be exciting to see how much further she will go.

Rating: 7.5/10

When the first Gladiator (2000) was released in theaters at the turn of the millennium, it was part of a much different cinematic landscape.  The decade prior was one of the last eras that a type of movie known as the “prestige blockbuster” would dominate the landscape.  The “prestige blockbuster” was a film like a historical epic or an intimate drama that could perform at the box office the same way that a blockbuster action film would.  These were the kinds of movies that would win a bunch of awards while at the same time making profits in the hundreds of millions for their studios.  These were also sometimes big ambitious movies too, but with a much more serious tone than the average blockbuster.  The 90’s weren’t the first period of Hollywood’s history where these kinds of movies would dominate.  You can look back all the way to Gone With the Wind (1937) to see an example of a historical epic being a blockbuster success, and the trend would carry over into the 50’s and 60’s, with widescreen spectacles like Spartacus (1960) and Lawrence of Arabia (1962) became monster hits in addition to winning lots of awards and acclaim.  The 1990’s in particular feels like one of the last big eras where these kinds of movies would prosper, starting off with Kevin Costner’s Dances With Wolves in 1990, and continuing with films like Forrest Gump (1994) and Braveheart (1995) soon after, and eventually peaking with Titanic in 1997.  The decade that would follow would see a major shift away from the “prestige blockbuster” as big historical epics would fail to ignite like they did in the 90’s and other genres like fantasy and comic book films would begin to take over.  It was a dramatic shift that probably took Hollywood a bit by surprise and it would take several more box office bombs to seal the “prestige blockbusters” fate.  Sure, there are standouts that still work, like last year’s Oppenheimer (2023), but the “prestige blockbuster” really feels like an anomaly now rather than a common occurrence.  And the movie that really did feel like the last of it’s kind for a while was Ridley Scott’s Gladiator.

When it first premiered, Gladiator was not exactly seen as anything special.  But after it’s modest opening in May 2000, Gladiator just kept sticking around, and by the end of that summer it was one of the highest grossing films of the season.  This was surprising given how old-fashioned it was.  It was definitely a throwback to the old sword and sandals epics of the past that had defined the last time the “prestige blockbuster” had ruled Hollywood.  Though it felt classic in it’s storytelling, it did feature some cutting edge visuals in it’s presentation.  The recreation of the Roman Coliseum in particular was a groundbreaking work of visual effects for it’s time, and the movie won it’s effects team an Oscar for the effort.  There was also the usual visual flair that Ridley Scott had been known for with movies like Blade Runner (1982) and Alien (1979) that helped it to stand out from other sword and sandal epics of the past.  But what I think helped to captivate audiences even more than that was the magnetic performance by Russell Crowe in the role of Maximus; the general who became a slave, who then became a gladiator who challenged an empire, as the tag line stated.  Maximus is one of cinema’s greatest heroes, and Crowe’s performance is widely praised even to this day.  The movie went on to win 5 Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Crowe, though sadly Ridley Scott went home empty handed.  In the years since, Scott has tried many times to replicate the magic that he succeeded to capture with Gladiator, but to little avail, with movies like Kingdom of Heaven (2005), Robin Hood (2010) and The Last Duel (2021) all falling short at the box office.  Still, he remains an active filmmaker well into his 80’s without showing any signs of slowing down.  Even after making Gladiator, he contemplated a return to the same story one day, trying to come up with different ideas about how to continue the story into another chapter.  It wouldn’t be easy, given that (spoilers) Maximus is dead at the end of the film.  He went through numerous drafts of a sequel, including a supernatural one written by musician Nick Cave.  But, 24 years later, Scott has finally landed on a story that he feels does justice to the original and now we have Gladiator II releasing into theaters.  The only quest remains is if it is a worthy successor, or are we not entertained.

Taking place 16 years after the events of the original Gladiator, we begin in the midst of a battle between a free city on the Northern African coast and the might of the Roman naval fleet.  Led by General Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal), the Romans take the city in quick order and imprison the soldiers on the other side.  Now slaves at the mercy of Rome, the remaining “barbarian” soldiers are taken to the gladiatorial arenas on the outskirts of the city where they are going to be auctioned off to the highest bidder looking for more stock to showcase at the fights in the mighty Coliseum.  One soldier named Hanno (Paul Mescal) proves to be an especially skilled fighter, and he peaks the interest of Macrinus (Denzel Washington), a former gladiator himself who now makes a fortune as supplier of goods for the Roman armies.  Macrinus sees the fury in Hanno’s eyes, with a will towards vengeance, and he hopes to use him as a weapon in his own ambitions for the control of the Roman Empire.  Meanwhile, General Acacius is secretly plotting his own challenge towards stopping the corruption that has infected Rome, with the twin Emperors Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger) representing all the worst qualities of leadership in the crumbling empire.  Acacius is aided by a handful of senators who were loyal to the great Marcus Aurelius, as well as loyal to his surviving daughter Lucilla (Connie Nielsen), Acacius’ wife.  However, plans are turned on their head when Lucilla witnesses the gladiatorial fight set up to honor Acacius’ recent victory.  She sees Hanno fighting in the arena and immediately recognizes him as her son Lucius Verus Aurelius, the true heir to the throne of Caesar.  After the fall of Emperor Commodus and the death of Maximus in the Coliseum, Lucilla knew that her young son wouldn’t be safe in the power vacuum that followed, so she ensured that he would be taken far away from Rome so that he could survive.  But now he has return all these years later, with hatred for Rome in his heart.  And with many schemes all playing out in and around the heart of the Empire, what ultimate fate will Lucius bring to the the future of Rome.  Will he hasten it’s destruction or will he assume his birthright and end the corruption that has infected the Empire?

When the decision is made to do a legacy sequel to a beloved film many, many years after the fact, there are a lot of risks involved.  The primary risk is that the movie has to escape the shadow of the film that came before it.  People already have expectations about what they want based on what they love about the original film, and the sequel then has to both meet those expectations and then surpass them in order to justify it’s existence.  There are several examples of legacy sequels that hit their mark, like Creed (2015), Blade Runner 2049 (2017) and Top Gun: Maverick (2022), but there are also a lot of examples of sequels that completely dropped the ball like Blues Brothers 2000 (2000) and Independence Day: Resurgence (2016).  So, with 24 years in between the first and second films, how does Gladiator II stack up as a legacy sequel?  While it is far from being one of the worst legacy sequels ever made it is also sadly not very good.  The biggest problem with the movie is that it fails to escape the shadow of it’s far superior predecessor.  Ridley Scott’s original film had this operatic verve to it, with everything from the performances to the staging to the music all creating a spectacle that felt grand.  A lot of that is missing in Gladiator II.  While there are some things that Ridley Scott demonstrates that he can still do very well, namely directing the action set pieces, there are also many signs that he has lost a little bit of that golden touch as he’s gotten older.  Of course, it is still impressive that at the age of 86 that he’s still capable of pulling off a movie of this kind of scale.  At a time when many of his colleagues have either slowed down or have long retired, he’s still putting out a movie at the rate of one a year, which has only cemented his legendary status.  But, with Gladiator II and last year’s Napoleon (2023), Ridley is also showing signs that while he still has command over the visual style of his film he doesn’t quite have the command over the story anymore.

Where I think the problem lies is with the script to this movie.  It’s kind of remarkable that the original Gladiator, with it’s collection of three screenwriters (David Franzoni, William Nicholson, and John Logan) had a more coherent and memorable script than the one for the sequel written by a single screenwriter.  The original film had a singular focus to it’s story, and that was showing the incredible journey of Maximus as he goes from general, to slave, to a gladiator that challenged the Emperor.  Nearly a quarter century later, we still quote lines from Gladiator, and some of them are pretty profound.  One line in particular that I love is “What we do in life echoes in Eternity,” which this sequel also recognizes as a powerful statement as it gets quoted a lot.  The script for Gladiator II, written by David Scarpa (who also scripted Napoleon) doesn’t have anything profound to say, and it spends far too many scenes calling back to the superior writing of the original.  For the most part, the movie just ends up being a repeat of the first film; with Lucius following the same trajectory as Maximus.  And this leads to yet another big flaw with the film, which is the character of Lucius.  He is a pale imitation of the character of Maximus.  The film never allows him the time to develop as a character, other than just showing how he is driven by vengeance over the death of his loved one in battle.  Paul Mescal is certainly not a bad choice to play the role.  He’s a capable actor and he certainly has the impressive physique to play a gladiator.  But the script just gives him this hollow, ill-defined character to work with.  When Russell Crowe played Maximus, he created a iconic hero; a man you would want leading you into battle, and the movie clearly defined what motivated him, with his sense of justice and seeking to live up to the ideals of Rome that Marcus Aurelius instilled in him.  For Gladiator II, it seemed like Ridley Scott and David Scarpa were at a loss for how to continue on with the story since Maximus dies at the end of the original, and they just looked at the character of Lucius and decided he’ll do and tried to shoehorn his story into a Maximus 2.0.

While Lucius remains a sadly hollow focal point of this movie, there are still other elements of this film that actually help to lift it up from being a complete failure.  First and foremost, the presence of Denzel Washington helps to save this film.  Denzel is working on a whole different level than the entire rest of the cast, and he helps to breathe much needed life into the movie.  I love the fact that he doesn’t even bother doing an accent and just plays the role like it’s an extension of himself.  All the other actors are speaking with the usual dignified British accents that you hear in these kinds of period dramas, and Denzel sounds like he just walked off the set of American Gangster (2007).  It shouldn’t work, but it does and Denzel’s scenes are by far the best part of the movie.  You can tell he’s having the best time on screen as he gets to peacock around in flowing Roman robes.  He also gets all the best one-liners in the script, which he delivers with an incredible amount of swagger.  Sadly nothing else in the movie rises up to what Denzel is bringing into the film.  While it is nice to see Pedro Pascal present in a Roman epic like this, which he does seem to fit in well as that Roman soldier gear looks good on him, he sadly is underutilized in the story and his character General Acacius is kind of pointless in the grand scheme of things.  I kind of wonder if the movie would’ve been better if it centered on his character rather than on Lucius.  The performances of Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger as the twin emperors also feel like pale imitations when stacked up against Joaquin Phoenix’s memorably camp portrayal of Commodus in the original Gladiator.  And while it is nice to see Connie Nielsen return to the role she played 24 years ago in the first movie, she also does feel underutilized in the film.  Basically, in terms of the cast, the only ground where this movie surpasses the original is with the inclusion of Denzel Washington in the film, as he’s the only element of the movie that feels like something new.

In terms of Ridley Scott’s direction, he seems to be most at home with the battles in the Coliseum.  These moments are definitely the ones that feel most alive in the movie.  One thing that I was happy to see was Ridley Scott getting to finally realize an idea that he had to scrap in the first movie, which is a fight between the gladiators and a warrior riding a rhinoceros.  Probably due to the limitations of computer animation at the time, Ridley was not able to get a realistic looking rhino to work on screen in the original, but with the advancements over the last couple decades, he now is able to make this rhino fight look the way he wanted and it did work in this sequel.  There’s also a naval battle that takes place in a flooded Coliseum that while is completely at odd with the true history of the real arena nevertheless makes for an exciting moment in the film.  One thing for sure is that Ridley Scott is very good at making his movies look great on screen and Gladiator II is no different in that department.  The money put into the set designs and visual effects are all well spent and Scott can still deliver the goods in this regard.  But the sum of everything else just doesn’t gel together.  I’ll give the film this, it definitely doesn’t feel it’s 2 hour and 28 minute length, and it moves at a brisk pace.  But, the editing of the movie also doesn’t have the same flow as the original film does, which went a long way towards giving it that operatic feel.  Here, the editing is very basic and just becomes a means towards moving us from plot point to plot point.  Also a major downgrade from the first film; the music.  Hans Zimmer wrote the score for the first Gladiator, and it still stands as one of his greatest works, with tracks like “Now We Are Free” being some of the greatest pieces of music ever written for film.  Zimmer sadly didn’t return for this film, and instead Ridley Scott turned to Harry Gregson-Williams instead, who’s been writing the music for most or Scott’s more recent films.  He’s a decent composer, but his sound is a lot more basic than the experimental work that Hans Zimmer does with his scores, and that difference is palpable in this film.  The music just doesn’t have that grandiosity to it, and it even has the audacity to call back to Zimmer’s much better tracks in moments that don’t earn it.  It’s another element of the movie where you definitely notice the fall off from the first film, and it sadly also makes the experience that much more disappointing.

In the immediate years after it’s original release, Gladiator inspired this brief revival of the sword and sandals epic, with many of the big studios hoping to cash in on the same success that Gladiator achieved.  Unfortunately, it was short lived.  Warner Brothers struck out twice with both Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy (2004) and Oliver Stone’s Alexander (2004) back to back, and 20th Century Fox also failed with Ridley Scott’s own Kingdom of Heaven (2005).  Gladiator II feels like another one of those failed imitators that tried to be the next Gladiator but couldn’t muster it.  It seems like Ridley Scott himself has been trying to chase Gladiator many times over the years and always come up short, even with a movie that is directly tied with it.  While it is admirable that Ridley has managed to get this long in the making sequel across the finish line, it also will be looked at as an unfortunate footnote to one of his masterpieces rather than a classic that will stand strong on it’s own.  The only thing that stands out as better in this sequel is the performance of Denzel Washington, which gives this movie much needed life.  Otherwise, everything from the story to the characters just feels like a step down from the original film.  I don’t think it should reflect poorly on Ridley Scott.  He is a legend multiple times over and the fact that he’s still tireless in his old age is kind of inspiring.  But we can’t expect him to keep delivering Gladiator quality films anymore.  If anything, he’s been much better in recent years making movies that are different from his usual historical epic formula.  I really liked his historical drama The Last Duel (2021) which took an unconventional approach to the way it told it’s story through multiple points of view.  I think Scott can still deliver if he has an interesting script to work with.  Gladiator II just feels less like it’s own movie and more like an obligation.  Scott wanted to see if he could still make another Gladiator and he wanted to deliver on the promise that he made for a sequel to the original.  But honestly, he should have left Gladiator alone.  It was a perfectly constructed story that reached a definitive conclusion.  There was nothing more to say about the story of Maximus, and this sequel proves it with it’s own story just feeling like a hollow retread.  It’s not a complete, embarrassing failure as there are good things in it (namely everything Denzel bring to the film) but on the whole it will never be remembered as fondly as the original classic.  To sum it up, no I was not entertained.

Rating: 6/10