“Mufasa: The Lion King” - Nothing to sing home about.

As the year draws to a close, we’re left with the annual end of year fireworks in the form of Christmas movie releases. One last splurge of films to goose box office receipts before the calendar flips over to the graveyard of films that is January. While Wicked and Moana 2 continue their strong runs, they’ll have company from a Bob Dylan biopic, a Dracula remake, Sonic the Hedgehog’s third (!) film, probably not Kraven the Hunter (grossing a paltry $11M in its opening weekend just a few days ago), and a Lion King prequel called Mufasa: The Lion King.

My very first question about Mufasa: The Lion King is not what you think it is - who asked for this? No, my first question is why the subtitle The Lion King? As this movie tells us, as well as The Lion King did, Mufasa means “king.” So, the movie is called King: The Lion King. Also, Simba is the lion king. This is already confusing.

Mufasa begins with Pumbaa and Timon babysitting Simba’s daughter Kiara while Simba runs off to find Nala, who is giving birth to another lion cub. Wait, this is a sequel and a prequel? Also, why isn’t Nala birthing her cub in their home? Some of that confusion is allayed, then replaced with other confusion, when Rafiki shows up and launches into the story of how a lowly, common lion named Mufasa became king. Yes, a lion whose name literally means king and whose son we were told came from a long line of kings by Mufasa himself isn’t actually of royal blood. Well, this sounds promising. What next - that Scar isn’t really Simba’s uncle?

Turns out, Scar isn’t really Simba’s uncle. Nor is his name Scar. For the first half of the film, I thought his name was Tucker because he and his family all have British accents. Scar’s real name is Taka and Mufasa is Taka’s brother in spirit only. The two lions meet after Mufasa is swept away from his home and family by a flood and later found floating in a river. Mufasa is adopted by Taka’s mother Eshe and trained as a hunter with the lionesses at Taka’s father Obasi’s insistence. After a pride of white lions attack and kill Taka’s entire pride, Taka and Mufasa spend the rest of the film fleeing from the white lions, hoping to find refuge in a mythical land called Malele.

This being a prequel, almost nothing that follows is surprising. Even if you have never seen The Lion King, or the other The Lion King, you know Mufasa prevails because Rafiki is relaying this story to Mufasa’s grandchild in the future. But you have seen at least one The Lion King, so you will probably spend much of the time wondering when the movie is going to show us how Scar gets his scar and becomes Scar. You also know that prequels can’t resist showing you the origins of stuff from the original movie, so it’s a foregone conclusion that Sarabi, Zazu, and Rafiki will show up in this story. And Pride Rock. And how Rafiki got his staff. And Scar and Mufasa having a falling out. And Scar digging his claws into Mufasa’s paws as Mufasa dangles from a ledge. The only thing missing is how Scar’s mane turned black.

So, here’s how Scar’s mane turned black. Just kidding. That’s a story for Rafiki to tell in Mufasa 2: Yet Another Lion King Movie. But my son had a different question that needs answering - where is the snowy mountain range in Africa that Mufasa and Taka traverse? This is what happens when a movie seems so determined to be meh that it can’t keep the attention of a 12-year-old...who watches tennis on TV. Because I was also quite bored, my thought upon seeing the mountains was - isn’t that where Gandalf fought the Balrog?

(For the record, the Atlas Mountains in northern Africa do indeed feature snow-capped peaks. You’re welcome.)

Surprisingly, it wasn’t just the story that was decidedly mediocre. Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote the songs and none of them stood out. A couple songs were almost bad, most notably Mads Mikkelsen (voicing the white lion pride leader, Kiros) singing “Bye Bye,” an awkward song about murder, and Mufasa (Aaron Pierre) and Taka (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) singing “I Always Wanted a Brother,” an awkward song that wasn’t about murder.

Unsurprisingly, Mufasa delivered what I expected it to deliver. A vanilla story filled with fan service and not an ounce of tension. A movie that is somehow confusing and not confusing at all. A film so very blah that you won’t remember the music and might not even remember which lion is which, following in a long line of very blah live-action Disney remakes. What next - a Lilo and Stitch live-action remake?

Rating: Ask for two thirds of your money back because it’s not the worst movie you can see this Christmas.

“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” - The last, last, last crusade.

Dear Indiana Jones Fans,

First, we’d like to thank you for supporting Indiana Jones. Without fans like you, Dr. Jones’ rich world universe of movies, comic books, novels, video games, pinball machines, a television series, a theme park ride, a stunt show, and countless merchandise would not have been possible. Even if you aren’t aware that most of those things existed, we assure you that they are all real things, many of which at least several of you enjoyed.

We would also like to extend our sincerest apologies for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. We didn’t want to make it either, but we signed a deal in the late 1970s with Paramount Pictures to make five Indiana Jones films. Paramount was upset that we titled the third film The Last Crusade and even more upset that it was an exceptionally good way to end a (sort-of) trilogy. They threatened to let Michael Bay write and direct two more if we didn’t do them, so you can see we really didn’t have a choice. Plus, they insisted we cast Shia LaBeouf and center the plot around aliens and CGI because Transformers was far more successful than they expected. Again, we are deeply sorry.

Luckily, Disney bought us in 2012. They were just as upset at Crystal Skull as you, noting that the wait time for their Disneyland theme park ride had dropped from seventy-five minutes to three minutes. Crowds for Epcot’s stunt show dwindled as well, in no small part due to a familiar-looking young man insisting the stunt show needed to incorporate swinging from vines. With Disney in control of our franchise rights, they told us to fulfill our contract to Paramount with a final movie respecting the heart of the franchise and that they did not know what a Mutt Williams was.

To show how much we appreciate your continued support of the franchise (especially the shockingly high $791 million box office), we present to you Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. We swear Dial of Destiny will be the last Indiana Jones movie. I know you’ve heard this before, but this time we really mean it. We even had Harrison Ford go on the record (NBC’s Today - May, 2019) saying “I’m Indiana Jones. When I’m gone, he’s gone.” Nineteen years passed between The Last Crusade and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, another fifteen years to Dial of Destiny, and Ford will be eighty-one years old next month. You do the math.

Dial of Destiny has all the things you love about Indiana Jones adventures. Jones using his bullwhip. Jones punching people. Jones pursuing an ancient relic/MacGuffin. Jones explaining the history and mythology of that ancient relic. Jones fighting Nazis. Jones riding a horse. Jones picking up his hat. Closeups of Jones’ hat. Jones lecturing a bunch of college students in a classroom. Jones driving a vehicle in a chase scene. We even used CGI to de-age Jones for an opening scene where he tries to recover a different ancient relic than the main story ancient relic. Oh...and Sallah (John Rhys-Davies) is there too.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t bring back everything you love. This is the first Indiana Jones movie that isn’t directed by Steven Spielberg. We left many, many (many) messages and, eventually, his assistant called us and said Steven was busy making a movie that Steven says will be THE defining biopic of cinema. Now that we are done making Dial of Destiny, we’re excited to have free time to watch Spielberg’s movie to find out which great person of history Spielberg pointed his camera at.

Dial of Destiny is also the first Indiana Jones movie not written by George Lucas. You’re welcome.

We think you’ll be happy to hear that James Mangold agreed to direct and help write the screenplay for Dial of Destiny. Mangold was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Director for Ford v. Ferrari and Best Adapted Screenplay for Logan, so rest assured Dial of Destiny was in good hands. In addition, Mangold brought with him Jez and John-Henry Butterworth - the writers of Ford v. Ferrari. Finally, we added David Koepp as a fourth writer, who has helped write many good movies (Jurassic Park, Spider-Man, Mission: Impossible), many other less good movies (The Shadow, Snake Eyes, The Mummy (2017)), and that he is very, very sorry he answered George Lucas’ phone calls while writing Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

We’re also excited to tell you about the other main characters. Phoebe Waller-Bridge plays Indy’s goddaughter/archaeologist Helena Shaw, the daughter of Indy’s friend Basil (Toby Jones). Helena wants to find the ancient relic so she can sell it and she needs Indy’s help to get it. Waller-Bridge attacks her role with the same gusto as Karen Allen did in Raiders of the Lost Ark. She will quip and smirk and archaeology so much you’ll think she’s a female incarnation of Indy himself.

Opposite them, Mads Mikkelsen plays an evil Nazi scientist named Jurgen Voller and nobody does evil villain like Mikkelsen. Like every Indiana Jones villain, Voller wants the ancient relic for its mythical power in order to help the Nazis take over the world. Also like every Indiana Jones villain, Voller is very one-dimensional to ensure there is no chance you will ever sympathize with him.

Everything else we did with the movie, we did with you, the fans, in mind. In honor of the previous films, we put in a bunch of easter eggs. We added a fun kid sidekick, Teddy (Ethann Isidore), a Moroccan teenager who helps Helena. He is no Short Round and, now that we think about it, adds nothing to the story or events. But we couldn’t find a way that drinking blood, ripping hearts out, or surviving a fall from an airplane in an inflatable raft made sense in this movie, so we went with the kid. Also, Sallah is there.

We cast Antonio Banderas as Renaldo, a new “old” friend of Indy’s for a fun underwater diving scene. We refrained from using too much CGI and filmed a ton of practical effects in several locations around the world. We put in a gigantic henchman for Indy to fight. We even decided to finally show the full power of the artifact, which we feel was the one flaw in the first three movies. We just know you’ll love it the same way you love it when monster movies show the monster in the first act of the film.

In gratitude to you, we spent $295 million dollars to make certain Dial of Destiny is at least the fourth best Indiana Jones movie. You might even say the third best. We appreciate your forty years of devotion and hope you enjoy watching Dial of Destiny as much as we enjoyed making it. Even if you don’t, we think you’d agree that shouldn’t ask for more than eight dollars back.

Yours truly,

The Indiana Jones Franchise

“Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore” - How to make magic boring.

We are often faced with choices in life that we wish we could go back and choose again. While walking into the screening of Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, I was presented with a choice of schwag for the film - would I like a movie poster or a reusable, cloth grocery bag? As a fan of movie posters, I took the poster offered to me. After watching the film, I realize I made a terrible error. As much fun as it would be to poke a thousand thumbtacks through the poster to express my opinion of this movie, I could at least have made use of the grocery bag. I would have turned it inside out to avoid the shame of carrying around an advertisement for the film, but at least its sole purpose wouldn’t have been to rot in a landfill for its entire existence.

(SPOILER ALERT - Despite there being very little plot to speak of, I’m going to speak of it anyway.)

It’s been three and a half years since the last Fantastic Beasts film - The Crimes of Grindelwald - and it’s safe to say quite a bit has happened in real life since then, and is still happening. Suffice it to say, trying to remember anything that happened in Crimes after absorbing recent IRL events is a monumental task. It also doesn’t help that Crimes was so forgettable. In fact, it was so unmemorable that it didn’t even phase me when Mads Mikkelsen appeared in the new film as Gellert Grindelwald, in place of Grindelwald’s former portrayer, Johnny Depp. To be specific, my response was “well, I guess Depp is out.”

The film opens with Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) tending to a magical beast called a qilin, underneath a rock arch on top of a mountain. That word is pronounced: chill-in, and, yes, it’s as dumb as it sounds. I chuckled every time it was uttered on screen. That aside, it was nice to see a new creature introduced, since the last film decided to all but abandon the concept of showing us fantastic beasts. This time, the film embraced this new beast by making the qilin the film’s MacGuffin. Newt is there to assist with the birth of a baby (maybe called a chill-y? eh?) but is attacked by a couple of Grindelwald’s hench-wizards, including Credence (Ezra Miller). They kill the mother and steal the baby, leaving Newt unconscious in a river. Newt wakes, returns to the dead mother, and is greeted by a second baby qilin.

Meanwhile, Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law) meets with Grindelwald at a cafe. They discuss the anti-muggle pact they made when they were young, which Albus chalks up as a mistake he made because he was blinded by his love for Grindelwald. If there is one through-line in all of the Potter-verse, ahem, Wizarding World (try as hard as you want WB, it’ll always be the Potter-verse), it’s that dark wizards are driven by racism as their sole motivation for everything they do. Grindelwald is no exception, as his plan continues to be the subjugation or extermination of muggles. One small problem - Grindelwald is an escaped fugitive and accused murderer being hunted by the wizard cops.

Those two paragraphs intersect to form the mess posing as a plot. As we learned in the previous film, Grindelwald can see bits of the future. This is how he was able to send people to capture the baby qilin. We eventually learn that qilins are used to select the leader of the entire wizarding world. Apparently, qilins can see into the hearts of all people and know who is pure and who is not. To those who are pure, they will bow in respect. In that case, why the hell is anyone campaigning and why are there people advocating for one wizard or another? On top of that, do wizard leaders not keep a qilin in some sort of protected sanctuary that is kept in the public eye, in order to prevent any shenanigans? Nobody is going to question the fact that the qilin being used in the selection isn’t glowing, despite that being a qilin’s defining physical feature? And what happens if the qilin doesn’t bow to anyone? And they say muggles are the inferior ones.

My friend summed up the movie quite nicely, saying “I didn’t care about anything or anyone at any time during this movie.” If any one scene is the epitome of that statement, it’s when we meet the group of people Albus has assembled who are going to try to stop Grindelwald. Returning is Newt’s muggle friend Jacob (Dan Fogler), Newt’s brother Theseus (Callum Turner), Lally (Jessica Williams), Yusuf (William Nadylam), and Newt’s assistant Bunty (Victoria Yates). Apparently, all of these characters appeared in the previous film, yet Jacob is the only one that I could remember. It didn’t help that they were all introduced to each other by name in the scene, as if the film is as unfamiliar with them as the audience. But, to my point, I didn’t care that any of them were there either.

Jacob’s charm was stomped on in the last film and is essentially there as trolling of Grindelwald by Dumbledore, if not trolling of the audience by J.K. Rowling. Yusuf is supposed to be a spy, but Grindelwald can see the future, plus Grindelwald has Queenie (Alison Sudol) reading the minds of anyone who comes near. The fact that Yusuf is a spy is literally the first conversation topic between Yusuf and Grindelwald, so what’s his job again? Theseus and Lally are the muscle known as aurors, though Lally should have been pushed from their train for whatever the fuck was the affectation she was going for with her dialogue delivery. Conspicuously missing are Tina (Katherine Waterston) and Albus, though Albus at least has an excuse - he can’t even think about fighting Grindelwald due to their blood pact. All in all, it’s a group that exudes nothing but shrugs throughout the film, mostly due to them barely mattering to the plot.

Speaking of not mattering to the plot, this won’t be the last time we see Grindelwald. Like every film in the Potter-verse, save The Deathly Hallows Part 2, the film ends without concluding anything important. We haven’t met any new, interesting characters and the ones we have met inspire little more than yawns. We haven’t gotten any new story arcs to follow and the main story - dark wizards hate muggles - is as uninteresting as ever. All we’ve seen is a couple of minor subplots conclude and an implicit To Be Continued...

In addition to the film not making us care about anything, it was straight boring. How the fuck do you make a movie about wizards and magical animals boring, J.K.?! All I wanted from this movie was to be entertained for a couple of hours and see a bunch of magic. What I got was a wand fight that might as well have been a laser gun fight (just different colored balls of light flying at each other), a few floating teacups (which we already saw in Beauty and the Beast, so not impressed), and Newt and his brother doing a goofy walk to avoid being attacked by some scorpion-crab things in a dungeon. The most boring movie I’ve ever seen used to have an easy answer. Now, I have to pause before I answer The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

Rating: Ask for all of your money back for two movies worth of Potter-verse.