'Mufasa' Crosses the Uncanny Valley

On their journey to the fabled land of Milele, the motley band of animal adventurers at the heart of Mufasa: The Lion King must cross what legend describes as the deepest canyon in all the land, a forbidding cleft that plunges deep into the earth. To make the movie, Barry Jenkins had to find his way through a terrain that is every bit as fraught, one littered with the bones of the filmmakers who have come before him: the uncanny valley. Although Disney likes to bill its recent animated blockbusters as “live action,” their attempts at photorealist imagery have only served to underline how not-quite-live they are. Each whisker and leaf is immaculately rendered, and yet the whole falls just short of the mark, a triumph of technological taxidermy.