Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
Im lowkey not ready to watch Mufasa die again though, tweetedanother.
Today, the people behind cartoon Mufasas death are relatively surprised by how culturally resonant their murder remains.
And the result is a little creepy.
While the 1994Lion Kings aesthetic never aspired to realism, its plot initially flirted with the idea.
The choice was somewhat groundbreaking, a tactic youd expect from HBO,Minkoff says, not Disney.
We needed to do the opposite ofBambi, Minkoff adds.
We all thought we were the B-team.
We were in crummy digs, says artistic coordinator Randy Fullmer.
But we had self-belief, like the B-team does.
We thought,Well show those guys.
I remember one animator who had little kids at the time who was traumatized byBambihimself, adds Fullmer.
He thought killing Mufasa was a horrible thing to do.
But Minkoff remained steadfast.
Death is a biological reality, a social reality.
Once we accepted that, it started shaping the sequence in a different way.
Though its only a couple of minutes long, Mufasas death scene took around 30 filmmakers weeks to create.
These images were combined with scratch dialogue to create outlines of the sequences.
Then artists converted the storyboards into layouts, which were passed onto the animation team.
(Thirteen artists worked on Scars material alone.)
They based their designs on dialogue recorded by the actors, producing thumbnails that also had to be approved.
The many images were finally compiled into single scenes.
In total, the film contained about 1,300 of them.
Mufasas death actually took place over the course of several scenes.
(Its to die for, the uncle purrs.
(He had a group of 50 people assigned to such tasks.)
For the cliff scene with Scar, Santoros team choreographed the small rocks tumbling around Mufasa.
Mufasas golden eyes inflate as he processes his fate.
The haunting image fades to black.
The next frame zooms out from the black of Simbas pupil.
The dust is all computer generated, Gaskill says.
That created a level of reality.
When you first see Mufasa again, you see this dark lump on the ground.
Then his body is gradually revealed.
You realize whats happening as Simba does.
When Simba begins to cry, his tears leave a trail through the dust on his face.
Gaskill describes it as a tableaux, like Greek statues in this murky dust.
The effect was chilling, for children and New YorkTimesreviewers alike.
Not so, Ebertwrote.
The effect is similarly tragic, but noticeably different than its emphatic cartoon predecessor.
Everything is laser-focused, Minkoff describes, minimalist and very concentrated.
Its just a different world, Santoro added.
There is a reason why people are still painting after the invention of photography.
With animation, everything is simplified, caricatured, designed.
Thats why children respond to it.
Theyd rather have an illustrated storybook than photographs because they respond to the pure colors, the designs.
2-D movies arent capturing reality; theyre creating an impression of reality.
The biggest tragedy is that people arent passing on this skill, Santoro said.
In the future, it will be like bringing back tapestry making from the Middle Ages.
Maybe the only thing more distressing than Mufasas death is the impending death of the medium responsible for it.
