Review by Courtney Anderson
Beyoncé has, once again, brought everything around her to a halt.
Beyoncé’s latest visual project Black is King has dropped on Disney+ to much excitement and anticipation. Black is King accompanies her album The Lion King: The Gift, which itself was created to accompany Disney’s 2019 live-CGI remake of The Lion King. It’s her first big visual project since Homecoming on Netflix – the documentary about her 2018 Coachella performance – which arrived to similar fanfare and critical acclaim.
Just like I did with Homecoming, I stayed up late to watch Black is King, against my better judgement and need for an adequate amount of sleep. My curiosity about the project trumped my common sense.
And just like with Homecoming, I can say I was not totally disappointed by my decision. Black is King is, first and foremost, a delicious feast for the eyes. It’s an hour-and-a-half of incredible costuming, makeup and hair, along with dynamic direction, gorgeous cinematography and an overwhelming amount of beautiful Black people.
Much of the set design and lighting very strongly reminded me of 1978’s The Wiz, another fantastical extravaganza that centers Black people. The Wiz is a movie I watched every Thanksgiving for a large majority of my life, and watching Black is King felt like watching a new version of that was meshed together with the story of The Lion King and created with a limitless budget. The movie is grand in every sense of the word.
The visuals are so grand and magnificent that they made me forget I was supposed to be paying attention to the plot.
The actual plot of Black is King is interesting to me. This project is not only a visual recreation of the album, but it’s also a literal re-telling of the story of The Lion King. In making Black is King, Beyoncé and her team created a real live-action version of the story, replacing the lions, hyenas, meerkats and warthogs with human beings. They use the music from The Gift to craft an invigorating new version of an old story.
In Black is King, our new Simba is a young African prince, destined by both birthright and divine right to become the king. His path to kingship is dramatically altered when he wanders too far and has an encounter with his malicious uncle and his cohorts. Soon after, Simba’s father dies, and his uncle forces our young hero out of his kingdom. He runs and runs, stopping only to rest and dream about the opulent life he could be having.
Simba
Nala
Years later, we see our Simba again. He has grown into a wild young man, choosing to spend his life partying in the city. He’s lost both his physical and spiritual connection to his kingdom and his ancestors. It’s only when he meets this movie’s version of Nala that he begins his journey to return home. Simba and Nala marry, he is guided to spiritual healing by this movie’s Rafiki (now played by a woman), and he takes a stand against his treacherous uncle. Simba defeats his uncle and takes his rightful place as king, with his wife by his side, and his new baby in his arms.
Not every element of Black is King lines up neatly with the story of The Lion King. For example, there’s an extended reference to the biblical story of Moses towards the end of the movie, and I can’t quite figure out what role it’s supposed to play in the story. Beyoncé’s role in the movie threw me for a loop, as well. She’s in every scene, acting as an omniscient presence and often cradling a baby. In fact, she’s a major part of the Moses reference, acting in the role of Moses’s mother, but she doesn’t seem to represent a character from Disney’s other The Lion King films.
Rafiki
Mother of Moses?
There are also plenty of references to the real-life anti-Black racism and oppression Black people – particularly Black men – face. There are voice overs and images of Black men as they explain the ways in which the world dehumanizes them. The movie also repeatedly emphasizes how important it is for Black people to know their lineage and history. These references serve to place Black is King in a much broader context. This isn’t just a Disney+ project; it’s a commentary on Blackness, Black history and Black masculinity in a world that actively tries to erase and destroy them.
Beyoncé has spent the last few years actively centering Black people in her work. She lets her projects speak for her; she almost never does interviews and rarely releases statements on her political stances. Projects like the “Formation” song and music video, the Lemonade film and album, Homecoming, and her most recent song “BLACK PARADE” have been positioned as political statements from Beyoncé – as her way of affirming a love for Black people and a commitment to Black liberation. This isn’t to say that Beyoncé just started doing things like this; fans who have followed her super closely remember unreleased tracks such as “Black Culture” or “Creole” and the era where she had an nearly all-Black woman band, or they’ll point to reports of her and Jay-Z paying to bail out Ferguson protesters and paying their court costs. But Beyoncé’s creative output from 2016 onward looks and feels a lot different than the years prior.
The political complexities, messaging and effectiveness of her work is something that can be hotly debated, and it would take me thousands and thousands of more words to do so. For now, I’ll stick to my experience with Black is King.
Ironically, I found Black is King to be a much better version of The Lion King than the 2019 CGI movie. While I’ll always love the 1994 animated version, I found 2019’s offering to be a boring, soulless cash grab that wasted everyone’s time and talents – including Beyoncé’s, who both played the role of adult Nala in the film and supplied an entirely new soundtrack for it. I’ll never forget the feeling of sitting in that theater, staring at the screen and wondering who the hell was supposed to be entertained by those dry ass lions.
Black is King, however, is an absolutely gorgeous project that will certainly be referenced for a long time. Beyoncé and her team have breathed new life into The Lion King in a way that fans of Beyoncé have become familiar with in the past couple of years: grand, majestic, and with Black people in the forefront.