By Akinwande Jordan
In January 2025, Niyi Akinmolayan shared Lisabi: A Legend Is Born with the general public via Netflix. Superstitions about sequels in Hollywood sometimes transcend the trailer parks and studio offices of the glamorous decadence of Hollywood— most see it as a venture into artistic futility poised to inevitably fail (of course, there have been prominent exceptions I don’t have the time to itemise). On a logical note, cinephiles of the elitist strain believe a film is a close-end art installation, and if a sequel is to be made, it is being made in service of the corporate profiteering or unbridled avarice.
The debate will be eternal, oscillating from superstition to elitism to artistic puritanism, but the kernel of the discourse before us is that Niyi Akinmolayan is alarmingly inept at delivering swan songs or following through on an understructure of passable storytelling and cinematic grammar. Lisabi: The Uprising (2024) was a decent epic saga that laid the foundational bricks for a sequel we hoped might adduce a promising “franchise,” However, we were fed a banquet of sand, albeit unsurprisingly.
The propulsive impetus of Lisabi: The Uprising is a perfect balance of myth, revolutionary commentary, and action. Lateef Adedimeji’s interpretation of the character is deft and contained; excesses are curbed, and choices are made with the intent not to waste the effect of a scene. But it is as though the rules of the film were totally spat on and desecrated in Lisabi: A Legend Is Born. Inexcusable anachronisms inundate the film. Even the score by Tolu Obanro bestowed upon the film could not enliven the irredeemable mien that leaves you puzzled and irate.
The plot carries the narrative torch of the first installment — Lisabi’s mutinous tirade against the Oyo imperial army continues as tensions and envy erupt across the camps of chiefs and revolutionaries. He is revered in Egba land, but a conspiracy brews nonetheless. Fundamentally, the aforementioned propulsive impetus is undifferentiated from its first installment — if you look past the many sins the film commits like a rule-breaking heathen incognizant of the rules in the first place.
The unsaid yet overtly familiar fact about the Nigerian epic is how indistinguishable they are from one another. However, this sequel offers nothing textually and subtextually. In 24 frames per second, you are left with saying, “Great acting, nice production, great camera work,” but none of these phrases contain an iota of truth in them. They merely serve as filler words to encapsulate the tiresome excesses of Lateef Adedimeji, Olumide Oworu, and Ibrahim Chatta.
They conceal the anatomy of Akinmolayan’s perspective here, which borders on feeble and, at times, juvenile. Shots linger gratuitously in a manner that exudes technical showboating. Never has a film been more elevated to the realm of decency by its set designers and the hard-working individuals of the costume department. It’s hard to make any film — the ventures of art are predicated upon an inherent worthwhile difficulty. You’d be hard-pressed to find any vestige of human creativity devoid of the proverbial stumbling block, but you cannot make epic films for the sake of being epic; you cannot excise pathos from the majesty of the spectacle.
Here’s a fanciful proposition: study style, study substance, and don’t be averse to an army of writers. Pending that lesson being taken into consideration, a legend wasn’t born here — the axe of modernity beheaded him.
