A noticeable uneasiness burdens Mufasa: The Lion King, the most recent artifact of Disney’s avaricious intellectual property mining. The bemoaned follow-up to Jon Favreau’s condemned 2019 live-action remake of the beloved 1994 film, Mufasa probes the principled lion’s biography and explains his lethal feud with his brother Scar. But the Barry Jenkins-directed project is mostly a site of strained encounters between a visionary helmer and his corporate shareholders.

This kind of confrontation is familiar. In a cinematic landscape laden with diluted IP projects, Jenkins is hardly the first filmmaker working as a cog in a billion-dollar machine. With a clear profit motive, Disney has dedicated itself to supplanting their 2D animation catalog with “live-action” remakes, sequels and prequels. While a few have found mild success with audiences, most have been fairly rejected on grounds of pointlessness. These movies, which are being churned out at a dizzying clip, are mostly exercises in risk aversion.