Disney is getting better at live-action adaptations — slightly.

That may seem strange to say about a powerhouse studio that has more than 80 years of hits under its belt and now owns a good deal of Hollywood’s overall output. But even with its storied history and its successful animated films as direct templates, it’s taken Disney three tries in 2019 to produce a live-action remake that doesn’t feel like a half-baked bad idea in search of a paycheck.

To be fair, 2019’s remake of The Lion King surpasses watchable. It’s gorgeous to look at in the same way a sleek piece of technology — like a new iPhone or a compact, microthin laptop — is also beautiful to the eye. The tech team that director Jon Favreau employed to create his talking, singing, photorealistic lions and sweeping African landscapes offers audiences something completely new to watch. Every piece of grass, huffed animal breath, and footprint in the sand is rendered perfectly. The CGI level is a technological leap forward for film akin to what we saw in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse in 2018 or Avatar in 2009.

But where Spider-Verse had heart and emotion, watching the new Lion King is more like seeing Avatar the first time. Viewers will undoubtedly be wowed by the spectacle, and the culture will doubtless be talking a lot about the work that went into this film. Given how much money this remake is on track to make, it’s highly likely that, much like Avatar, Lion King will spawn a new wave of stylistic imitators. But will it offer anything new or lasting to the cultural conversation aside from a handful of new Beyoncé tracks that we don’t have to fake a subscription to Tidal for? Does it build on the 1994 animated original in any way or offer a new twist on the Hamlet-based storyline? Not so much.

The story is the same as it ever was. Young lion Simba (JD McCrary as a cub, Donald Glover as an adult) is the future king of Pride Rock, a vast land ruled by his parents Mufasa (James Earl Jones, returning to his role from the original animated film) and Sarabi (Alfre Woodard). When Simba’s uncle Scar (Chiwetel Ejiofor) fools him into thinking he’s responsible for Mufasa’s death, Simba runs away and comes of age in the jungle with his new friends Timon (Billy Eichner) and Pumbaa (Seth Rogen). His childhood friend Nala (Shahadi Wright Joseph in youth, Beyoncé as a grown-up) comes to find him years later so he can challenge Scar and take back his rightful place as king of Pride Rock. John Oliver (Zazu), Florence Kasumba (Shenzi), and Keegan-Michael Key (Kamari) round out the voice talent.

The vocal performances are spot-on, which is more than can be said for Disney’s other 2019 live-action remakes, Aladdin and Dumbo. But it’s also to be expected when tasking talented actors with mechanically copying an existing movie. None of these performers were tasked with building characters from scratch or making the classic film their own. They simply had to repeat what had already been done — literally, in the case of James Earl Jones, who rolled back into the studio to rerecord the lines he’d already delivered perfectly in ‘94. The hyena Shenzi gets slightly more lines (though not an enhanced character or significant role in the story), and Timon and Pumbaa are handed a little more comic business, whether that was scripted or gathered via Eichner and Rogen’s improv abilities. But one of their throwaway lines hits hard. Toward the end of “Hakuna Matata,” when the warthog-meerkat duo is ready to wrap it up, Glover’s Simba starts putting his own spin on a few notes of the song. Timon moans, “Oh great, he’s riffing.”

Intentional or not, this complaint about a few seconds of mock spontaneity in a film that could have desperately used a few original riffs of its own (aside from the glossy new soundtrack number “Spirit”) feels deeply meta. The 1994 Lion King is a nearly universally beloved film from Disney’s animation renaissance. Popular culture wasn’t clamoring for a remake. It’s hard to comprehend the logic behind doing one, aside from the projected massive payoff, of course.

Disney has even gone back to that well once already. 2004’s The Lion King 1 1/2 retells the story of the original film, but from Timon and Pumbaa’s perspective, with Nathan Lane and Ernie Sabella returning to voice the characters they originated. For a direct-to-video sequel, it was fairly well-received at the time; Variety called it a “clever retelling.” It would be nice to see even that level of thought and creative ambition going into these extremely pricey remakes. (The production budget on this Lion King has been estimated at $250 million.) They’d start to feel less like obvious, cynical cash-grabs, cashing in on millennial nostalgia, and more like films with some actual artistic plan or purpose.

At least it’s a chance for Disney to show off its current technological standard. As impressive as The Lion King looks, though, it also shows the weaknesses of current photorealistic CGI. While it’s a near shot-for-shot remake of the original, this version of The Lion King lacks much of the emotion and expressiveness that keeps people coming back to the first. Perhaps one of the most affecting moments of animation in the 20th century is the way Simba’s ears go flat and his eyes get wide as he sees the wildebeest stampede approaching in the moments before Mufasa is killed. The terror in his eyes is fully evident.

The Lion King 2019 has the correct music cues for the moment and a hell of a realistic-looking stampede. But real lions don’t emote the way cartoons can, and in the equivalent moment in the new film, Simba barely seems to react to the situation at all. And the more fanciful, playful, and experimental moments of the original have similarly been erased in favor of animals standing around looking like nature-documentary shots. During the “Hakuna Matata” number, Pumbaa isn’t happily belly-flopping into a lagoon, nor is Simba awkwardly trying to swing in after him. While Nala and Simba are supposedly belting the final notes of “I Just Can’t Wait to be King,” their mouths are barely open. But hey, they definitely look like real lions. This lack of dexterity weighs down the movie, and again raises the question: “Why such a slavish remake in a medium that doesn’t allow the glory of the original to fully translate?”

It’s hard to imagine millennials, or even Gen-Xers, choosing to show their kids this version of the film in lieu of the animated original. But 20 years later, the score and soundtrack are still compelling (although half of the villain number “Be Prepared” apparently got stuck in a warehouse somewhere), and given that the script is still mostly unchanged, everything that worked narratively the first time around works again here. Someone who’s never seen the original version could probably enjoy this strictly inferior clone. But why should they?

Ultimately, like Avatar, this latest iteration of The Lion King will likely leave more of an imprint on the way Hollywood makes movies than on pop culture as a whole. But the positive thing about The Lion King is that Disney is showing improvement with each of 2019’s live-action remakes. The trailer for the company’s next live-action reboot, Mulan, looks stripped-down and promising, and the casting for The Little Mermaid, along with hiring actual musical director Rob Marshall to helm, and Lin-Manuel Miranda to consult with Alan Menken on the music is a far better sign than anything surrounding Dumbo, Aladdin, or The Lion King. The new Lion King will make a lot of money, and hopefully, some of that money can be used to make films that have more artistic integrity, narrative ambition, and bare reason to exist. That’s the Circle of Life — or at least the Circle of Hollywood.

It’s understandable if it took people a while to come around to the idea of a live-action adaptation of Disney’s Aladdin directed by Guy Ritchie. The Howard Ashman and Alan Menken musical numbers in 1992’s Aladdin are iconic. They seem even more so after the death of the film’s original Genie, Robin Williams, who brought a memorable, highly personal performance style to “Prince Ali” and “Friend Like Me.” So the idea that Ritchie — who specializes in fast-paced crime dramedies, and has never directed a musical — was going to come in and grasp the nuances of staging songs in a way worthy of the original vision was questionable at best.

But when you strip all the music away, Aladdin is at its heart a film about two men, a heist, and a big con — one of Ritchie’s favorite dynamics. Viewed through a certain lens, Aladdin is about a poor orphan (Mena Massoud) and the sultan’s evil vizier Jafar (Marwan Kenzari, who lacks any of Jafar’s necessary sense of menace) chasing down a valuable lamp from a mysterious location, then spending the rest of the movie trying to get it back from each other. Meanwhile, they both angle to get the girl (Princess Jasmine, played by Naomi Scott) through a series of elaborate lies. All of which feels squarely within the wheelhouse Ritchie has lived in through a career of fast-moving crime films like Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, and equally fast-moving adventures like Sherlock Holmes and The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

Problem is, when you strip the music and animation away, there’s not much left for Will Smith and his merry band of Hollywood newcomers to work with. Aladdin does add one quick personal scene between Aladdin and Jafar, which gives Jafar a tinge more backstory and purpose, and suggests a meaningful connection between the characters. But that angle is quickly dropped. The filmmakers aren’t much interested in developing these characters out of their original two dimensions, or leaning into the character dynamics that make Ritchie movies distinctive. As a result, the whole endeavor feels unfinished and unresolved.

Like Pirates of the Caribbean, Aladdin opens with children in a boat on the open water, almost as if trying to subconsciously remind the audience that once upon a time, Disney did successfully create a viable franchise out of an existing property — and that while critics considered the series unnecessary and ill-advised, it was still entertaining. “We’re doing it again!” Aladdin seems to gleefully proclaim as the camera swoops in to find a decidedly not-blue-skinned Will Smith manning the sails.

Like Williams before him, Smith opens Aladdin with “Arabian Nights,” a song which needed its lyrics altered for cultural sensitivity even back in 1992. Songwriting duo Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (La La Land, The Greatest Showman) have updated the words again for 2019, but for some reason, they also make the song more than twice as long as the original version — a wild choice, given that it ends up in the hands of Will Smith, who is not actually a singer, or even as compelling a “sing-talker” as someone like Rex Harrison.

Ritchie overuses two main devices to keep the story moving along — sweeping views of the gorgeously rendered Middle Eastern city of Agrabah, and additional swooping shots following Jafar’s parrot, Iago (voiced by Alan Tudyk), as he flies around spying on other characters and reporting back to the palace. The former takes the film from “Arabian Nights” straight into the heart of the city to encounter Aladdin, who saves Jasmine from getting in trouble in Agrabah’s marketplace. They instantly share a tender love-at-first-sight gaze (which doesn’t work as well on real-life actors as it did with their cartoon counterparts) and then they’re off to the races with a rendition of “One Jump Ahead” that’s less of a jump and more of a leisurely trot.

“One Jump Ahead” offers early hints of everything that will go wrong with Ritchie’s Aladdin — mainly, that the film’s musical numbers fall somewhere between a very impressive Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade performance and one of ABC’s lesser Wonderful World of Disney made-for-TV movie musicals. The film has all the expense and spectacle it needs, but the performances range from perfunctory and fine to downright engaging. The world of Agrabah feels properly (and practically) built out, filled with such color and verve that it’s even odder how labored the musical numbers feel. “One Jump Ahead” is slow and jerky, and begins with no fanfare. It isn’t helped by what are either some funky frame rate choices, or CGI that roboticizes Aladdin and Jasmine’s movements throughout the song.

“Friend Like Me” and “Prince Ali” also feel slowed down and stretched out. The film serves Smith’s Genie much better when he’s interacting with Aladdin in human mode, without the bombast and with a hint of the charm that used to make a Big Willie summer so damned fun. He even gets a romantic subplot of his own, as he falls for Jasmine’s handmaiden Dalia (Nasim Pedrad, bringing pitch-perfect comedic line delivery to her role) — a strong story update. In true 2019 Disney fashion, Jasmine gets her own freshly added musical showcase to ensure that the audience understands how empowered she is as a modern, independent woman. Her song “Speechless” sounds like a Jessie J B-side that Hillary Clinton rejected as a campaign theme song circa 2015, but it’s one of the film’s more appealingly performed songs. The only hint of vocal bravado in this otherwise amiable movie comes when Naomi Scott opens her mouth to belt out her musical statements of purpose.

Jasmine’s solo number compensates for the way “A Whole New World” is staged, in a way that makes the film’s world feel smaller, and as if the lyrics don’t matter. (Why sing “Don’t you dare close your eyes” if no one is closing their eyes? Where’s the blocking?) But “Speechless” doesn’t make up for the fact that the film’s best, most energetic musical number comes during the end credits — a Will Smith / DJ Khaled version of “Friend Like Me” that might leave audiences wondering, “Why go to Pasek and Paul at all? Why not DJ Khaled for the whole soundtrack, given that the top-billed star is a ’90s rap icon?”

Perhaps two white men rooted in traditional American show tunes weren’t the best possible choice to update music that wanted to draw from Middle Eastern and hip-hop musical influences, not when the Palestinian DJ Khaled was right there. It was uniquely frustrating to see the best number — the film’s only real original statement of purpose — come at the end of the feature, showing what the film could have been if the creative team had stretched their imaginations instead of mechanically reproducing the original film.

It’s a shame that Ritchie couldn’t execute the musical vision Aladdin requires, and that the music itself wasn’t more imaginative. The film has its positive elements, and with stronger numbers, it might have gelled more effectively. It would be nice to be able to say more than, “Well, at least Aladdin is better than Disney’s garish recent live-action Dumbo.” But at least it is better than Dumbo, because Disney is not going to stop giving us these expensive, unnecessary, generally über-profitable remakes.

At this point, it’s fair to look at Disney as the Michael Scott Paper Company of studios, and live-action remakes as their paper. It doesn’t matter how well these remakes do or don’t do. It doesn’t matter whether the directors are uniquely qualified or have relevant experience, since they’re there to execute a generic corporate vision. It doesn’t matter if they’re released to a great clamor and then forgotten by the next weekend, or released with barely a whisper. And it really doesn’t matter if any of them are actually good. Much like Michael Scott, no matter what happens, Disney is just going to keep making these things and pumping them out into theaters and onto Disney Plus.

Luckily (maybe) for audiences, Aladdin’s final set piece is the film’s best. It could be that the drastic improvement from Dumbo to Aladdin, and that Aladdin was able to end on a high note, point toward a trend of ongoing improvement at Disney, as they barrel toward the third cartoon remake this year. Maybe by the time they made The Lion King, due out in July, they finally figured out the alchemy that would make these films more than loud, clumsy copies of classics. But given their recent history, probably not. Bringing Ritchie in for his first musical was a mystifying choice, but potentially justifiable. Having him produce a film this generic and indistinctive takes the project back into the mystifying realm.

Disney’s 2013 production of The Lone Ranger had some serious problems. Among other things, director Gore Verbinski opted to construct his own historically accurate trains rather than modifying existing ones, or creating one from CGI, which helped send the movie wildly over budget. His version of The Lone Ranger was a poor and ultimately forgettable adaptation, mostly memorable for Johnny Depp’s assertion that his supposed Cherokee heritage and a Joann Fabric & Crafts fake crow perched atop his head gave him the right to play the character of Tonto.

The Lone Ranger’s single saving grace is, ironically, that overpriced train, the focal point of the third act’s thrilling action set piece, set to a wonderful Hans Zimmer arrangement of the “William Tell Overture.” The train feels real as it barrels through the film’s Western set, and its solidity lets audiences connect with something in the film. The scene clearly features actual, physical people, performing a difficult swashbuckling scene on an actual train. The real peril can be seen on their real faces.

All of which highlights the central problem with Dumbo, Disney’s latest live-action adaptation of one of its animated classics. As soon as a CGI train, billowing CGI smoke, kicking up CGI dust, and sporting a fake-looking engine grill shaped to evoke Alice in Wonderland’s Cheshire Cat barrels into this cartoonish, mostly CGI world, Dumbo is in trouble.

While the original 1941 Dumbo is only 64 minutes long, the 2019 version runs just shy of two hours, and comes complete with backstory that no one was clamoring for. The mid-century cartoon centers mainly on the animal characters, focusing on Dumbo, the loss of his mother, and his friendship with a good-natured mouse named Timothy. It features a cast of supporting characters, most memorably including a trio of Stepin Fetchit-esque crows led by “Jim Crow” himself.

Racist tropes still feel slightly more acceptable in 2019’s Hollywood than a movie that runs under 90 minutes, but Disney decided to avoid both for this remake. Tim Burton’s hybrid CGI / live-action version turns its focus to humanity. Colin Farrell plays Holt Farrier, a Great War veteran who returns to his American circus family having lost an arm on the front. His wife has died in his absence, leaving him to care for their children Joe (Finley Hobbins) and Millie (Nico Parker, doing a truly atrocious Christina Ricci impression), who also live at the Medici Bros. Circus, which is run by Max Medici (Danny DeVito). When Jumbo, an investment elephant, gives birth to Dumbo, the calf with ears large enough to use as wings, the circus attracts the attention of a big-city, Walt Disney-like charlatan, V.A. Vandevere (Michael Keaton), and his trapeze-artist paramour Colette Marchant (Eva Green).

Rendering highly stylized worlds is nothing new for Burton, who’s returning to directing for the first time since 2016’s Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children. His distinct cartoon-gothic aesthetic is fairly consistent throughout projects like Sleepy Hollow, Edward Scissorhands, Beetlejuice, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and more. He’s often used his “creepy” aesthetic to tell stories about outsiders trying to figure out where they fit in the world, and how to navigate “regular” society.

His interest in that outsider trope made him the perfect director to take on Lydia Deetz in Beetlejuice, Bruce Wayne in two Batman films, and ostensibly, Dumbo, the shy elephant unwillingly forced into the spotlight because of his too-big ears. The visually garish, dynamic worlds Burton created earlier in his career often supported that storytelling perfectly, when rendered with a mix of tangible, practical sets and makeup enhanced with computer-generated effects. But ever since Alice in Wonderland, he’s veered toward mostly digital worlds that have less weight and solidity, and more of a plastic sheen.

Many of Dumbo’s animals have too clearly emerged directly from a hard drive. Dumbo and his mother both look like wide-eyed JPEGs. Neither are quite real enough to trend into the uncanny valley, but they also aren’t real enough to elicit convincing reactions from their talented human costars, who spend the film struggling to act as though they’re engaging with all the green screen elements that surround them. When riding the flying pachyderm, Eva Green looks like she’s holding onto a gymnast’s sawhorse for dear life. Colin Farrell feels as connected to the CGI baby elephant, or the many other artificial animals, as he might to a tennis ball.

It’s particularly frustrating to watch Burton approach moments of greatness before quickly losing the thread. Vandevere’s Dreamland circus teases a Busby Berkeley-esque performance that never comes to fruition. Instead, the Busby-style showgirls assemble to create a group of CGI pink elephants out of bubbles to dance around for the show’s audience, leaving audiences with yet another digital rendering instead of actual performers. Dreamland has such potential: when Vandevere welcomes the Medici Circus in with a procession, the sets and costumes fill the screen with color. The showgirls’ blue costumes catch the camera’s focus in the same way Captain America’s USO girls once did. By contrast, the fake pink elephants are literally pale imitations of the real thing.

That same lurch away from any grounded reality seems to be tethering both Danny DeVito and Michael Keaton. Peppered with sweeping gestures and a dose of great facial tics, Keaton’s villainous Vandevere performance approaches camp, which actually makes him the most watchable person in the film. DeVito isn’t given much to work with in Dumbo, aside from looking occasionally forlorn, or delivering the occasional one-liner with very little gusto. Perhaps their Batman Returns reunion was overhyped, but Burton usually gives his veteran actors more to work with.

But that more would have necessitated a deeper script treatment, and a better-realized world to interact with. At this point in his career, Burton doesn’t seem interested in either. Nor does the script seem interested in the many questions raised by the simple fact of Dumbo’s release date. Just as Vandevere feels like a modern echo of Walt Disney, Dreamland recalls Disneyland. Dumbo debuts a week after Disney finalized its merger with Fox, which got Disney its very own performing elephant — the Fantastic Four and X-Men franchises. As expected, the newly merged entity promptly announced redundancy layoffs. It’s strangely appropriate that after “merging” Dreamland with the Medici Bros. Circus to get his hands on the spectacular flying elephant, Vandevere attempts to fire the circus’ original performers, while placing Max in a figurehead, leadership role at the company. Vandevere is the film’s villain, but does Disney see the irony?

Trailers that highlighted circus performance and relied heavily on the magic of the flying elephant and the colorful world of Dreamland made Dumbo seem like it was meant as a memorable spectacle. If that was Burton’s intention, he failed. Dumbo quickly becomes the McDonald’s of films — technically a full meal, but not satisfying or substantial. Audiences will be able to recount Dumbo’s story, but they’re unlikely to remember potent lines or moments (aside from Colin Farrell calling Dumbo “Big D”), or big emotions that would bring them back for a second viewing. The film has no perfectly executed set pieces, stirring musical cues, or even ridiculous performances — like the ones in the 2016 circus offering The Greatest Showman — that stir up significant feeling. Even Parker’s stilted Wednesday Addams impression as the clinical, scientific Millie doesn’t verge into memorably bad.

An unintentional laugh from terrible child acting would have been welcome. A fully camp experience would have been perfect. Even, Jim Crow and his jive-talking bird buddies from the 1941 version might have been a form of release. The rage inspired by seeing that kind of racism on-screen is an emotion, at least, and audiences deserve to feel something. No one ventures out to the cinema aiming to feel dead inside. But Dumbo’s lack of emotional resonance presents a solid argument that Tim Burton finally might be.