Mulan Review!

 Alright! Today I am reviewing Disney's remake of Mulan, which, once upon a time, was a happy, fun, charismatic, and surprisingly dark 1998 animated feature. I regret to inform you none of those things carried over to live-action. So let's talk about it.

To get all the bad things out of the way, let's just go over the controversies/poor production decisions. Filming in Xinjiang, where China keeps "Re-education camps" (Read: Concentration camps) and then thanking them for it was bad. I get that you need the perfect shot, but it's best to stay away from places that house concentration camps. 

Second, releasing this on Disney+ for $30 is a scam. And it's a straight-up slap in the face considering they scheduled it for the exact same day that Tenet came out in theaters, the first major blockbuster to be released in theaters since the pandemic began. And putting a Disney remake on Disney+ is just preaching to the choir. They know their audience is a cash cow. It's really scummy. 

So those are just problems that surround the movie in general. For actual problems you can spot within the movie, you have the fact that they stripped Mulan of everything. Remember the original cartoon where she smiled? Or made jokes? Or was a character? This Mulan is not that. This is a very... stoic Mulan.

Also, remember the characters you love from the original? Mushu? Harvey Fierstein's Yao? Bisexual icon Li Shang? Grandmother Fa? All gone, reduced to atoms. They are instead replaced by very, very boring blank slates that barely have personalities. I count two attempts at humor during the movie, both created by this group. Only one of them got an internal laugh from me, however. It's decidedly not Eddie Murphy's iconic "Dishonor on your cow!" 

The film feels that loss hard, especially during the opening. By removing all of the songs, we are left with nothing. Most animated movies feature an "I want" song, which establishes the main character's wants and motivations. This does not have that, and thus Mulan's character arc becomes a static line. 

I have a lot of problems with the film's opening. Especially in the opening, it's more or less a scene for scene remake of the 1998 Mulan - She gets prettied up, goes to the matchmaker, fails due to an insect, and then takes her father's place in the army. The difference is that literally nothing is exciting. In the original when Mulan fails the matchmaker, she fails hard. She causes the matchmaker to cover herself in oil, nearly drink a bug, throws hot tea on her, and inadvertently causes her bottom to catch on fire. Here she just moves a teapot hiding a spider, which causes the matchmaker to flip the table, making all of the cups go flying, which Mulan catches. And then she fails because... the matchmaker flipped the table? It didn't make sense.

And then we get to what should've been the best scene of the movie - Reflection and Mulan's decision to take her father's place. In the original, we got a beautifully done, amazingly scored, synthesized, and inspiring montage of Mulan stealing her father's armor and cutting her hair. Here, we get... two shots of Mulan taking the father and pointing the sword at the camera. They could've at least used the synthesizers. We don't even get the iconic "Mulan's sword splits her face symmetrically" shot. Like... you had one job. 

And it's here that we get to the main thing this movie lacked - A heart. In the original, we see Mulan struggle and become better. I've always respected how the original had the female character have to work to overcome her very real biological disadvantage to go toe-to-toe with army men. This one gets rid of a message that was empowering for all and it's a huge shame. There's no inspiring training montage here, just "Mulan is a child prodigy." It's lame and sends the wrong message: Apparently, true power is born with, not earned.

This was stupid.

That brings me to Chi. Chi was such a huge part of this movie I actively begged for the sweet release of death. Basically, Mulan is a Jedi, or at least a Chosen One, because she has this magical thing called "Chi," which gives you super-advanced martial art skills or something (I don't know, it was really vague). It was stupid. Also stupid was the decision to get rid of the songs and Mushu in the name of realism, but keep a phoenix and a hawk lady... a Ladyhawke, if you will. 

I mean, when I heard they were getting rid of the songs, I thought it was going to be a huge, three-hour epic based on the original tale of Mulan. I was pumped. Turns out it's not. It's just the original without the songs, fan-favorite characters, intense villains, character arcs, and yet somehow half an hour longer. 

These dudes are sword fighting on a tree branch. Mulan wanted both this and gritty realism.

Any new character introduced here is boring, basically. That's the only realistic thing about it. The commander is boring, the emperor is boring, the villains are especially boring, and Mulan is boring. 

Also boring was the action. Asian kung fu movies are known for their huge, bombastic, and completely unrealistic action set pieces. Mulan tried really hard to be realistic in every single way, but at random points throughout the runtime became a wuxia fantasy as the characters defied gravity and teleported behind enemy lines. 

And when Mulan hit her "character moment" and completed her arc - not that she had to improve in any way, she just decided to stop letting the male patriarchy holding her down - she shed her armor to go out and join the final fight, finally showing everyone she was a woman. First of all, don't go into a battle without armor. You need it. At least bring some form of headgear. Second of all, they had literally just shown that Mulan's chest brace had saved her life from a shuriken not two minutes before. That was unfortunate irony. 

The only time the movie ever elicited any emotion from me was a very beautiful instrumental rendition of Reflection. Other than that there was nothing. I also found it interesting that despite it being a big, brooding, serious blockbuster, nothing ever hit quite as deep as when "A Girl Worth Fighting For" is stopped abruptly as the army comes upon a destroyed army, and Li Shang learns his father was killed by the villain. Nothing like that ever happens here. Literally, no one dies. 

My sense of symmetry is so happy. 

But! Did I like anything about it? Yes. The main highlight was that literally every shot in this movie could be a wallpaper. It's beautiful - full of colors, symmetry, blurry backgrounds with a sharp focus - all the stuff that makes the cinematographer inside me happy. Unfortunately, the decision to send this to Disney+ means several people saw it on their phones, so it was all for waste. 

And let me say this: When a critic says something is "Artistically beautiful," that's just b.s. and the movie is actually pretty bad. Artistic shots alone does not a good movie make. Cool shots are cool, but if someone walks out and the only good thing they say about the movie is that it looked good, then you've got a pretty boring movie. 

So basically, this movie only has two things that I enjoyed about it - The shots and being mildly entertaining. It's not downright terrible like The Lion King, it's not borderline guilty pleasure like Aladdin, and it's not a genuine improvement like The Jungle Book. It's just a nice-looking wall of "Meh" that's worse than the original in every single aspect. 

Overall, I give this movie a 6/10. "Save yourself half an hour and watch the original." 

All in all, just watch the original.