Ah, yet another chapter in the saga of “Disney Live Actions My Childhood.” While I am admittedly warming up to the idea of some of these live action remakes (I loved Aladdin), some, while not terrible, I still find to be completely redundant (*cough The Lion King *cough cough.) Even when I was fairly anti-remake, when I heard they were tackling Mulan, one of my absolute favorites, I was absolutely on board. There is just so much epic battle action that an animated rated G film couldn’t quite capture. Of course my main concern is that they would either make it too similar to the original, being once again redundant, or they would make it so different I couldn’t recognize the film. I will tell you now, Mulan is indeed a very different interpretation of a classic animated film. And I actually found myself highly enjoying these differences.
When Rouran warriors, under the leadership of Bori Khan, (I missed you, Jason Scott Lee!) and a witch by the name of Xianniang (Li Gong), invade an outpost in imperial China, the Emperor (Jet Li) issues a decree that one man per family must serve in the Imperial Army to defend the country. Hua Mulan (Liu Yifei), an adventurous and headstrong girl, takes her injured father’s (Tzi Ma) place as she has no brothers. She disguises herself as Hua Jun and trains with Honghui (Yoson An), Ling, (Jimmy Wong), Po (Doua Moua), Yao (Chen Tang), and Cricket (Jun Yu) under Commander Tung (Donnie Yen).
Mulan is based on the “Ballad of Mulan”, which was composed around the fifth or sixth century CE by an unknown lyricist, and the 1998 animated adaptation by Barry Cook and Tony Bancroft. This adaptation was directed by Niki Caro (The Zookeeper’s Wife), written by Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver (Rise of the Planet of the Apes) and composed by Harry Gregson-Williams (The Martian).
I’ve seen heard some people complain that this version takes away some of the build-up of Mulan’s training, adding that her “chi” is stronger than most men. They seem to feel that this takes away from the female empowerment of the film by just giving her natural (or unnatural) abilities over most. I could tell they wanted this to be a Wuxia style film from the very beginning when she’s running on the rooftops as a child, jumping from ledge to ledge to a perfect landing on the ground. Of course, it takes away from the build-up, but I don’t believe it takes away from the female empowerment of the film. She still beats men at everything and is even better when she’s Hua Mulan than she’s pretending to be Hua Jun. They just omitted the struggle.
They also got rid of Mushu for a non-speaking phoenix and replaced the Huns with Rourans to be more culturally accurate to the time period and removed the songs of the 1998 Disney classic, save for hints in the score. As much as I felt like I was going to miss these (and trust me, I wanted to belt out “Reflection” and “I’ll Make a Man out of You” at a certain parts of the film), they proved to me that it wasn’t needed to move the plot forward.
What it did have was Liu Yifei portraying a very capable yet uniquely feminine version of Hua Mulan. In Imperial China, her character was an outcast for being too independent and physically strong, but in modern days, she would have been a somewhat normal woman, albeit extremely talented at martial arts and war. They also expanded on Mulan’s father a little bit, allowing Tzi Ma to show off his amazing acting skills. They even had a small cameo by the original voice of the 1998 Mulan, Ming-Na Wen. I do wish they expanded on Bori Khan’s motives and character a little bit more though. The witch Xianniang was far more interesting.
While the initial 30$ price tag may be a bit steep to see it on Disney +, it may be worth it if you have a large family you would have taken to the theaters anyway, or if you are a super fan of the original who can’t wait until it’s available for free. Mulan may not be what everyone expected or even wanted, and even though it doesn’t replace the 1998 classic in my heart, this Disney-Wuxia hybrid of a film is something I’ll enjoy over multiple viewings.
