[7.0/10] *Mulan* is fine. It is a gorgeous thing to look at. Its action set pieces are thrilling. Its story is solid. The core components are there. It does nothing to embarrass the legacy of the 1998 original and takes enough chances on its own to make it more than just a lazy live action restaging.
That’s the film’s greatest strength. Unlike other Disney remakes of its animated classics, *Mulan* has the gumption to chart its own path. You still have the story of a young woman running away from home, pretending to be a man to join the imperial army, and saving China from foreign invaders. There’s some familiar beats and remixed characters and musical stings that call to mind the animated predecessor.
But there’s also scads of new setups, new storylines, and new twists on the old scenes. Say what you will about what parts of the movie succeed or fail, but the film has the good sense to follow its protagonist’s lead and do so on its own terms.
Unfortunately, for all that independence and laudable effort to do something new and different, the 2020 *Mulan* can’t hold a candle (let alone a torchlight to let all of China know it’s here) to the 1998 *Mulan*. That a remake can’t quite live up to the original is nothing new, and the new movie makes commendable attempts to update the old one for a new era. And yet, despite all those praise-worthy efforts to make the current release its own thing, its very existence invites comparisons to the film’s animated precursor, comparisons which aren’t flattering.
Most notably, the 2020 *Mulan* is an emotionally flat movie. There’s tension in fight scenes and a few heightened moments. But for the most part, the performances and the characters are all restrained or even flat here. That leaves them feeling like action figures to be moved around a beautifully-constructed game board. You rarely get a sense of the major characters’ inner lives, rendering the emotional arcs that were the core of the 1998 release and nominally the core of this one too, much more inert and uninvolving than they should be.
The major exception is Donnie Yen as Commander Tung, Mulan’s military boss and mentor, who manages to inject some life and interiority into a character who could easily come off as just another generic leader guy. And most of all, Tzi Ma as Mulan’s father, Hua Zhou, gives an award-worthy performance, showing an inner turmoil within the Hua family patriarch and, frankly, conveying more of the tension between who Mulan truly is and who she’s expected to be better than the character herself. His screen time is brief, but Zhou is the heart of the film, and its best emotional asset.
Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for most of the other characters, who have flattened or generic personalities. That’s truest for Mulan herself, who comes off reserved to the point of being a cipher, staunching the inner conflicts that are typically communicated through other characters rather than Mulan herself. But it’s also true for the standard issue soldier buddies, the snarling antagonists, and the bland love interests. One of Disney’s trademarks, even in its less-availing films, is a richness of character, something the new *Mulan* lacks.
That said, it almost makes up for that deficiency with an abundance of stunning images. Director Niki Caro and cinematographer Mandy Walker deliver what is arguably Disney’s best-looking live action production ever. The film provides so many colorful settings, rich with detail and strong choices in lighting and composition that communicate the terror or grandeur of a particular moment. Aside from some conspicuous CGI creatures, the cinematographic approach nicely heightens the reality of this fable while still giving it enough of a root in the genuine to make it feel real. On aesthetics alone, *Mulan* is a homerun.
The same goes for its superlative fight scenes. Whether it’s plucking arrows from the sky, raiding multi-colored markets, or going toe-to-toe on a perilous set of scaffolding, Caro and company craft an array of breathtaking action sequences. A willingness to rotate the angle of a skirmish, embrace some Wuxia tropes, and give hand-to-hand combat interludes time to breathe makes those larger than life set pieces the highlight of the film and almost worth the price of admission on their own. They work as the equivalent to the musical numbers in the 1998 release as a showcase for what the filmmakers are capable of.
But that’s not the only major divergence from the animated forebear. The 2020 *Mulan* adjusts the themes of the piece in subtle ways. At heart, both movies have an “embrace who you really are” mentality. But the remake spends more time focusing on the expectations placed on women in these societies, more specifically how they are supposed to hide their power, or chi, because it’s considered unfeminine, when embracing that power makes them stronger and more self-assured than their male counterparts. It’s a more directly feminist movie in its up-front themes, feeling of a piece with *Captain Marvel*’s similar point made from beneath the Disney umbrella.
That comes through in Mulan’s counterpart, Xian Lang, a “witch” in the service of the antagonist who encourages Mulan to stop hiding her true self and embrace that power, intimating a bond of sisterhood that connects them across the opposing sides of this war. There’s an implicit battle being fought by both of them to be able to take their place in a male-driven society, albeit one they fight with different means. It leads to some Jedi-like pronouncements here and there, but it’s one of the more compelling new wrinkles in the 2020 film, even if the idea’s not quite realized to its full potential.
Similarly, rather than rooting Mulan’s journey in the assertion of individuality, the remake takes on a more collectivist ethos. This Mulan is less motivated by the chance to self-actualize than by her loyalty -- to her fellow soldiers and, most importantly, to her family. There’s a sense of her taking chances and making sacrifices for the communal good rather than as part of personal fulfillment that’s lacking elsewhere. The new Mulan still embraces her true self and self-actualizes by the end of the film, but the framing of it is different.
Difference is good in remakes. The 1998 movie will always still be there for fans and new generations to enjoy, so finding new spins on characters, stories, and arcs is vital to making the 2020 film seem worthwhile in its own right. Some of those choices irk the former preteen with sentimental affections for the original, but I also admire them. This *Mulan* is its own film, with its own takes on the story and setting, and its own points to make.
It’s just ultimately a less engaging movie than the one it’s following up. Aside from some of the emotional dampening, there’s little to complain about in *Mulan*. It’s a well-made, visually stunning, thoroughly sound rendition of the legend on the big screen. The movie marks its own territory while bringing just enough honor to the production that came before. But the inevitable comparisons can’t help highlight what this new movie lacks, making a perfectly good film seem like a mere pleasing sparkler in the shadow of a brilliant eruption of fireworks.
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