‘Mulan’ (2020) Review

The Disney live-action remakes of their classic animated films have made billions of dollars worldwide. While these remakes are undoubtedly a success, responses from critics and audiences have been mixed. Some of the complaints have been that the films are almost identical to the animated versions but worse. Disney is now giving Mulan the live-action treatment and the results are mixed.

Mulan tells the tale of Hua Mulan (Liu Yifei) who is a young woman in ancient China, who is expected to behave ladylike and be a good wife in order to bring honor to her family. When a dangerous tribe threatens all of China, Mulan takes the place of her father (Tzi Ma) who is too old to fight. She has to pretend to be a man in the army in order to help save China while also keeping her family’s honor. 

Changes Mulan into a boring lead character

When the trailer for Mulan was released, many were excited as it looked different from the animated version. Some fans were upset that the film does not include songs, Mushu, or Li Shang. However, Mulan appeared to be an action-filled war movie that would put a new spin on the Mulan story. The problems with Mulan aren’t that things are missing, it’s that it changes Mulan into a humorless, bland film with little heart.

Mulan in this movie is not an interesting character. The film changes the background of her character by introducing chi. Mulan has a high amount of chi which makes her a powerful warrior from the get-go. She not only has to try to be a respectable woman, but she also has to hide her chi, which is basically treated like superpowers here.

It’s hard to care about Mulan because she has zero growth as a character. She starts out amazing at everything and remains this way, but she has to hide it. In the animated version, she takes a huge risk in joining the army since she is not a warrior. “I’ll Make A Man Out of You” packs a punch because we get to watch Mulan’s training and see her develop into a great warrior. Here, she is already a great warrior so her training is basically pointless.

Strips away the magic of the original

The other characters in the movie are equally as humorless. The only characters who are somewhat entertaining are the other soldiers that Mulan befriends. This troop actually crack some jokes and bring some humor to the movie. I’m not saying the movie needed Mushu, but there should have been some more characters who had likable personalities. Donnie Yen as the commander of the army is also a good character, but even he is underutilized. 

The villains are also very weak. The movie doesn’t have Shan Yu, but does have another character played by Jason Scott Lee who I guess is just a different version of Shan Yu. He has some cool fight scenes, but he doesn’t have much motivation besides revenge which makes him a weak character. 

The other villain is a witch character who is way more powerful than Lee’s character. She is out of place in this remake that is supposed to be a more realistic depiction of Imperial China. I don’t know much about Imperial China, but I’m pretty sure there were no women who turned into hawks. The witch supposedly has powerful chi like Mulan, but Mulan doesn’t have these powers so it’s unclear why the witch does.

The imagery is spectacular

While the characters are boring, the film does put a lot of work into making the film look nice and cinematic. Director Niki Caro provides some beautiful imagery of landscapes and grand action scenes. The costuming is also very impressive as well as the set designs. Clearly, a lot is put into the production of this movie.

The action is well shot and has creative combat moments. However, it takes way too long for the film to get to the action. It does get better once the action starts, but it is slow up to that point. The lack of interesting characters does take away from the action, however, as there is no one to really care about during these scenes.

Final verdict

Mulan isn’t a terrible movie. It’s definitely better than some of the other live-action remakes. However, the animated version has so much life and personality that I don’t know why anyone would choose this version over it. 

I admire the fact that Disney allowed this remake to be so different, especially after The Lion King, but the changes they made were bad and only reminded me of how the animated version is better. It has a nice message for kids, especially little girls, but I would definitely stick to the animated version.

Final score: 2/5