Mulan (2020)

Released 25th March 2020, Mulan follows an adaptation of the legend of Mulan; the woman who joined the army and saved China. In credit to this Disney remake, it takes a fresh approach to the story of loyalty, bravery, truth and family; an approach that arguably puts greater emphasis on its themes than the original. That said, many of the changes made are questionable; granny was replaced with a socially conforming sister who fails to dominate the scene like granny ever did. Mushu is also replaced with a phoenix which, while still aiding Mulan, feels very contrived due to its lack of traditional phoenix characteristics. This leads to one of the greatest problems of the film; chi. Much like phoenixes, which derive from Greek mythology (not Chinese), chi is passed off as ‘natural superpowers’ despite chi actually being the spiritual force which imbues life into all living things. What makes this more frustrating is that chi is used as a central device of the plot thus rendering the cultural appropriation difficult to ignore.

Another aspect which is hard to ignore is the poor acting across most of the cast. Liu Yifei is perhaps one of the weakest lead performances I have ever watched; she only seems to be trying in four scenes with the rest being simple line reading thus making her harder to engage with. Yoson An gives one of the two good performances of the film as Chen Honghui, Mulan’s best friend in the army. However, the best performance overall would have to be the new character of Xianniang. Brough to life by Gong Li, Xianniang is a fellow female ‘chi’ user who is shunned by Chinese society for her power; power that a woman supposedly shouldn’t have. She is fascinating as she acts as an intriguing mirror towards Mulan with their allegiances, treatment and use of ‘chi’. Gong Li also performs the role well with my only qualm of her character being one contrived exchange at the end of the second act. Besides these three notable performances, everyone are passable with little else that I can say.

Being a Disney budget, the visual effects are really good throughout. Despite the prowess in the effects department however, the choreography of the action scenes is a very mixed bag with some interesting angles used to shoot them but also a very malleable use of ‘chi’ in what the characters can do. The soundtrack is fairly good and I can’t really fault it (despite a lack of memorable original music). Overall, Mulan had great promise in how it diverted from the original film, however, the malleable actions of Chinese culture and weak performances make the film feel ingenuine and disappointing for how well some of the ideas could have been.