Main cast: Liu Yifei (Mulan), Donnie Yen (Commander Tung), Jason Scott Lee (Bori Khan), Gong Li (Xian Lang), Tzi Ma (Hua Zhou), Rosalind Chao (Hua Li), Yoson An (Cheng Honghui), Ron Yuan (Sergeant Qiang), Jimmy Wong (Ling), Doua Moua (Chien-Po), Chen Tang (Yao), Jun Yu (Cricket), Nelson Lee (The Chancellor), and Cheng Pei-Pei (The Matchmaker)
Director: Niki Caro
This Mulan is a reboot of the 1998 cartoon from Disney, because someone in that company believe that they can pander to China and make lots of money by producing a movie written and directed by non-Chinese folks, complete with a theme song by a non-Chinese artist, to get the people in that country to give Disney a lot of money. After all, any movie starring Chinese people will make the folks of China open up their wallets! Too bad COVID-19 ruin everything, and this movie now opens to either theaters not filled to the brim due to you-know-what or available as pay-per-download at a pretty steep price.
Does anyone still not know the plot? It’s the Chinese version of Joan of Arc, minus the religious overtones or tragic ending, with Mulan deciding to look like some woman in short hair and passing off as a man, to join the military in order to defend her kingdom from the Rouran forces led by Bori Khan and the witch Hua Li.
This latest version confuses me, though. The folks behind it take away the “unrealistic” elements like songs, but then introduce phoenixes and magic, with Mulan being some kind of chi-user in order to make her some kind of special chosen one. The original cartoon has our heroine being a very human character that trains hard in order to be a soldier like the rest of the guys. Here, the message is that you need to be born with special talents before you can make something out of yourself. That isn’t very progressive, is it? If anything, it kind of reinforces a sense of elitism among certain people that are born with privileges lacking among the common people. This message is further damaged by modern-day fake wokeness that sees the writers of such woke materials incapable of creating compelling female characters that earn their victories. No, Mulan is special, so she just wins because she’s just that… special. How is this supposed to be interesting again?
The blandness of the heroine and her character journey makes this Mulan a very pretty but ultimately boring, hollow movie. It’s not inspirational because it says that one has to be born with special gifts to be worth anything, and it is clearly a movie written by Hollywood-types that superimpose Western values way out of context of Chinese culture into a “Chinese” movie while claiming to be culturally sensitive to that culture. It mocks the institution of marriage, with Mulan not wanting to get married or conform to the values of femininity of her time because she’s a modern-day Western character re-skinned as a medieval Chinese heroine just because. Seriously, you’d think Disney, whose staff constantly bleat the loudest about how woke they are, would come up with a convincing reason for Mulan to reject the values of her time. Make her attracted to women, perhaps, to explain her aversion to being married to a man. Alas, I guess being genuinely woke would make the Chinese refuse to give up the money, so lip service will have to do.
This won’t be so bad if there had been other diversions to mask the disingenuous tedium of the movie, such as perhaps some well-choreographed fight scenes or songs, but no. It’s just sitting through this movie and watching the heroine just waltz her way to victory because she’s special, and that’s about it.
Furthermore, I wish the cast had spoken in Chinese. It is one thing for a cartoon to have Chinese people speaking English, as it’s after all a cartoon, but it’s harder to suspend disbelief when I am watching a live action movie set in China with a Chinese cast… that speak in often accented-English. Oh well, I guess subtitles will get in the way of the people outside of China opening their wallets, and that won’t do.
Aside from the language issue, the cast is alright, and I believe I’ve also mentioned that they spent a lot of money on the lovely scenery in this movie. That just makes this movie pretty to look at. Ultimately, though, the whole thing is a soulless cash-grab, a pointless remake done by folks that have no idea what else to do anymore, and it also manages to make the very average 1998 cartoon come off as a masterpiece in comparison.
