Mulan (2020)

Disney's early 21st century trend of remaking their animated classics as live action epics has mostly for me been a failure. They have never quite captured the magic of the original films they are aping. They mostly feel like uninspired copies. Mulan doesn't really change that although I may have, on the most basic of levels, just enjoyed this film a bit more than some of the other updates. 

This Mulan is an attempt to bring wuxia esthetics to the Disney formula so we get a sweeping, visually stunning adventure story that still hits all the main plot points of the original film. But in doing this so many of the pieces that makes 1998's Mulan so strong are lost. This Mulan is oh so serious with very limited moments of comic relief. Gone are Mushu and the lucky cricket (although they refer to him in a different way), the wise cracking grandmother, all the music, and most of the jokes playing off our understanding of gender. 

In fact it's the gender analysis of the first film which I missed the most. For some reason (desire to appeal to Chinese censors?) the clever gender deconstruction and queering of the characters has all be scrubbed from this version. The original animated film did a lot of exploring what it means to "be a man" or a woman, how that is constructed and deconstructed, and how individuals might navigate that binary, including flowing through it. This Mulan removes all that to make it all about a young woman lying about who she is hiding her chi under a bushel, and learning to let her little light shine and be who she is. All good messages but rather mainstream. Gone is all the drag, the burgeoning love interest between a man and someone he thinks is another man, and the examination of the ways men can't show their true selves while practicing their masculinity. 

Instead this Mulan is painted as a superhero. Early on we are shown she has powers which she is encouraged to hide away. We see the way another magical character is ostracized for her "being a witch" and how Mulan learns to stand against that culture of suppression. Again, this is all good but feels a little standard. This Mulan tells a good story and raises her to the status of a national hero. But it's a story we know exactly how it's going to play out as we've seen it before. Perhaps that's where these films loose it a bit for me. It is hard to get too into it when I feel like I'm rewatching something I've seen before.

There is also something that's rather uncomfortable about this Mulan in that the movie consistently reminds us that we are watching a story of reinforcing empire. In the original the antagonists were invaders bringing death and destruction in an attempt to gain power. But here the villains are painted differently. There is a scene where they talk less about seeking power, about getting their own land back, the land taken from them, and about creating a space where people who are different have a place. They are less cruel and power seeking and more a group of wronged people seeking justice. And Mulan fights them?? This is a difficult problem as this Mulan is an agent of empire. It all feels less noble and less honourable. 

So once again we find ourselves with an inferior copy, an almost 2 hour reminder that there is a better version of this story out there and we ask ourselves why wouldn't we just watch that?

Mulan
Starring: Liu Yifei, Donnie Yen, Jason Scott Lee, Yoson An, Gong Li, Jet Li, Tzi Ma, Rosalind Chao, Ron Yuan, Jimmy Wong, Doua Moua, Nelson Lee
Director: Niki Caro
Writers: Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver, Lauren Hynek, Elizabeth Martin