After all the failed attempts that Disney has had at trying to remake their classic animated movies, Mulan was the first one that actually looked like it had potential. Despite its massive controversies surrounding its filming involving Disney shooting in actual Chinese concentration camps, the first trailer for Mulan actually felt like it could offer up something cultural, entertaining, and above all else, different. It had enough similarities to the original story to make it familiar but featured plenty of different ideas that could be fleshed out into something else, continuing the public’s Stockholm syndrome for their nostalgic properties and made them believe that it could actually turn out good. Once again though, as it always does, Mulan was released on Disney+ and fans were once again dissatisfied, but exactly why were they unhappy with this movie above all the others? In Imperial China, a young girl named Mulan (played by Yifei Liu) is told she must hide her inner fighter spirit and return to the traditional roles of being a proper wife to bring honor to her family despite possessing incredible strength and capabilities. Her town is warned that the Emperor of China (played by Jet Li) requests an army to fight against the oncoming assault led by Böri Khan (played by Jason Scott Lee) and a witch named Xianniang (played by Li Gong). Although Mulan’s frail father, Hua Zhou (played by Tzi Ma) plans to go, Mulan takes his place by masquerading as a boy and goes to join the army. Being in a position where she could die at any moment from either side, Mulan needs to defeat the invading forces and save China before she is discovered. Basing more of its source off of the original ballad as opposed to the Disney animated film, this version of Mulan is technically better than other Disney remakes due to containing at least a few differing elements as well as a few pretty visuals, but still features several infuriating elements that keep it from being good.

The original tale of Hua Mulan told in the Ballad created in the Northern and Southern dynasties era of Chinese History features the all-to familiar layout of Mulan dressing up as a man to fight in the army to save her father and bring honour to her family, but several adaptations have been created over the years and each one has added something different to the tale to flesh elements out further. This movie feels like it’s on the right direction to be a more grounded realistic version of the story, which would separate it from its cartoony and comedic animated Disney movie. While it still features elements that go over-the-top unrealistic like shape-shifting witches, energy flow that makes people become superheroes and logic-defying action stunts, its feels like an extension of its style and even genre, so it doesn’t feel too out of place and does help it stand apart from others of its type. It also has enough differences to make it its own creation and not just a repeat of the animated version; taking out the songs, removing a certain annoying Eddie Murphy snapdragon, and highlighting the Chinese martial arts philosophy of Qi are all good steps to making this its own thing. While that is to be praised, the rest of the story feels awkwardly paced and not nearly as impactful. Like most of these remakes, the scenes that are similar to the original don’t work nearly as well because they rush through them figuring that the audience is already aware of how to feel about said scene (when Mulan leaves her family to fight in the army, it isn’t a powerful moment of bravery and strength, it’s just something that happens in a few seconds). While the pieces of the story aren’t necessarily bad in practice, their execution lacks investment and emotional connection which results in a lot of these great ideas feeling wasted and the original scenes feeling empty. The director for this movie, Nikki Caro, essentially directed this story previously in her 2002 hit film, Whale Rider, so you’d figure she’d be able to relate and work with this material, but whether through a mishandling of the content or Disney being unwilling to allow any form of liveliness or passion behind these soulless retreads, the movie feels hollow, soulless, sloppily paced, awkwardly acted, tonally messy and even a little destructive to its own story. The message of the movie is one of the most ill-fitting out of all of these movies as it directly contradicts the movie’s plot and only proceeds to trample over what it represented in the first place. While a good message somewhere else about not restricting your strong qualities in service of an outdated system and a push to conform, it feels very counterproductive and even actively wrong in the context of this story (the moral of not hiding who you are really doesn’t work in a story where it’s a basic requirement to hide her identity to get anything done)

One of the defining reasons for why this movie doesn’t work all comes down to the handling of its lead character. Hua Mulan is a figure so ingrained in Chinese folklore that people even to this day debate whether or not she was an actual person or rather an amalgam of other female Chinese warriors like Xun Guan, Mao – Wife of Fudeng, Lin Siniang, Princess Pingyang and various other examples that led their own impressive militant lives. Whatever the real history of this illusive warrior woman is, its most likely that she is vastly more interesting and relatable than how she is portrayed here. This Mulan is a blank shell only meant to deliver messages to children under the guise of empowerment (like every Disney remake has done with its main heroines). While the Mulan in the animated version isn’t an amazing character, it showed she was afraid, struggled with her decisions and grew from a weak girl into a competent warrior, providing the bare minimum, yet still enough to make her likeable and someone you’d wanted to root for. This Mulan starts off as a perfect child superwoman who grows into an invincible fighter; nothing about that is interesting or relatable. Many of these problems stem from the writing which makes her incredibly unrelatable by giving her no flaws and the actresses, who is totally flat and expressionless throughout the whole movie. While she does look the part, handles the weapons and fighting pretty nicely as she is legitimately trained, and maybe it could come from Disney’s meddling of not wanting her to have a character, she exhibits no personality for the entire movie and leaves this Mulan as nothing but a barbie doll. Most of the other actors like Tzi Ma, Donnie Yen, and Yoson An are completely wasted; they act their parts fine but are hampered with such a terrible script that they have nothing good to work with (and wasting renowned actors like Jet Li, Rosalind Chao, Cheng Pei-pei and even Ming-Na Wen definitely doesn’t help this movie out). Jason Scott Lee and Gong Li as the villains almost work as both are played by good actors and have elements that seem interesting, but it never goes far enough to really become anything.

The film does have a lot of positive elements in regard to its technicals and its locations. It’s a very nice-looking movie with wonderfully vibrant areas and sets from production designer Grant Major, as well as some very nice cinematography by Mandy Walker. The culture is very split in terms of how its handle; on the one hand, it is really cool to see a lot of these Chinese-specific designs, clothing, make-up, buildings, etc, and it does take up a majority of the movie. But on the other hand, it’s not entirely correct in how it portrays these elements, most of them are correct in nature, but wrong in presentation (houses are from different regions, witches and phoenixes aren’t treated like they are in Western cultures, etc.). It’s a messy distribution and one that isn’t entirely truthful to Chinese culture, but it does still at least offer up a nice visual style. The action is also very well done for a Disney movie as it has some cool set-pieces that capture that larger-than-life dramatic style of fighting that is prevalent in various martial arts movies; it’s a nice element to have in this movie and it allows the fights to be that extra bit more memorable because of it. Even if it’s not fully realistic, it’s fun to watch and it has nice choreography and good camera work. The screenplay written by Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver, Lauren Hynek and Elizabeth Martin is one of the things that really drag this movie down as the lack of Chinese-inclusion would have helped touch up on those singular inaccuracies and would have been able to make things more consistent (the strong lack of any Chinese involvement is truly bizarre). It also has a ton of forgettable writing that leaves the movie without a sense of humor, which is something it didn’t require if it wanted to be a bit more serious but would have been nice regardless as it didn’t need to be a complete turnaround from its animated counterpart.

The original animated Mulan was a movie that people fell in love with when it was released, even though it had a fair share of faults. Like all the others before it, this remake makes its animated counterpart so much better by comparison because it shows what can happen when its handled poorly. The story can be less engaging and more forced and stupid, the characters can lack so much relatability, the writing can be more in-your-face obvious than necessary, and it can turn a fine lead character like Mulan and make her nothing but another message-spewing doll for Disney to sell pretending they’re saying something impactful. Out of many of the Disney remakes, this one is still better than some of the others as at least it has some nice visuals, some cool action, some interesting elements of culture, and it’s different enough to be its own thing, but its mistakes are arguably even worse than some of the others. Its message of needing fear to have courage doesn’t work when your lead doesn’t even have emotion, being true to yourself doesn’t work when the story requires a lie to survive, and providing a strong and relatable heroine doesn’t come from having super Qi powers that make you a superhero from birth, but from the passion and engagement that comes from a girl braving death by taking her father’s place in a war that she has no experience in fighting. It offers up enough difference to make it at least worth a check-out, but for fans of the original movie, this flick doesn’t do much that would bring honour to its viewers.

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