Mulan
Year: 2020
Rating: PG-13
Length: 115 minutes / 1.92 hours
In Disney’s ever-ouroboros-like handling of its back catalog, the continuation of live-action adaptations of its animated classics claims another victim. This time, Mulan (2020) seems to miss the point of what made the original so beloved. Of course, you can probably say that about other live-action adaptations as well (especially The Lion King (2019)). If anything, Mulan is a parody of its source material and Chinese culture overall. Everything about this adaptation felt flat and uninspired—like Disney is just running all their previous animated classics through the live-action machine to see if anything good comes out the other side.
Don’t get me wrong; I think Disney has had a few live-action successes. I think The Jungle Book (2016) improves on its source material. It’s just when you adjust the way you tell a certain story too much, it no longer contains the elements that made the original fun and exciting. By making Mulan (Yifei Liu) this incredibly acrobatic and talented fighter from the start, it removes the challenge a young woman would face when not only hiding her gender but also training to be as good as (or better than) her male counterparts.
Sure, removing some of the more cartoonish elements like the songs and Mushu makes sense in this “edgy action-adventure.” Still, when the only thing this new version has going for it is a few fancy camera movements and lots of choreographed fight sequences right out of the B-roll of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), it loses its individuality and its vision for the story the original was trying to tell. It also didn’t help that none of the characters aside from the sole female leads—Mulan and Xianniang (Gong Li)—had any character development or traits that would make them stand out or be important to the story at all.
A faded live-action pastiche of a beloved Disney classic, I give Mulan 2.5 stars out of 5.
1/2
