Mulan

The excite­ment around Disney’s lat­est live action remake seems under­serv­ing giv­en that the cash-grab­bing updates of Aladdin, The Lion King, The Jun­gle Book, Beau­ty and the Beast and Cin­derel­la range from fine to abysmal. But Mulan was sup­posed to be dif­fer­ent: a new Mulan; an authen­tic Mulan; a less prob­lem­at­ic Mulan.

Gone is Mushu, named after a ​“Chi­nese” dish that exists only in Amer­i­ca, the wise crack­ing drag­on with a dis­tinc­tive African-Amer­i­can accent. Gone is Cap­tain Li Shang, in the wake of #MeToo the com­mand­ing officer/​love inter­est is replaced with the pater­nal and uncon­tro­ver­sial Com­man­der Tung. Gone are the songs, the irre­sistibly catchy ​‘I’ll Make a Man Out of You’ is sore­ly missed but Christi­na Aguilera’s war­bling ​‘Reflec­tion’ appears instrumentally.

The changes from the ani­mat­ed ver­sion bring it clos­er to the orig­i­nal ​‘The Bal­lad of Mulan’, a 6^th cen­tu­ry poem that is con­sid­ered the ear­li­est extant tran­scrip­tion of the Chi­nese folk­tale. The result­ing film is excit­ing, beau­ti­ful and undoubt­ed­ly the strongest Dis­ney live action remake to date. For all its splen­dour, how­ev­er, ele­ments of Mulan feel watered-down and it is ulti­mate­ly less tri­umphant than one had hoped.

Hua Mulan starts the film as a small girl, already exhibit­ing extra­or­di­nary abil­i­ties and flip­ping and spin­ning atop rooftops with super­nat­ur­al ease. By the time she reach­es adult­hood, and is played by Liu Yifei, she is sti­fled by the con­stant bad­ger­ing of her par­ents. Her father (a crim­i­nal­ly under­used Tzi Ma) speaks of lit­tle else but the impor­tance of bring­ing hon­our to their family.

When a man from every fam­i­ly is con­script­ed by the Emper­or (an unrecog­nis­able Jet Li) to fight the Rouran invaders from the North, Mulan dis­guis­es her­self as a man to take her infirm father’s place in the army. Her train­ing is intend­ed not so much to trans­form her into a sol­dier as to unlock the ​“qi” that lies latent with­in her.

Many of the key ingre­di­ents are there, Liu is a com­pelling Mulan, bring­ing grav­i­tas to even the most wood­en of dia­logue and con­vinc­ing as a skilled war­rior. The new vil­lains Bori Khan (Jason Scott Lee) and Xian Lang (Gong Li) as a Rouran war­rior leader and a shapeshift­ing witch respec­tive­ly are great campy fun and man­age to be threat­en­ing with­in this firm­ly child-friend­ly context.

This is the most expen­sive film ever made by a female direc­tor and much of mon­ey can be seen, the cos­tum­ing is extra­or­di­nar­i­ly detailed and lush and the bat­tle scenes impress even though at times there seem to only be a dozen sol­diers fighting.

The CGI is incon­sis­tent, some­times cre­at­ing stun­ning dynam­ic images but at oth­ers fill­ing the screen with light­weight plastic‑y car­toons. Much of the dis­plays of mar­tial arts are gor­geous but the fran­tic edit­ing and arbi­trary use of slow-motion dulls its impact. Even with all the talk of the impor­tance of hon­our is hard to invest in the sav­ing of the Emper­or, who begins this film con­script­ing elder­ly men to die on the battlefield.

For a film with so much at stake, Mulan nev­er feels epic, but it does suc­ceed as a sto­ry of a young woman coura­geous­ly defy­ing cul­tur­al and social expectations.