Through Disney’s continuous conquest to — seemingly — remake their entire animated catalog, the next film that was on the docket after Lady and the Tramp was Mulan. Originally set to release back in March, Mulan went under extensive delays due to COVID-19 until Disney decided to release it straight to Disney+ (but with a catch). I won’t go into great detail about this controversial Premier Access release program, but if you want more information, read Nathaneal Molnár’s piece about the release program (underlined).
Anyway, controversial release details aside, is Mulan worth the (approximately) $37 to access it? The answer depends on how dedicated you are to Disney’s recent catalog of movies, as well as how many people there are in your household (comparing the cost-per-person for a ticket for a family movie night vs the charge to access the movie at home). My answer to Mulan’s asking price is a flat-out no, because while Mulan has some great moments of spectacle, it’s largely bogged down with severe tonal inconsistencies and a litany of other issues.
What Mulan does right cannot be understated. This new remake has several things going for it that many other Disney remakes otherwise didn’t. The most welcome of changes from the original Mulan to this remake is the entirely Chinese cast vs the partially authentic, yet mostly whitewashed cast of the original film. I can speak for tons of people in saying that many of Disney’s films such as Aladdin, Mulan, and The Emperor’s New Groove are classics, however, the predominately White casts for those films are an issue considering they all take place in non-White countries (as well as White male directors helming those projects). Mulan also retains the original story of a young woman breaking free of — arguably — sexist traditions to be the person she wants to be, not the one that her family (let alone the dynasty she serves) wants her to be. These aspects are truly the strongest points Mulan has going for it.
Besides a more area-accurate cast, Mulan presents some great visual sheen. I do have my complaints about some aspects of the visuals (we’ll get to those eventually), yet the production design, costuming, the cinematography, and even the orchestral soundtrack is beautiful. Colors pop off the screen with great fidelity in several aspects of the film, which is always a great change of pace from otherwise dull-looking Disney remake films. Mulan has a certain level of restraint when it comes to the visual effects, as well, which is also great to see when films such as Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King were so overdesigned to the point of being tacky, and both giving me serious headaches by the end (no headaches here, hooray).
Unfortunately, Mulan suffers in more departments than it succeeds.
Even though I just finished praising Mulan’s visual fidelity, there are just as many issues with it than there are praises. Your usual suspects such as wonky computer-generated effects creep in at several moments, as well as oftentimes questionable wirework for many of the stunts. Smaller visual quirks such as iffy CGI and wirework can be forgiven, yet there’s one landmark issue that can’t be overstated: the tonal contrast between the narrative and bombastic action.
This new version of Mulan was shooting for a more “edgy” tone, jacking up the PG rating of the original to PG-13, and with that, comes a lot more action. I love a good action picture, they can be loads of fun as well as visceral, and I felt that Mulan had the potential to successfully switch tones to meet this more action-heavy and “darker” perspective. Sadly, Mulan has a huge problem with contrasting its action with the story (as well as being poorly edited). On the one hand, Mulan’s story is personal, subtle in many ways, and undoubtedly serious, however, that plot is pinned against action scenes straight out of Bollywood (with a good mixture of Star Wars-level acrobatics and super-human abilities to boot). I’ve got nothing against Bollywood films, yet the thing that keeps them endlessly entertaining is the fact they don’t take themselves seriously; trying to take the best of both worlds between wacky Bollywood action and serious, grounded storytelling makes for borderline hilarious moments that feel extremely out of place.
Mulan’s darker tone isn’t served well by its bombastic action, creating a massive tonal shift at the drop of a hat at several key moments of the story; that confuses me since the overall direction for this version of Mulan decided to strip out the campier moments of the previous version (the fan-favorite character of Mushu and the musical sequences). Some of that gritty feeling Disney was trying to push for this new version of Mulan could’ve been achieved — despite the wacky action scenes — if there was any sort of weight to the action. I don’t believe Mulan should’ve been a gory movie, yet the complete lack of any blood (say for one story-critical scene that’s less graphic than an everyday nosebleed) strips away tons of weight and consequence to the action. Mulan is still being framed as a family movie despite its rating change, but the contrast between trying to market Mulan as a darker take on the story, yet only taking the most menial of steps to barely achieve that goal falls in line with my usual complaints about Disney’s dedication to sanitizing everything it touches.
Outside of visual problems, half of the performances feel flat or overexerted for unknown reasons. These performance issues bring to light many problems involving the writing behind the key characters of Mulan as well, stripping away a lot of the personality they had in the first film. A lot of drama behind the character of Mulan is stripped out of her to rush the film along, adding on top of extremely weak villains who’re underdeveloped at their very best. Mulan presents us with a whole new villain to pair up with Böri Khan (the remake’s version of Shan Yu): a witch with mystical powers that assists the invading army. Neither villain gets any real-time to develop themselves outside of corny monologues that state their blanket goals before they go about killing people once again (let alone having hilarious twists to their arcs that make zero sense). With Mulan’s whole character dynamic being shafted, and with undercooked bad guys — with about as much motivation as I have to crawl out of bed every day — the complete lack of charms to any of these characters crafts a story that’s hard to be invested in.
All of this sadly leads to the most controversial aspect of this movie, which is the casting of Yifei Liu as Mulan. A lot of people have taken a hard stance against this movie because of Liu’s extremely controversial political stances (notably, her support for the CCP and brutal police state in Hong Kong). I cannot blame anybody for taking a hard stance against Mulan over these political opinions (I certainly don’t agree with those opinions in the slightest). I can usually pride myself in separating the art from the artist, yet it was a bit hard to do so for Mulan because of its central theme: a young woman breaking free of an otherwise restrictive government to fight for what’s right.
Mulan is a strange mess of a film; there’s plenty of notable achievements met through the visual design and the overall diversity, yet this remake (like every other Disney remake) strips away the personality of the original film to present us a watered-down (and pointlessly longer) version of that original film. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: I wonder how long it’ll be before people get tired of seeing movies they’ve already seen, but worse.
If you’re interested in checking out Mulan for yourself, it’s available via the Premier Access Disney+ program, otherwise, it will be available to stream normally on Disney+ by December.
