Mulan

"But when the two rabbits run side by side, 
How can you tell the female from the male?"

-"Ballad of Mulan"

"The emperor walked into the most obvious trap in fake chinese history and then started doing bed sheet kung fu (sic)." That is how Chinese writer Xiran Jay Zhao, the author of an upcoming book about Wu Zetian, the only female emperor in Chinese history, nearly concluded her multiple-tweet disappointment in the new Disney live-action remake of their 1998 animated hit Mulan. Her frustration is understandable. In countless tweets and re-tweets, she joined numerous others in expressing predictable frustration at this Disney remake. Surrounded by controversy and delayed due to the pandemic (although now available for $29.99 on Disney+), this new Mulan, which waited on the shelves of development hell before finally being directed by Whale Rider director Niki Caro, is finally here, and it's...not that bad, I guess? But alas, it definitely has loads of issues.

This Mulan is a motion picture riddled with contradictions. The costume design is beautiful, yet it's designed by Bina Daigeler, not an Asian designer. The film has exciting fight scenes, but they're also kind of ridiculous and they don't present anything we haven't seen before. Mulan makes for an effective action hero, but any character arc or development is absent. Instead, her comrades cheer "I believe Mulan!", and the filmmakers hope we don't groan in disbelief too loudly. Despite these problems, I couldn't help but at least be moved by some scenes, even as I rolled my eyes at others.

Mulan (Liu Yifei) is someone who has always required patience as she learns "how to control herself". Despite her natural tendencies as a leader, she is told by her parents that she needs to hide her gift away, and that her main job is to bring honor to her family through marriage. A matchmaker (Cheng Pei-pei) instructs Mulan that a good wife is to be quiet, composed, and polite, yet Mulan does not believe these are characteristics for her. She believes she is loyal, brave, and true (although the two groups of adjectives aren't necessarily contradictory to each other). Truthfulness is the quality that she struggles with the most throughout the film, mainly because she disguises herself as a man.

Due to invading armies, the emperor (Jet Li) decrees that every family must send one man to join the defending army. But Mulan's family has no son. There is only her, her sister (Xana Tang), her mother (Rosalind Chao), and her father (Tzi Ma), who requires a cain for walking and is not in fighting condition. Declaring that he has been blessed with two daughters, Mulan's father chooses to fight and represent his family. For Mulan, this is not an option. Late in the night, she steals her father's armor, sword, and horse and rides off to join the army. Effectively disguising herself as a man and avoiding showering with her fellow soldiers, she perseveres and trains under the leadership of Commander Tung, played by Donnie Yen, who fought with her father in a previous war. Tung and the character Chen Honghui, played by Yoson An, are both based on the character Li Shang from the animated film. Splitting Li Shang into two characters, while well-intentioned, has sparked controversy.

There has been lots of other controversy regarding this film over the past year or so. The one that has gotten the most attention is Liu's comments on Twitter supporting the police brutality against pro-democracy demonstrators in Hong Kong. (The calls for a boycott of the film also helped coin a new nickname for Agnes Chow, a pro-democracy activist in Hong Kong, as "the real Mulan".) Liu is a human being, and she is entitled to her opinions, regardless of how abhorrent they may be. But another controversy of the film had little to do with Liu and could entirely be blamed on Disney: its non-Asian crew. None of the principal crew members (its director, four screenwriters, costume designer, etc.) are Asian, with some describing the attitudes of the screenwriters as "orientalist". Amanda Silver, one of the screenwriters, recently told an interviewer that their "research" brought them to the epiphany that the Eastern hero embraces "filial piety". I don't even truly know how to respond to that. Perhaps if Disney had invested in having actual Chinese screenwriters, this updated Mulan wouldn't have been so cringeworthy. Beyond that, I thought we were past the point of actors speaking English in a movie that is meant to be throughly Chinese, but at least they got the "filial piety" in there.

In fairness to Silver, the film's focus on family is its strongest moments. They are the scenes that work the best. The family dynamics are also what made The Farewell last year such a compelling film, and we were given plenty of it. In Mulan, it shows up in the beginning and the end and that's it. (Incidentally, Ma played the father in both films.) But the screenplay and its dialogue are really the weakest part of the film, often devoid of humor and essentially stripped of any queer subtext that the first film had.

Much of Mulan requires a heavy amount of suspension of disbelief (see bedsheet kung-fu), especially when it comes to the action scenes. Last year, there was a teenager in China named Wang Weitian whose walking-on-air exercises went viral, but even he could not do what Bori Khan (the villain played by Jason Scott Lee) and the Rourans do in this film, like run up walls. In a Disney animated film, no suspension of disbelief is required. Audiences buy the fantasy the minute they agree to watch a cartoon in which people sing. Nobody points out the ridiculousness of there being a red dragon voiced by Eddie Murphy, but a witch in a live-action historical film invites copious amounts of justifiable repudiation. At least Gong Li, the Meryl Streep of China who plays this character, assisting Bori Khan and his army, provides one of the more interesting performances in the film. She and Mulan are the only ones given any ounce of complexity. Again, in the 1998 animated film, Mulan has much more depth; that's what happens when you allow characters to sing their hearts out to communicate their inner turmoil.

At least Mulan tries to do different things. With last year's The Lion King, audiences were given a banal shot-by-shot remake, and any new element only harmed the film further. Here, enough of what made the 1998 film work is back; Christina Aguilera even returns to sing "Reflection", one of Disney's best songs, and composer Harry Gregson-Williams' incorporation of the theme into his score might give you goosebumps. But unlike The Lion King, perhaps including more of the original would have helped this new Mulan. To not hear "Honor to Us All" and "I'll Make a Man Out of You" is a reminder that the original animated musical is superior to this update. Thus, as is the case with just about every one of these money-grabbing remakes, the originals should have been left alone. There already has been a live-action version of this famous story, the 2009 film from China. Though I haven't seen it, it sounds more interesting than this Mulan, which is about as mediocre of a live-action film as any Disney movie has made.

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