Mulan (2020) Review - Why, Disney? Why?

mulan is an incredible movie with stunning visuals gorgeous music and a powerful story and message but this i don't know what this is hey everyone how's it going i hope you're doing well today i'd like to talk about the new live action mulan movie so the original mulan movie is actually one of my favorite disney movies of all time i think it might only tie with the lion king for the number one spot and uh so far i've only seen three of the live-action disney remakes uh beauty and the beast jungle book and um what was the other one mulan yes mulan uh and generally have not been impressed but i did like the jungle book shout out to you jungle book but for some reason i had a sliver of hope for this one because i loved the original so much i didn't expect greatness i thought maybe i'd give it a 7 out of 10 or something like good but not great but honestly within 20 minutes i was ready to give it a 1 and call it a day and i just could not wait for it to be over so let's get into it from here on out they're going to be spoilers so in the event that you want to watch the movie and for god's sake don't but in the event that you do i would stop watching now just know i give it a one out of ten and here's my explanation also please keep in mind this is my first movie review ever so um i don't entirely know yet how to make it super entertaining or anything but i figured i'd share my thoughts because on instagram i shared a rather incendiary post about this one so first and foremost it's just a bad movie i don't know how else to put it it manages to take an incredible story and make it unbearably boring which is honestly kind of impressive no single moment in the movie made me feel any emotion whatsoever which is also kind of impressive but again is the mark of a complete cinematic failure there were no emotional moments that made me want to tear up there was no humor there were maybe one attempt at humor maybe one um otherwise it was just so bad i didn't even notice the acting is all around unimpressive the cinematography is uninspired the editing is jarring and clunky and oh god the writing help us all we'll get to that i guess the first specific issue i'll mention is that the movie was marketed heavily with nostalgia so you get a trailer with um the orchestrated version of reflection in the background is very popular song from the animated film you get uh very hand-picked shots to remind you of the first film but you go and watch it and within the first three minutes you come to understand you're watching an entirely different movie i know they said they were going to make some changes and wanted to reimagine it a bit but my god did they over deliver on their promise which by the way undermines the entire point of their marketing campaign why change so many fundamental things about a beloved movie and then market it as a nostalgia fest they also said they hoped to make it more historically accurate than the original movie and i'm totally down for that and i definitely know the first was not accurate but from what i understand with the new one they even failed to do that they still mixed and matched different peoples cultures dynasties and time periods mulan is a tale from northern china this is where she lives that style of building is not only from southern china but it's from a dynasty that took place over a thousand years after the time period mulana said in can you imagine if pocahontas took place in california and the english still landed there and she was still from the powhatan tribe the choices they made especially considering what they said they were going for are baffling alright so let me get to the number one reason i think this movie is for lack of a better description complete dog remember in mulan the real one when we meet a young adult who simply wants to bring honor to her family and then to protect her father and then through her hard work bravery and determination that part's important is able to do both of those things and save her country from foreign invaders yeah okay well say goodbye to that the new movie starts and we meet mulan around the age of 10 this time and she's doing some crazy for her age we find her chasing a chicken around her communal residence she chases the chicken up to the roof of a three-story building and she eventually slips off here's where it gets really and irrevocably weird she spins around like an olympic gymnast sticks her staff in the wall slides down an awning jumps like six feet and lands intact before doing an impressive twirl with her staff what the is happening i remember meeting mulan as a young adult she was a bit too carefree perhaps a bit clumsy and she had to train day and night to become the warrior she was by the end of the story so why the is mulan jr flipping off of rooftops and practicing martial arts already as a child i'll tell you what's happening i'm sweating what the hell it's eventually established that she has superhuman abilities because of her high levels of chi and that she needs to hide them from the public so that nobody thinks she's a witch and no i'm not kidding for those who don't know chi is a concept in traditional chinese culture and philosophy which essentially refers to the energy that permeates all living things it's contained in the food you eat in the air you breathe and more subtly refers to the life force in the human body the filmmakers seem to have taken that concept and added elements of magical realism and the result is that from a very young age mulan essentially has force powers like a jedi superpowers why is this bad i'll tell you firstly it shows a distinct lack of understanding of chinese philosophy and the fact that she is something great words cultivate not something they inherently have but her chi power undermines all of her following successes and more importantly the entire moral of the original story in the animated movie the moral was that it doesn't matter how or why you are ostracized by society with hard work sacrifice and courage you can make a difference in the world but if you're born with powers that are so strong you have to hide them for fear of being considered a witch and your arc as a character becomes whether or not you can be a warrior you don't have to work at all within the first four minutes it's shown that there's almost no way for her to grow or develop as a character roll the credits she already knows how to fight better than the other men she's already physically stronger than the other men and if you recall back in 1998 mulan's goal was never to become a great warrior it was simply to bring honor to her family if she could have done that by being a great bride or daughter she would have look at me i will never pass for a perfect bride or a perfect daughter she actually attempted to it's just that that wasn't who she was but in the 2020 film they established early on that she is not for women it's for warriors that was never the main point of the first movie she didn't set out to prove that a woman could be a warrior she set out to protect her father and to bring honor to her family and eventually her country now they show her practicing martial arts in a field as a child as if the true self her reflection should show as a warrior not someone looking to honor her family the story becomes it's not that any woman or any ostracized individual could become a hero in the face of adversity it's that mulan could because she had high levels of chi and the chi problem bleeds into the rest of the movie because now her only problem or sprinkle of character development becomes when do i reveal that i have these superpowers to the world that is now the entire arc of her character that certainly is not an easy choice by any means to reveal your true self to a hostile world but the question of when to reveal her true self to the world was one of many that mulan had to answer in the first movie do i have what it takes to be a good bride am i a good daughter in fact who even am i should i go to war to save my father will this even work can i become what i need to be should i give up compare that to yo when should i reveal my high levels of chi a big part of that too is liu ife's acting she almost never emotes uh so it's very hard to tell what mulan is thinking in any given moment um she never conveys it just from a facial expression anyway they introduced this phoenix witch character as sort of an example of stakes like what mulan could become if she uses her chi powers for evil but her presence detracts from an already non-intimidating villain drags the story out and adds to the film's generally confusing tone like didn't they want to make it more realistic why can she turn into a bird and like i said they changed the main villain from one of the most badass intimidating disney villains now all of china knows you're here perfect how many men does it take to deliver a message one to one who's like a puppet king for the phoenix witch it's like a macbeth lady macbeth dynamic but you know let's talk about the fighting too they do a lot of wire foo in this movie otherwise known as wire work it's a style of action introduced by hong kong directors in the 1980s and later used in more popular films like crouching tiger hidden dragon the matrix and others it adds a huge fantasy element to the films it's used in and mulan 2020 uses it liberally well duh 2020 they're not using wire work and animation dummy it's honestly cool that they honored chinese cinema by including it but it's disastrous for the tone and story again weren't they trying to make more gritty realistic film how can you have that and also have people flying around like this and this and doing stuff like this it's clearly not grounded in reality and when some people fight this way and others don't and you combine it with the fact that mulan has hai chi it implies that she really does have superhuman abilities not just in a story or fantasy sense but in a real physical sense and again that undermines the point of the original story so disney you try to sell the world on a nostalgic reimagining of mulan you remove or change multiple beloved characters remove all of the beloved songs scrap incredible sequences like the training montage and the fireworks finale and get rid of virtually every chance for mulan to be an interesting character thank you disney one out of ten you took this and made it this you took this [Applause] prepare to fight did we die we died with honor and made it this [Music] as if 2020 couldn't get any worse [Music] but let me tell you how i really feel you

Channel: Mike Steele

Views: 6,701

Rating: 4.9408035 out of 5

Keywords: mulan, review, movie, movie review, 2020, film, disney, disney plus, disney +

Id: KmPql2kOPrY

Length: 12min 15sec (735 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 02 2020