Mulan (2020) VS Mulan (1998)

[Music] disney has released yet another live action remake and truth be told mulan is the only disney animated feature that i thought had the most potential out of all the other disney animated properties to get a live action remake as you can tell a more serious version of the story with the heart of a more mature and realistic war movie within the confounds of pg-13 rating of course spoiler nothing about this movie was pg-13 so did this latest disney remake deliver or does it fall into the same uncreative pile of crap as most of the other live-action disney remakes we are about to find out let the battle commence now i'm going to describe the pacing of both these movies for you in the opening three minutes of the animated movie we are introduced to the villains the emperor and the warriors of china and we are then taken straight to mulan in the live-action version we spend the opening six minutes on mulan's childhood which just isn't necessary except to show that she is a strong warrior at a young age and is pretty much perfect in every way we are then shown four minutes of the two new villains as well as two minutes showing the emperor and the warriors that is 12 minutes of time that is spent establishing things that the animated movie did in a fraction of the time so yes right off the bat this disney remake follows the same mistakes that the previous disney remakes have made and that is that the movie is longer because it either pads out scenes from the original or it will just completely skip them all together and put new scenes in their place that aren't anywhere near as effective for example look at this scene where she failed to bring honor to her family in the original movie she actually did something and it was ultimately her fault but in this embarrassing scene in the live-action movie it was mulan's sister that made a mess of things and the matchmaker says that it's mulan's fault for some reason and that she will never bring her family on her and then in the animated movie mulan feels the sense of failure and guilt she sings the reflection song which gives her some development she has a nice moment with her father and then the male villagers are called to war in the live-action movie after the disaster with the matchmaker it just rushes straight to the scene with the army recruiting we don't get any development with this mulan we don't see here have the internal struggle which was beautiful character development in the original movie in the live action movie it's just completely taken out the far family no hua family it's like the movie is just going through the phases and rushing through the story and taking out all of the scenes where mulan is supposed to be going through a struggle i mean mulan doesn't even get to vent to her father in the animated movie the conversation goes on for quite a few seconds and escalates rapidly the father even tried to talk to her sternly but calmly at first before he raises his voice at her but in the live-action movie she doesn't even get a single word in before he just yells at her there was no build up to that it just suddenly happened and then it goes straight to the next scene because as i said it's just rushing through the movie and going through the phases you don't even see the relationship between mulan and her father in the animated movie even when she fails to bring honor to the family her father is obviously sad but he puts his daughter first and tries to make her feel better which results in her smiling for the first time since her failure in the animated movie you see the family dynamic and see how close this family is and how much they mean to each other so when mulan takes her father's place you see how she actually came to making a big and dangerous decision like that and it made sense but in the live action movie she makes the decision in just a few seconds and it doesn't have a single impact on you in the animated movie she cries you see her in deep thought and then we have a beautifully powerful scene with an amazing soundtrack from jerry goldsmith and even then you see the way she looks at them fondly as this might be the last time she ever sees them again she cuts her hair we see her get ready in her father's armor her horse doesn't even recognize her for a moment and after a little hesitation she rides off into the night this is really powerful stuff and it's beautifully executed the live action version just skips all of it and later on the movie shows us a flashback where she leaves her hair clip on her parents desk rather than showing it happen in the actual scene i'm just gonna say it the way they handle this iconic scene is a disgrace and the entire scene where mulan trains in the army in the animated movie we get a three-minute training montage in the form of an amazing song arguably the best in the entire film and in this small amount of time we see and feel the struggle that all the characters are going through and we see all of them but especially mulan struggle again and again and again to the point that she is sent home and first she gives in to her failure and considers leaving only to then decide to try harder it's honestly inspiring and seeing all her hard work pay off after she struggles so much is so satisfying to see but in the live action movie you don't get that struggle the training scene goes on for what feels like an eternity and throughout her training mulan is just perfect she doesn't struggle like the animated version does and she never fails during the training sessions and when she starts to impress people it's not even remotely satisfying to see as she did not have to struggle for it but the movie makes sure to make the men struggle and even makes one of them cry just to make them seem pathetic when compared to a woman in the animated movie you not only saw mulan learn to become a warrior but you also saw the rest of the characters become warriors too after the padded out training scenes are finally done we then get the rest of the animated movie story and in the animated film again it's very well paced but in the live action movie it just gets so boring this makes it fall into the same category as the other live-action disney remakes where they are essentially telling the same story but they take far more time than they need you to tell it and the pacing of the movie is just dragged out as a result whereas the pacing in the animated mulan is constantly moving it's full of energy and it keeps you entertained and invested in the story from beginning to end and it does all of this in a tight one hour and 21 minutes so the movie with the far superior story is the animated mulan now i have explained the setup of mulan's story in both of these films but the live action movie actually gives her a little backstory right at the beginning of the movie it makes the point to show us that mulan since childhood has been strong we see as a kid that she is very skilled and her people are just looking at her and shaking their heads at disapproval and i was just thinking to myself oh god please tell me you are not doing this old thing this just kills her entire character arc because by making her strong right at the beginning they are pretty much depriving her of important character development character development that is supposed to mold and change her throughout the rest of the film but by saying she is already a strong warrior at the beginning of the movie means her journey is already 95 over what else does she have to learn i'll tell you what nothing so right from the beginning the movie has failed the character of mulan and we haven't even seen the actress who plays her yet the whole appeal of mulan's story and character arc is that she is just a regular girl who joins the army as a means to protect her father but the big caveat is that she is heading out to war and she has no idea how to fight she is completely out of her league as far as her knowledge base goes she is a completely blank slate and that's what's so interesting about her journey is that she is now going to have to learn how to become a warrior from scratch but that journey in the live-action version is already complete for her because she isn't a blank slate she's already pretty much perfect the movie will try to trick you into thinking that she is not perfect by having her drop her weapon a couple of times but then you suddenly see her doing all of these flips and kicks with no training from the army and by the way the actress that plays mulan i didn't have a good feeling about this actress and i was right because her performance is so stiff and dull she is hardly ever expressive with her facial expressions and there is no variation to her emotional state she is pretty much one note throughout the whole entire film with the animated movie she had a ton of expressions and you would especially see it when she was trying to push herself like when she was climbing to get the arrow and after that you saw her smile after she had her first huge success for an animated character she felt like a human being in the live-action mulan we actually have a human being and she comes off less human than the animated character and i didn't even once look at her and think this is mulan not even once and not to mention that in the animated movie mulan is just an average person she could be any one of us so for her to join the army it's a big and ballsy choice in her part as she is unprepared unskilled and completely out of her element but in the live action movie mulan has been training in combat her whole life so when she joins the army it felt less like a brave decision and more like a logical next step for her because you know as the movie established earlier she's just amazing at everything because of the superpowers she has so automatically that makes this mulan less brave and courageous than the animated mulan who cried and really struggled before making this life-altering and potentially life-ending choice and she had no powers to back herself up and by the way it was about 38 minutes into the movie when i realized that this mulan has not even had that much dialogue and despite that they are trying to make you feel for her but there really isn't any reason to as like i said they cut out all of her emotional and vulnerable scenes because by keeping them the studio thinks that mulan is not a strong female character and when mulan is revealed to be a woman it's not even a shocking moment the way it happens in the animated movie and the reactions from all the characters to this day still gives me goosebumps and the music drawing the scene just adds to the intense nature of the moment but in the live-action version you don't feel anything the moment is just completely lifeless and what's worse is that she doesn't even get exposed she just revealed her identity of her own free will her disguise was everything in the original movie if she lost it then that would mean her death that's the way the society works the animated mulan wasn't so stupid to give a disguise up but one of the movie's messages is that a lie doesn't last forever the truth will eventually catch up to you and she gets caught in the live-action version she just drops a disguise of her own free will and then admits it to everyone and if this was the animated movie and mulan did this then she would get her head cut off but in this fake disney empowerment world they let her off they don't even give a reason like shang did a life for a life my dad has repaid even the mercy she has given doesn't hit you with a sense of relief or anything like it did in the animated movie you can feel the impact this has on the other characters in the animated version as these are characters that she has been given time to know but in this movie the side characters are so minuscule that you don't even care how they feel about this big reveal and the possibility that mulan could die and when compared to the animated version the reaction from the side characters in the live action movie is just embarrassing now regardless let's just say i accept that this is the full extent of their leniency that doesn't suddenly mean that they are going to give her the reins to command their entire army i mean what the hell are you on disney sparing a life should have been a one-off get out of jail free card for her but where is this fantasy nonsense coming from in the original they didn't trust her but she got their respect and they followed her lead later on and it was a great moment that called back to their training earlier on in the film which just signified how much they've been through together and it was beautifully done but no in the live-action version she leads them into battle and everything she does was self-taught she doesn't make any use of the training that she learned because like i said she was already perfect when the movie started so there was nothing else the training could have taught her mulan in the original movie had a journey that was full of struggles full of challenges and it was full of great character development there is no journey that this mulan goes through she is the same character by the end of the film that she was at the beginning the animated mulan on the other hand is a different person at the beginning and end of the movie and you can tell she has come a long way when she returns home she is not the same clumsy incompetent and confused person she was when she left there is no such growth for the character in the live-action film they turn mulan a beautifully developed and sympathetic character into a merry sew and it came at the expense of the live action movie's main character and it did her a huge disservice and disney should be ashamed of themselves with the way they handled her character the animated mulan has a personality and an arc the live-action mulan doesn't so the movie with the far far far superior interpretation of mulan is the animated movie [Music] now the first side characters that we are introduced to is mulan's family and the comedy that accompanies their introduction is so good and in some cases it has tons of character development like the scene where mulan's father is praying that she impresses the matchmaker whilst the results of her shenanigans are going on around him which gets him to pray harder even the following joke where she promises that she won't let her father down whilst folding up her cheat sheet on her wrist and then we are introduced to the crazy grandmother she doesn't play a big part in the story but it shows us mulan's inner circle that she has grown up with and the grandmother also gave her the lucky cricket and then we move on to mushu now some people say that he stands out too much but to be honest i don't care the movie would not be the same without eddie murphy's energetic performance as mushu he doesn't integrate into the time period as well as the genie in aladdin but i always looked forward to seeing mushu pop up on screen as 99 of the time i am always laughing at his jokes the other side characters in mulan are ling chenpo and yao these guys are freaking hilarious and seeing them on screen is so entertaining we have other side characters too and however big or small their roles are they are all memorable and play their part in the overall movie and mulan has some of the best comedy out of the entire disney animated library and tonally it is able to go back and forth between the comedic and more serious scenes so well i mean you can literally be laughing your head off with a whole song number in one scene and then you can just get dropped into a dark and depressing scene in the next seriously how come the mcu can't do this have a scene full of jokes and then cut to a serious scene and we even have a genuinely touching scene right here where shang realizes that his father is dead it's just so good oh and in the live-action version the scene just lasts for 10 seconds and there is no shang mourning the loss of his father anyway moving on now the side characters in the live-action mulan have been severely cut down mushu is not in the movie but he's been replaced with this flying phoenix the cricket is not in the movie either cricket is the name of a soldier now and ling chenpo and yao are also nowhere to be found and neither is shang now disney's reason for not including shang in the movie is because in the wake of the metoo movement they found it inappropriate for mulan's love interest to be a commanding officer yup they are actually using the metoo movement as a justification for taking shang out of the film this makes absolutely no sense to me as their bond does not fall in line with the horrendous stories that we have heard in real life so that reason is null and void if you ask me it just sounds like an excuse to keep great male characters out of this film as there are none and if anything all they did was exclude a very good opportunity for diversity in the form of an asian male character i mean these studios act all self-righteous like they care about diversity but if that's the case why are you depriving the perfect opportunity for an asian actor to play a great asian role because the character of shang is far better than this cardboard cut out of a character that replaced him this character has no personality and is such a boar and the love interest in this is just a joke shang on the other hand is such a great character just think about all the one note commanding officers these armies usually have in films you usually don't come out remembering the commanding officer you come out remembering the hero that has to work for the overly strict commanding officer but in mulan he is not like a typical captain he is clearly new to his position and is trying to prove to his father that he can command and train these recruits to be soldiers and even though he is taking on a new responsibility he has a strong sense of authority which he clearly demonstrates with his delivery of this one word soldiers and despite being hard on the new recruits you can see that even he is struggling to teach them too as this is very new territory for him as well as the fact that he has to simultaneously deal with the approval of this imbecile so all in all the side characters in the animated mulan are charming memorable and funny and as cool as a character mulan is she would be a much lesser character without them as some of her best scenes in the film involve her relationship and interactions with these people when she's interacting with them you laugh you see their relationships develop and you are even afraid that she's gonna get caught there is so much extra material for this story when she has memorable characters to interact with and there is far more at risk of being lost and for the live action movie to deprive her of all these memorable characters and to replace them with these boring and completely irrelevant characters with no personality is just detrimental to not only the movie but also to her as a protagonist they even do jet li wrong who plays the emperor and for some reason they very obviously dub over his voice i don't know what they were playing at here oh and mulan's family in this movie are also incredibly dull and they do not have any heartfelt moments with her these are the two most memorable and heartfelt moments between mulan and her father in the animated movie and in the live action film they completely ignore this one and when they tried to do this one it did not feel the least bit genuine again it just felt dull in the live action movie mulan is also given a sister who contributes absolutely nothing she didn't have a sister in the animated movie so this is a new addition and i talked to my sister about it after i saw the movie and she actually told me that the only reason they must have given mulan a sister in this movie is so the sister could be the one that screwed up and look like a klutz while mulan remains perfect just look at her balance all those objects isn't she just perfect i'm strong and yeah my sister was right that is the only reason they gave her a sister in here in the animated movie mulan made a mistake she failed her family and she felt the weight of it on her shoulders but we didn't get any of that in the entirety of the live-action movie because as all feminist movies do they don't want to show any kind of weakness or vulnerabilities from their female characters because to them that goes against female empowerment for some reason when in actuality it works directly towards female empowerment and demonstrates growth but these out of touch people in hollywood are never going to realize that so yeah the sister screwed up the meeting with the matchmaker and mulan in this female empowerment movie wasn't even allowed to make that mistake so yeah the side characters in the animated mulan are full of life joy and energy and really complement our main character whereas in the live action movie they are boring completely unmemorable poorly written and do nothing for our main character except show how much of a big bore she really is the poor excuse of a love interest they gave her was also an absolute embarrassment of a character and doesn't hold a candle to the character of shank so the movie with the four superior side characters is the animated mulan now i'm just gonna say right off the bat that the villain in mulan is one of disney's least interesting villains that being said whereas other disney villains would toy with you or go on a monologue sean you is the only disney villain that will just kill you without a second's thoughts and that's what i always liked about him he's a no [ __ ] kind of bad guy and anytime he was on screen i would always be intimidated because you know that he will offer you in a matter of seconds now the other villains do the monologues and the other stuff which works for them but the difference in methods really stood out for me with the villain in mulan and as well as his great design his freaky image and imposing figure he is still a very good villain to me now in the live action movie we get two villains the witch and this guy who was essentially the same kind of villain that we got in the animated movie except unlike the animated movie he does not have an imposing figure he's just a complete ball and honestly i can't remember a single thing about him i can't even remember his name as for the witch who i'm sure also has a name but i'll just call her the witch i'm not even going to give her a proper analysis i'm just going to tell you this one thing about her throughout the movie she kills a ton of soldiers and other good characters but by the end of the film she ends up becoming a good guy because and i am not kidding here she is just so inspired by the sight of men following a woman into battle something they never did for her and after this sorry excuse of a redemption arc the movie tries to give her an honorable send-off even though throughout this movie she has killed [ __ ] tons of people but they were all just men so i guess that makes it okay this is one of the dumbest things i've ever heard and it just shows how out of touch most of these sjw writers can be in their own warped minds they thought that the image of a woman leading an army of men into battle will restore good into the heart of a murdering villain as well as pull out their audience's heartstrings enough to make them forgive a murderer for their killing spree that is disgusting and from a storytelling perspective it's just nonsense and a wet dream from a writer who is seriously out of touch and has severe mental issues but what do you expect from a company that knowingly let this movie be filmed in real concentration camps in china where the country is illegally harboring muslims against their will but james gunn did not fall in line with our company values so we fired him but i digress i'm not going to act like this is one of disney's great villains because he's not but he definitely left an impression he was evil he was threatening and he was memorable and that is more than i can say for either of these villains in this movie especially the feminist witch so the film with the superior villain is the animated movie honestly if you couldn't tell everything about the live-action mulan is inferior to the original even the action is underwhelming especially for a movie that's rated pg-13 there's nothing pg-13 about it the pirates of the caribbean movies were from disney and they earned their pg-13 rating so what's this movie's excuse and when mulan fights during training the soldiers are like wow we didn't know you had it in you it makes no sense why didn't they think she had it in her she has been excelling at everything in this movie in the animated film she made a fool of herself and it wasn't until she kept working so hard and succeeded in retrieving the arrow that everyone else had trouble getting that they started to admire and befriend her they all improved together and developed a bond and these are the very people who she originally built a bad image with throughout the movie she earned her success and her friends as well as a boatload of respect this mulan is praised left and right in the last act of the film and the extent in which the soldiers are praising and embracing her doesn't feel natural or even earned she's braver than any man here that's just the best warrior amongst us from now on you have my trust let's hear it for ping the bravest of us all mountain now this is how you do it they saw what she did on the battlefield whereas in the live action movie they did not and pretty much everything that mulan does in this last half hour of the movie she is using what she has learned during training to help save the emperor you can even see that she climbs the pillar faster than the others because again she had a lot of practice throughout the night it's not because she's just perfect which is the reason the new movie would have gone with and the others are following her even shang who has now forgiven her she's a hero so mulan earned her praise and respect in the original movie unlike the live-action version also when mulan loses her father's sword i was just thinking it was far more sad when a big muscle man like aquaman lost his mother's trident because that's a movie that knew how to show the loss and feelings of a hero far more than this movie does this one just shows that she can't do any wrong i was never on the edge of my seat for her like i was with the animated version and that really did take away any sense of tension from the action scenes and mulan got injured quite badly in the animated film she got no such injury in the live-action movie the only things i liked about this film were the visuals as there were a lot of scenes that looked genuinely nice and when they brought back some of the original songs but turned them into an orchestral version during the action scenes and stuff i found those scenes to be kind of fun too but only because the iconic music was playing during these scenes but as for the rest of the movie it was really bad and if i was giving a storytelling class then i would put both of these movies on and tell them to take notes from what the animated movie did and just completely ignore what the live action remake did it's time for the scores the original mulan gets a 10 out of 10 and the live-action remake gets a three honestly if this movie wasn't called mulan and they changed the characters names then i would have no idea that this was supposed to be a mulan movie i would just look at it as a cheap rip-off film which is trying to copy elements from other movies but just resulted in an unoriginal joyless and uninspired fob job of a film which was intended to fool some unassuming viewers into watching it and that is essentially what this movie is so it fits in perfectly with most of the other live action disney remakes although surprisingly i still don't think this is the worst disney remake so they have actually been worse than this which sounds unimaginable but it's unfortunately true i have given some of the other disney remakes a lower score than a 3 and i'm not saying this easily but out of all the live-action disney princesses in these live-action remakes the actress that plays mulan is the worst out of all of them i did not see her as mulan at all not even for a second and the female empowerment aspect demanded that she'd be a completely emotionless plank of wood because somehow that is meant to showcase strength and empowerment it honestly feels like disney had forgotten what made their own animated movies so special to begin with and the more i thought about it i realized that mulan in this movie is very similar to captain marvel in the sense that she is already powerful when the movie starts she is told however by a man to keep her power in check and not fully embrace the true extent of her abilities and then later on she embraces them and then becomes even more powerful than she already was and to top it off the movies are under the impression that in order to show that these are strong female characters they must have these stone cold expressions on their face and they must have no emotions throughout the entire film but we'll make sure to give them one crying scene in case anyone's on to us yeah you're not fooling anyone and all the genuinely good female characters don't do this but the ones that have no clue how to be a strong female character usually do and they will just fade away and be forgotten the original mulan is a classic and it will always be remembered as one the new movie however will not and are disney even aware of what their own movies were even trying to say are the messages in the live-action moonland really what they took out of the animated film upon re-watching it well you have seen the feminist version of mulan and you all know about the normal and more grounded messages from the animated moonland so if you want to learn any lessons of self-discipline and perseverance then watch this not this you have been the first female to direct the highest live-action budget ever today i get to acknowledge to myself and you and and all your viewers that that this is what it looks like when women make movies of this scale so it's very female-led filmmaking and i hope that that this movie encourages other studios to give other women um the opportunity to work at this level yeah i like the sound of that but you didn't do that patty jenkins is the only female director that has proved that you have not if anything this movie is definitely going to be a prime example as to why studios do not let women direct big budget action movies and that's what you have contributed with this film it could have just been a bad movie but if you are going to attach a political motivation for having directed a film then all the downsides will come with it if you fail there is only one word that can perfectly sum up this movie and that word is dishonored so that's it for another versus video guys thank you very much for watching if you're new to the channel and haven't already feel free to click that subscribe button and the bell right next to it so you can stay up to date with all of my future videos oh and by the way you guys liked the hell out of my joker vs video and it got recommended by youtube purely because of the amount of likes that you guys gave it so thanks very much for your support guys i really do appreciate it please do the same with this video as i put a lot of work into it and hopefully it will get recommended by youtube's algorithm and help my channel grow thank you very much as always watching guys i really do appreciate it and i will catch all of you next time take care

Channel: Eric Carter

Views: 81,788

Rating: 4.8820028 out of 5

Keywords: Mulan VS Mulan, Mulan (2020) VS Mulan (1998), Mulan old vs new, Mulan (1998) VS Mulan (2020), Live Action Mulan VS Original

Id: r32Jyf5hGiw

Length: 28min 33sec (1713 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 20 2020