Mulan (2020) VS Mulan Rise of a Warrior (2009)

[Music] a few months ago i compared the live-action disney remake of mulan to the original disney animated film but this time we are going to compare it to another live-action version of mulan and that movie is 2009's mulan rise of a warrior and in this video we are going to find out which of the two movies did a better job at telling the story in live action let the battle commence now mulan rise of warrior did something at the beginning of the movie that really did not sit well with me it pretty much skipped the entirety of mulan's home life something that the animated movie beautifully showcased in order to establish how ordinary yet out of place mulan is as a character and i complained about the disney remake cutting a lot of this down and for the 2009 movie to do this i was really disappointed and it only got worse we also find out in the 2009 movie that mulan has been trained to fight as she was growing up this got me really worried because i already saw a superpowered mulan in the disney remake i did not want to see the same thing happen again as this goes against the excellent character development in the animated movie where we see mulan build herself up as a warrior from scratch so i already was not confident with how the 2009 movie was skipping mulan's life as normal girl and showing that she is already a practicing warrior but as i watched more of the movie it suddenly hit me this mulan movie is less about showing mulan's development at home this movie is all about showing mulan's development in the battlefield as she has to witness so much death around her and unlike the live-action remake she actually emotes throughout the entire film and she goes through various different stages of grief she cries a bunch she gets depressed there comes a point where she's in command of the army and after losing a close friend in battle she pretty much gives up as the death toll becomes too much for her this is the kind of development that we should have gotten in the live action remake but we didn't because that movie was all about showing mulan as a perfect warrior who was the strongest in war and never had to struggle to get there but in rise of a warrior she might be a somewhat capable warrior from the start but she still struggles and witnesses the horrors of war and she experiences the feeling of loss because unlike the live-action remake she actually does have characters that she is genuinely close to one who is a childhood friend and the other who is a love interest we'll talk more about them later but do you see my point this mulan has people that she has a personal and emotional attachment to as well as soldiers in the war that she feels responsible for and befriends even if she is not best friends with them the connection is there so unlike the live-action remake where she didn't really have any attachments to anyone this mulan has so much more to lose during the battle and that's where the development and the struggle comes from even before that when mulan arrives at the training camp there are some soldiers that bully another soldier and to get them back he throws the leader's pendant into the lake the bully tells the commanding officer that his pendant has been stolen and the commanding officer orders everyone to take off their clothes so they can see who has the object and whoever did steal the object will suffer the punishment of death now in the live-action remake a similar situation arises and it starts out as a big problem for mulan until they immediately give her a way out i told you to line up for showers showers showers you lot stink oh that's bad what can she possibly do to get out of there i need a volunteer for night guard dude me i mean evelyn's here sir wow i couldn't even ask the question and already it got resolved i was on the edge of my seat for that [ __ ] in the 2009 movie however whilst everyone else gets undressed she is petrified and stands absolutely still the whole scene plays out very slowly and you are on the edge of your seat the whole time and at no point when you're watching does she get an easy way out like she got in the disney remake so this entire time you are wondering what she is going to do and you can see the fear in her face as she is thinking of all her options so what does she do rather than revealing herself or running away and failing her quest just like that she holds onto a thread and says that she stole the object this way she doesn't have to reveal that she's a woman and what does the commanding officer do he sentences her to death they tie her up and leave her until noon the next day when she will be executed and meanwhile her childhood friend goes back into the lake to try and find the object that he threw away do you see there is so much tension already and the war hasn't even started yet and already it shows mulan is in grave danger and the film this early on gives you a side character that has already altered the course of mulan's journey and is now trying to fix it this provides a great deal of development for not only mulan but also her childhood friend and situations like these feel so real and human and it tells the story in a vastly different way to the animated movie while simultaneously telling the same story so this mulan goes through so much hell even before the war starts this mulan even gets injured very badly and to make things worse they have lost all of their food and medical supplies so they can't even heal the wounded or even mulan who is their captain and in order to feed mulan something and keep her alive the love interest does something to himself that makes my skin crawl so you can see that the whole story of both mulan and the war she partakes in is so much greater than that of the fake female empowerment war that we got in the live-action disney remake one preaches that you can do anything if you are a woman who is born with superhuman qi powers and the other shows that you can be this person as she goes through all the emotions that a normal person would that's what makes this version of mulan very interesting because the animated mulan shows that you can be this person and because this is a more fun telling of the story almost like a fairy tale you kind of almost want to be but this more grounded and real version of the story makes you think i could be this person but do i really want to be because it takes an especially brave and courageous person to do something like this and to endure this much emotional and physical pain and although you may be able to see yourself in this can you really see yourself in this that is a question for you to ask yourself but one thing that we can all agree on is that none of us can see ourselves as this now are there any problems i have with the 2009 movie story well the pacing really does weigh on you and the depressing tone and look of the movie really does feel draining to look at after a while so much so that i actually felt like taking a break halfway through and also this is a foreign movie and the pacing of these kinds of movies is not as fluent and smooth as some of the hollywood movies that we're used to but aside from that the movie feels much more in line with how a gritty and real version of the story should have been and the movie is rated r which gives it extra points in his favor and it doesn't romanticize fake female empowerment over the story that is being told and not to mention that mulan looks really worn out in this movie and especially as it goes on she doesn't look all clean and stylish with a face full of makeup while she's fighting the war unlike the live-action remake seriously everyone looks so clean in this film and no one even acts like they've been through an emotionally challenging and psychological psychologically soul-crushing war so the movie with the superior telling of this story and the superior interpretation of mulan is the 2009 movie [Music] now i want to very briefly talk about mulan's family in the disney remake you get mulan's father her mother and her sister in the 2009 movie you just get the father now the mother in the remake is completely forgettable and the sister if you've seen my previous verses video then you know the disdain i have towards this character so that leaves the fathers in these movies now in the 2009 film he doesn't really get much screen time at all because as i said earlier the movie just rushes through mulan's home life and in the disney remake we get to see more of him but in the end it's all for nothing he just doesn't have the genuine relationship with his daughter like in the animated movie or even the 2009 movie for that matter because even though we don't see much of him we see that her father is very fragile and that she cares for him she even has to trick him in order to take his medicine and she does it lovingly for the well-being of her father and not begrudgingly and when she decides to go after war even though it's super quick you understand why she's taking a father's place because you understand the relationship now granted you really could have understood it better and seen it flourish a lot more but from what we do see the point is established it is not established in the live-action remake however when you see mulan go off in her father's armor which she later just throws away with absolutely no care like she's throwing away a piece of old trash you feel like she is only doing it because she wants to go to war herself and not because she's doing it to save her father so the relationship between mulan and her father has not been conveyed to the audience and therefore everything mulan does from this point is a storytelling disaster as the foundation has not been set but thankfully the foundation has been set in rise of a warrior and therefore the relationship she has with her father is far superior in the 2009 movie and i haven't even talked about the end of the movie when mulan returns to him but trust me we'll talk more about that later now you already know what i think of the rest of the side characters in the live-action remake of mulan they are unmemorable and pale in comparison to their animated counterparts and it completely excludes the character of shang and replaces him with a very generic and one note commanding officer and the so-called love interest in this movie has absolutely zero chemistry with wulan and as an audience member you just don't care about him or any of the other side characters that mulan is supposed to be bonding with really the character interactions and the so-called bonding moments are a complete disgrace and feel so blatantly scripted and lack any sense of being genuine the relationships just feel lazily manufactured as for the two side characters in the 2009 movie an interesting dynamic that it has which i have not seen from either of the two disney moonland movies is that very early on two of the side characters actually find out that mulan is a woman and at first you don't know how they're going to react to this especially the second guy as he found her out during a casual wash in the lake but through some good character building they keep her secret and not only does this add to the relationship that she has with these two characters throughout the rest of the film but whenever they are in danger it makes you as an audience member care even more because not only did they keep mulan secrets but if they die then mulan has lost some very important people in her life as they are essentially the only two people that she can be completely truthful to in this war and it makes their fates all the more tragic not to mention that one of them that being the love interest he actually frees her when she is captured and sentenced to death and if it wasn't for him then she would definitely have died and this is a great foundation for their romance and it only gets developed even more as the film goes on so in the live-action remake we got these slots and in the 2009 movie we get these two and not only do they have a huge emotional connection to mulan but she has a huge emotional connection to them and this movie was able to give her side characters that you care about as opposed to the live action equivalent in the remake who were reduced to lifeless sacks of nothing just so the movie could give mulan someone to rescue as opposed to giving us someone to care about so they could work side by side and rescue each other you get no such connections between mulan and the side characters in the live-action remake not even close so the movie with the far more memorable and interesting side characters is the 2009 movie now i want to start off by saying that the action in both of these movies is good but it's not great if you've seen movies like the lord of the rings or any other movie with this grand style of action then this is not going to really impress you the 2009 movie in particular will surprise you with this production value of these battles and the sheer number of the army will impress you but the actual fight choreography won't some of the action scenes are even done in a montage as it is implied that this war is going on for a very long time and i liked the way it conveyed the raw and gritty feeling of war and how when one battle is fought and many people die then they just fight another one it almost feels like it's asking the question is it even worth it and yes there is blood in this movie which is both traumatizing and pretty cool to see in a mulan property if you have grown up watching the animated version and something i like about this war over the disney remake is that the war doesn't look so clean and the soldiers don't look so polished with a face full of makeup during the battles everyone looks very grimy and dirty and sweaty and they look like they've been through a great ordeal whereas all the characters in the live-action remake do not they don't even act like they've been through much when the battle is over nor do they find a moment to mourn the loss of their fallen comrades and excluding all of these things from the war really does just make the whole thing feel fake and this should not be the case especially when this is supposed to be the mature version and before anyone says this is a disney movie they can't make a war that looks dirty and grimy and has people looking like they've been through a lot well you're wrong disney can and disney have look at the final battles in the parrots the caribbean movies they got pretty darn grim and even though i didn't really think that much a part of the caribbean 3 the big final battle was huge and epic and quite mature so disney have shown that they can do this with their family films and with mulan's pg-13 rating they had no excuse as i said in my previous mulan vs video the action scenes in the live-action remake have some good choreography and when they were accompanied with the reflection music it was quite entertaining but from a story perspective they have no stakes and no tension and sometimes they don't even make sense like how did mulan completely circle past the enemies quick enough to stop them from shooting down the last few groups of soldiers with their catapults by the time she circled them the soldiers should have been all blown away and mulan should have been seen and shot really the action scenes in the live-action remake did not work to better the film especially when you don't like or care for the characters it was just used to make mulan look empowered whilst also looking like a model with a face full of makeup and it doesn't feel like they cared about anything else when crafting these scenes the only time she is challenged is get this when she fights another woman but when she fights everyone else who are men she wipes the floor with them easily with no effort because you know pandering social justice movies like this always operate on the basis of boys versus girls and girls always win with minimal effort and that not only makes this movie come off as disingenuous but it also deprived it of all the tension something that is not the case with the 2009 movie or the animated film and unlike the live-action remake when the soldiers were dying in the 2009 movie you felt that loss even if they weren't characters that were essential to the plot the movie made an effort to make you care and it's all of these things that really make the action scenes in this film so the movie with the far superior action is mulan rise of a warrior [Music] now the villain in the 2009 movie is a right [ __ ] he is the spoiled son who has no discipline practically no moral center and just wants to see death and destruction happen all around him and at one point in the movie his army can easily wipe out mulan and her army but he decides to hold his army back and watch as both mulan and her soldiers suffer with the wounds that they have received during battle runes that they can not heal because their medical supplies and food have been destroyed and just to kick them while they're down and reduce their morale even further he kills all of the captured members of their army right in front of them including one of the guys that kept mulan's secrets her childhood friend and to top it off this piece of filth even killed his own father during a happy conversation so he can take his place as leader and soon after he becomes so spoiled with power that he even says that he is going to marry his own sister that is all kinds of effed up and it makes you want to see this [ __ ] get his so much and mulan very smartly actually uses her status as a woman to get the better hand and kill him whilst his guard is down now that is a smart way of using your womanhood as opposed to whatever the hell this was supposed to be as for the villains in the live-action remake one is a feminist witch who was not embraced by men so she just starts killing them in retaliation and the other is just a lesser version of shaneu from the animated movies except here his motivations and the hold he has over the witch makes absolutely no sense and that's pretty funny isn't it disney said that they weren't going to include any talking dragons lucky crickets or musical numbers because it wasn't realistic but they have no problem with giving us a magical witch as well as magic chi powers that magically makes mulan a superhero because you know that's totally realistic and not to mention that in the 2009 movie which actually is realistic we actually get a musical number of sorts and it was very smartly and emotionally incorporated into the film now the villain in rise of a warrior may not be a hugely memorable villain with a great design but he provided the movie with a legitimate threat one that seems almost impossible to overcome but through her hard work teamwork determination and wits mulan ended up taking him down as a woman rather than her disguise as a man and she didn't do it to preach about strong female empowerment she did it as a tactical way to defeat the bad guy and that is far more empowering and iconic than just chucking your father's armor away like it's nothing and foolishly revealing your identity to fight off the enemy and when you look at the methods of the two mulans and how they decided to reveal their identity one did it as a tactical way to defeat the enemy whereas the other did it to earn some social justice points from certain viewers at home who don't know how storytelling works and here's something that will blow your mind in the 2009 movie mulan never reveals her true identity she only did it to kill the villain so the villain in the 2009 movie works on his own and he also complements mulan as a character as well that was not the case with the 2020 movie so the movie with the superior villain is mulan rise of a warrior [Music] something i found quite interesting is that as you would expect the live-action disney remake chose an actress who would be looked at as the pretty hollywood version of mulan the mulan in the 2009 movie however looks so ordinary now there's nothing wrong in getting a good looking actor to play the main lead i mean that's one of the ways they make the main character stand out but it is an interesting turn to go with a more generic looking lead as it doesn't make mulan look like the friendly character that we know it kind of makes her look a bit like a stranger in a way and also if i was to ask you how long mulan fought in the war in the two disney movies how long do you reckon she was in the war go ahead comment your guesses right now in the comments below but i always thought that the training and the war went on for two to three months four months tops as when mulan comes back her whole family looks exactly the same if she was gone for years then you would see a difference maybe the grandmother would have died and that goes for both disney versions now in comparison just guess how long this mulan was gone for go on place more guesses in the comments below 5 months 6 months 9 months 11 months no this mulan was gone for 13 years yep she returns home after 13 years and when she gets back her father is now an even older man than he already was when the movie started that makes her return seem very painful and even depressing i was actually thinking to myself imagine if she came back and her father was dead that would have made this movie even darker and even more depressing but no thankfully he is still alive it really wasn't until i saw this movie that i started to wonder just how long was mulan gone in the other two disney films and although we are never told in those versions it seems like she isn't gone for long but damn i never would have expected 13 years so yeah mulan rise of warrior is definitely a movie that bashes your childhood in the face and as much as i am praising it for that it doesn't make you want to give it a very high score it strangely does get too grim for its own good add to that the fact that the movie doesn't really have much in the way of re-watch value and as amazing as some of the visuals are the movie does come off as quite cheap at times the visuals look so dark that actually bums you out after a while and even its pacing feels like it's padding itself out quite a lot at times if the movie was told in a much more tight run time then i can imagine that this movie would get a much higher score from me but as is it gets a decent score but not a great score you all know this if you've seen my previous blue line versus video but the live action remake gets a 3 out of 10. and 2009's mulan rise of a warrior gets a 6. it's worth noting that although my score for the 2009 movie is above average this is the kind of storytelling path that the disney remix should have gone for it's a much more different and ballsy telling of the story and yes they couldn't have made it rated r but a story like this doesn't need to be rated r a pg-13 rating would have been good enough and disney have done great with pg-13 ratings in the past just look at what they did with the pirates of the caribbean movies and look at what christopher nolan did with the pg-13 war movie so it can be done but disney just wanted to try and appease the chinese government who are murdering raping and torturing men women and children in their filthy concentration camps where they are holding muslims and thankfully it cost them a lot of money and now the hypocritical studio wants to make miss marvel a movie about a muslim female character because they care about representation even though the very person they are trying to represent they are directly supporting in their kidnapping sterilization and torture if it means getting them more money because god knows they don't have enough of that already i suppose that's one good thing that we can add to the incredibly short list about the pandemic disney are losing crap tons of money the very thing that they are willing to go to disgusting lengths to obtain but yeah mulan 2009 is good and showcases the weakness and vulnerability of mulan whereas mulan 2020 is bad and showcases that mulan doesn't have any weaknesses and vulnerabilities and just shows that she is a superhero with magical qi powers and i will leave you with this for all the talk about only women directing female-led movies as only they should be allowed to direct for them just remember this mulan 2020 was directed by a woman and mulan 2009 was made by two men the evidence in many cases has shown that men can write and direct female characters far better than most of the women directors hollywood are hiring nowadays and the men that have directed them have gone on to make them iconic in comparison how many of the more modern day female directors have accomplished this not many because they are treating them as political message boards rather than well-written characters and that's why movies like the 2020 mulan will always fail [Music] so that's it for another video let me know in the comments below what you thought of mulan rise of a warrior and how you think it compares to the so-called mature disney version to me the 2009 movie only further proves what a massive missed opportunity the disney remake was please give this video a thumbs up if you liked it as the more likes the video gets the more likely it is going to be recommended by youtube's algorithm and it will make even more people aware of this video and show them what we could have gotten with a live action interpretation of mulan thank you so much for watching guys and i will see all of you next time take care

Channel: Eric Carter

Views: 23,628

Rating: 4.8957529 out of 5

Keywords: Mulan 2020 VS Mulan 2009, Mulan VS Mulan Rise of a Warrior, Mulan 2020 is bad, Mulan 2020 sucks, Mulan 2009 VS Mulan 2020, Mulan 2020 VS 2009

Id: n1O3Hi7viUk

Length: 21min 59sec (1319 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 25 2020