Why Mulan Mattered

in one of the first videos i ever made on youtube i threw some text on the screen declaring that the 1998 disney movie mulan was the best movie ever but i never really explained that now i don't want to get too distracted with words like best so let's just say that i really love this movie i love it more than any of the other disney movies of the time it speaks to me on a more personal level and it's just really really good it's my go-to watch to get myself motivated to do anything [Music] can't watch 20 minutes of it without waterworks [Music] it's fun emotional epic thrilling satisfying it's got great characters it's got relationships you care about it's gorgeous so yeah suffice it to say that i truly love the original movie the general consensus around the recent crop of disney live action remakes is already that they are mostly soulless films if you're not already on that page i won't change your mind but i have to make this video anyway because this time the movie they tossed into the corporate meat grinder was my disney movie they messed with mulan and now a video must be made still i'm not just gonna complain about a remake no one saw this is a movie where something in almost every scene irritates me but this video isn't going to be an exhaustive list of grievances instead i want to use what i see as the failures of the remake as a chance to talk about why the first movie worked why the relationships it depicted had a lasting impact on me and why i feel indebted to the film at the heart of the reason that the movie doesn't work is that it doesn't make me care about the relationship between mulan and her father and that's a big deal because if we care about their relationship then we'll care about everything she's going to do for the rest of the movie and there's two reasons why i think this father-daughter relationship isn't as moving or as interesting as this father-daughter relationship exposition and scene organization a big problem this movie has is that it needlessly adds a ton of unnecessary fantasy world building to the story that is constantly talked about without ever being adequately explained rules about how chi works and how it's treated in society are told to us by half a dozen characters without any coherence to it mulan's father says women can't use chi but the emperor's advisor says qi can't be used in destructive ways that is forbidden to use the power of chi in destructive ways but the commander tells us that she is basically like the force and he can use it but he's a commander in the military so isn't that a destructive way and if it's only destructive ways that it can't be used then can women use chi in ways that aren't destructive say like shape-shifting but there's this witch who shape-shifts who seems to say that that women using any kind of chi is against the rules and then the shape shifter tells mulan that she's not as strong with her chi because she's pretending to be someone else your deceit weakens you it poisons your chi the shapeshifter tells her that pretending to be someone else makes you weaker with your chi the person who's she lets them turn into other people it's just never really well established what the extent of chi is or its place in society other than it lets you kick projectiles at people the inclusion of chi has a devastating impact on the central father-daughter relationship because instead of focusing on the emotional connection and bond that the two characters share the father has to become exposition machine man your chi is strong in her first scene mulan is introduced as a rambunctious carefree child with extraordinary gifts her parents worry that because she's not adhering to the strict social norms for women that she'll be unable to find a husband when she's older what man will want to marry a girl who slits around rooftops chasing chickens in this scene mulan feels guilty about breaking this statue and her father comes out to console her the scene has all of the affectation of a touching bonding scene everything about the music the framing the tone tell us that this is going to be an emotional scene it's where the father is going to come out and give his daughter some crucial piece of advice that she'll hang on to for the rest of the film it's all set up to pull at our heartstrings and then do you know why the phoenix sits at the entrance of our shrine she is the emissary of our ancestors some say the phoenix is consumed by flame your chi is strong but she is for warriors not daughters it's exposition all the way down and despite the framing that is signaling a connection the characters just do not connect we never really get a sense of how mulan is feeling about this the equivalent scene in the original is this one the father is much more compassionate than you think he's going to be given the setup here that mulan has failed the most important test in becoming a wife he's gentle and completely focused on making her feel better not about making her adhere to gender norms and in this push-in shot we get to see that his words are having an effect on her the tone of the two scenes is ostensibly the same but the substance is completely different here he's telling her that it's okay that she failed that she can take her time she'll succeed eventually and because he speaks in metaphorical language it's not explicit that he's saying you need to do x y and z to be a proper woman he's just reassuring her that he has every confidence in her in the remake when the father isn't delivering exposition he's reinforcing the idea that no she definitely needs to change and abide by social norms your job is to bring honor to the family do you think you can do that the uplifting music doesn't change the fact that there's something really insidious to the scene that he's telling such a young child to hide herself away even though the movie wants us to care about their relationship so the most crucial scene in the entire film doesn't do what it needs to do to create a connection between these two characters because it's too focused on setting up world building for the action scenes later on and it also doesn't work because it sets the father up as an opponent for her overcoming gendered expectations rather than the ally he felt like in the original movie but that's just one scene let's look at how the relationship unfolds during the rest of the first act stories are basically just two things happening again and again action reaction you have a scene where a character does something or something happens to them and then a scene where the characters react to the previous scene and come up with a new plan to achieve their goals and just keep doing that until the story is over in other words you don't have something happen and then have something else unrelated happen immediately without taking that little breather in between this plays out perfectly in the original mulan mulan goes to the matchmaking ceremony and fails the test action mulan is sad about the previous scene and her father consoles her reaction her father is conscripted into the chinese army action mulan and her father get into an argument about his conscription reaction every plot point is allowed to breathe and nothing is said twice in the new movie the father-daughter scenes are handled a little differently mulan goes to the matchmaking ceremony and fails the test action before they can even get home her father is conscripted into the chinese army action mulan and her father get into an argument about his conscription reaction mulan and her father talk about his conscription without raising their voices but coming to the same impasse as the previous scene reaction this structure effectively renders the matchmaking scene totally pointless it doesn't matter that she failed that test because we're on to the next thing before the consequences of that can even be explored we miss out on all of those introspective moments that mulan has after that failure in the original film and then we have two scenes of reaction to the conscription scene the tone is different but the function they serve in the story is the same the inclusion of the scene also neuters some of the emotionally moving tragedy of the original scene order in the 1998 movie they argue at dinner and then that is the last time they talk before she bails i know my place it is time you learned yours the fact that they leave on bad terms leaves their relationship unresolved so part of the audience's investment is that mulan has to survive the war so that she can get back and give her dad a hug it's like a note missing at the end of a song we feel the need to have that closure and it carries us through the rest of the movie if they just reconcile immediately then the only thing that's at stake is whether mulan will survive or not that's not nothing but it's not as much either crafting empathy between two characters is the most important part of storytelling and the most difficult and movie succeeder fail on the ability to do so i think the mulan remake is a pretty incredible display of how just switching up the scenes and changing their focus can take a relationship that was unforgettable to one that doesn't work at all the introduction of qi doesn't only affect the father-daughter dynamic here but drastically changes the way mulan is characterized this causes some problems when the movie tries to put this new character into the more iconic scenes of the original without doing the proper setup and it also radically alters the message of the film here's what i mean in the original one of mulan's defining characteristics is her cleverness her craftiness in her introductory scene mulan saves herself some work by getting her dog to do her chores for her it's not a throwaway moment it tells us right from the start that she is a resourceful character the message to the audience is that this character will win by being clever in the matchmaker scene this characterization is continued she uses her fan as a distraction so that she can read the cheat sheet notes she's painted on her wrist her cleverness backfires a bit when she tries to use that same fan to put out the flames but she recovers by using tea to douse the fire the fan also comes back in a brilliant moment at the end by attaching it to the matchmaker scene the movie has made the fan a symbol of her femininity then at the very end when she's completely out of options she uses a fan to disarm sean yu it's a great moment that unites all of the themes around gender expectations in the movie letting her win in a man's world by using a symbol of femininity as a source of strength it's great and again she uses it in a clever way there are a ton of other examples using the weights to help or climb the pole rather than as a disadvantage doing a similar thing at the end to sneak into the emperor's palace rather than the more direct route of busting down the door drawing sean you into a trap with the fireworks at the climax and then there is the big one firing the rocket at the mountain to cause an avalanche that wipes out the invading army because of the way the film has characterized mulan when this moment happens the audience says of course of course mulan would be the one to find a clever solution that all the men would miss lulan wins because mulan is clever but a weird thing that often happens with adaptations is that they want to change some parts of the story so that the movie has its own identity which is something i encourage but they do that while still holding on to the most iconic images of the original even if those two things are contradictory the avalanche scene in the original mulan is one of its most memorable moments it has to be in the new one but it makes little sense to include it given the way the movie has chosen to characterize mulan the live-action version of mulan isn't defined by her cleverness but by her innate physical strength by using her chi she is the strongest and most coordinated soldier on the battlefield virtually unbeatable by any number of opponents when this version of the character encounters a problem she solves them by rushing straight forward and punching she uses her incredible coordination physical strength and martial arts to win mulan wins because she has well superpowers so it's a little weird that the movie does some version of the avalanche scene based on the way the movie has characterized her what the audience should expect is for her to single-handedly fight and defeat the huns in physical combat which is basically what she does for the rest of the movie the avalanche scene is just this weird detour where the movie feels it has to pay deference to the source material even though they've changed every other part of its dna but it's not just that the characterization is sometimes inconsistent that makes this a weaker film it's the direction they've chosen to go in entirely a character who solves their problems with cleverness is just inherently more interesting to watch than one who solves them with brute force the animated version of mulan is constantly surprising you with the way she solves problems and she's also consistently at a disadvantage in all of the life or death situations she's in she expresses real emotion and fear too all of which invests the audience in her struggles i'm never worried or engaged when the live-action version of the character is in danger because i know she's going to be fine she'll use her chi and win she's stronger than everyone else because she has super powers on top of that she's portrayed in such a stoic and wooden manner throughout the film in a misguided attempt to make her quote unquote strong that she never reveals any inner humanity that would bind you to the character there is an attempt with the character of the witch to make the story explicitly feminist in a way that is very on the nose she's a character who has grown bitter because society doesn't let women achieve their full potential but then here is mulan breaking that restriction and inspiring the witch to believe in a better world but the existence of qi and the fact that only some people can use it in any real sense neuters the power of this message it's not every woman who can achieve great things only the ones who can use the force that's what this movie is haphazardly and accidentally saying the universality of the original film and its feminist themes are skewered by the need for martial arts action and even the alleged happy ending of this movie doesn't have mulan escaping gender roles in much of a meaningful sense she gets to be a bodyguard is that really a happy ending for someone who was initially characterized by her desire to be carefree and wild the movie just makes her subservient at every point you know there is an interesting irony at the core of the story of mulan mulan is a character whose life is worsened by the existence of patriarchal norms who then has to go on and save the life of well the guy the patriarch the emperor she's saving the guy who represents her own oppression but in the original mulan when she saves the country everyone and the emperor himself bow down to her the most damning and most painful and most depressing moment of the live-action film is that this moment is completely inverted after mulan saves the emperor's life and the country she bows down to the emperor oftentimes when i make a video there's one point i want to make that is the reason the video gets made it's the thing that stirred the most emotion in me the thing that made me want to speak on the subject at all that's what this next point is about okay so one of the most basic scenarios in a story is the fish out of water story a character begins the story in one environment and then they are thrust into a new way of living they come face to face with an ideology that feels alien opposite of everything they've ever known and in order to survive there and thrive there they have to adapt quickly they have to learn the ropes of the new society until they have mastered the skills that it values but in the phrase fish out of water we know who the fish is but what exactly is the water and what exactly is the land we might say rural china is the water and military life is the land mulan physically leaves one and goes to the other but that's just the surface of what's happening what really makes the story structure work are what each of the environments believes what's expected of the characters what is valued there when she's at home mulan faces strict ideas about how she should act based on her gender she's a woman so she should act in a certain way which are all established in the first song of the movie men want girls with good taste obedient who work fast-paced so we've got a starting environment of very strict gender expectations for women and we see mulan struggling under those expectations and with all of that established in the first act the movie takes our little fish and throws her out of the water after all of that work going over what's expected of women now we're going to have a whole segment exploring what men are like beautiful isn't it they're disgusting no they're men so she gets to be a fly on the wall in a world that she's never seen before and it's awkward for her she doesn't know how to act i'm going to say that again just so we remember it mulan does not know how to act like a man she doesn't know how to walk like a man she's not shameless or unhygienic or messy or aggressive or boastful or gluttonous all of which are qualities the movie immediately associates with masculinity or at least the negative side of masculinity she's also not strong or swift or commanding or eloquent all of which are qualities the movie associates with the positive side of masculinity through captain lee shang and i can't stress enough how much this is the reason the movie is compelling for me why it's head and shoulders above the other disney movies that i was attached to as a kid something i've never shared on this channel before is my bisexuality and i think that played a huge part of the reason for why this disney movie in particular appealed to me both as a child and still as an adult a lot has been written about mulan being a trans narrative that reading of the film is pretty easy to see and not hard to find what's less commented upon though is how it can be read through a bisexual lens or through a queer lens and i'm not talking so much about the musings over the character of lee shang's sexuality many audiences interpret him as a bisexual man i certainly do he's attracted to mulan both when she is dressed as a man and when she presents as a woman that is important representation that the adaptation strips out of the story but what i'm talking about isn't really about representation but about capturing the experience of being bisexual the following isn't exclusive to that sexuality or descriptive of every bisexual person's experience but for me being that way made me feel alien and separate from other men while at the same time harboring secret feelings of attraction and all of that is a part of the reason that masculinity itself felt like a kind of silly performance a performance that i didn't see as natural or authentic something i had to learn and all of that maps onto how mulan feels when she is first entering the army camp when she is confused about why all these men are being so aggressive boisterous and loud i identify with her in that situation more than i identify with any of them the fact that she feels so unnatural in this environment opens up this exploratory space for the audience where those feelings can be confronted and conquered mulan was my guide through the alien worlds of masculinity because she felt just as awkward being there as i did now with all of that said with how critical the fish out of water setup is to this story with how important it is to make masculinity something that mulan is not well versed in in order to make the story structure work at all let's watch the scene in the live action remake where mulan enters the army need a camp little man insult me again he'll take the tip off my blade lower your sword oh what i can't even fully articulate the profound depths of disappointment from which a sigh emerged from me at this moment from the instant mulan walks into the camp she is unfazed by how the people around her behave she is not a fish out of water she's a fish who went from one pond to another and didn't have to do anything to adapt to this new environment she has nothing to learn here so the scenes are just not compelling during this part of the movie there's a montage where mulan has to hide that she's a woman from the other men but it's all just wacky hijinks it's all just her worrying that a man might see or feel her physical body and then realize she's a woman rather than about her having to learn the obtuse rules of behaving like a man in short one movie provided me with a crucial stepping stone to understanding myself the other has slapstick where the original version of mulan focused on presenting relationships that we could actually get invested in where it depicted flawed characters who had a lot to learn over the course of the story characters who felt human and struggled against all odds but who came up with clever interesting and surprising solutions a story which ends with the upending of gender expectations and roles the new film does none of that instead we have a movie where we don't care about the characters characters who have nothing to learn and are never truly in danger it's almost as tragic as losing 130 million dollars avalanche scene in mulan is one of the most suspenseful sequences in all of disney's animated movies there's so much happening all at once and it pushes the characters literally to the brink if you want to learn how to write more suspenseful stories then i recommend that you check out benjamin percy's course on skillshare the sponsor of this video skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of classes in subjects like creative writing filmmaking and productivity in benjamin's class you'll learn a ton of techniques that you can use throughout your story to make it more engaging because suspense isn't just about action scenes it's about the control of information hooking readers and viewers along each step of the narrative there are no ads on skillshare either and they're always launching new classes so if you want to give this class a try or learn a different skill then give this link a click the first 1000 people to do so will get a free trial of skillshare's premium membership thanks for watching everyone and a big thank you to my patrons on patreon for supporting this channel keep writing everyone

Channel: Just Write

Views: 529,429

Rating: 4.9544215 out of 5

Keywords: 11-24-20

Id: XZmaqyLFD3M

Length: 21min 25sec (1285 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 30 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Sventex]

It's kind of sad to watch. It's the most ironic video, him trying to use logic on the system of Chi. What ever happened to the themes?

[u/Dooms_DJ]

I hope Just Write didn’t ruin someone’s experience watching Mulan with his review ;)

[u/persik42]

I just wish he could evolve as a critic and stop looking at the seeming flaws in this masterpiece of a film.

[u/thesweatynerd67]

It is such a quiet thing, to fall. But far worse is to admit it

[u/Signal_Flare303]

He has returned to us brothers.

[u/BatarianPreacher]

I watched the EFAP Movies for both Mulan versions yesterday and holy shit, the 2020 one is awful, especially comparing it to the original Disney Mulan.