Yet Another Useless Disney Remake | Mulan (2020) Review

there are a few big reasons why you should not watch the live action remake of disney's mulan but i'll tell you this it's not because of that 30 pay wall on disney plus honestly yeah it's a really high price but it has its benefits compared to other movies nobody seems to be complaining about the fact that amazon prime costs about fourteen dollars a month after tax and then you have to spend an additional twenty dollars for a pvod rental like bill and ted that's only valid for one use which uh by the way that is gonna be my next review so don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss out on that one anyway as for mulan you pay 6.99 a month plus tax for your subscription in addition to the 30 dollars for the movie but then the movie is permanently on your account and can be viewed as many times as you want call me out on that if you so wish but that price is more reasonable than the much higher degree of money some families might pay for five plus tickets concessions and gas money to see something like that in the theater that being said this movie is completely worthless no matter how you watch it let's get right into this shall we first off mulan is a testament to disney being one of the worst offenders and pandering to communist china i'm not a political channel by any means don't get me wrong but even i can't ignore the issues of them filming part of the film in the xinjiang province where about a million ethnic muslims are being held at inhumane interment camps on top of that the film's star yufei liu infamously expressed support for police brutality during the human rights protests in hong kong last year so that's great but enough of that let's talk about the movie itself i don't really like it at all initially i came out of the experience with a negative viewpoint but it didn't hate it right out of the gate compared to the other live-action remakes i had seen mulan seemed to be the one that was trying the hardest to develop its own unique identity other than pete's dragon which is the only good remake thus far seriously why doesn't anyone ever talk about that one the ironic thing about this remake of mulan though is that all of the creative choices intended to differentiate it from the original honestly made the film worse by not fully committing itself to being a full-blown wusha epic like crouching tiger hidden dragon or a live-action copy of the original animated musical this weird hybrid of tones ideas and familiar beats just comes off as inferior and practically every way imaginable normally i don't like comparing remakes with their source material but considering that a translation of the original ballad can be read in like two minutes tops comparisons are inevitable and expected despite some changes to the story this remake can basically be broken down in the same way as the other abominable live-action movies can it apes the original of its most memorable beats strips away all of the grandeur and context behind those great moments adds in a bit of extra fluff and then calls it a day there are certainly worse and more aggravating films i've seen this year but mulan is by far one of the blandest and most dissatisfying ones for in taking the approach i just laid out the film is completely and utterly lifeless and you would think that at least depicting many of the same events of the original movie which all have their distinct dramatic or comedic impact would mean that the remake would satisfy the most basic needs of a disney fanatic but it never fails that the brain dead creatively bankrupt hacks at disney think that these movies were great because of the moments themselves rather than how they were executed other youtubers such as shay frillas and filmmento have already put out excellent videos addressing why the original pulls off dramatic moments so much better than the remake so i would suggest checking their content out for more specific examples i've linked their videos in the description but to be short of words this movie not only takes amazing moments from the original film and executes them in very unremarkable ways but the whole entire experience is vapid empty and hardly different from any other generic blockbuster that's out there i quickly realized that the film was in trouble when there was a corny unnecessary voice over narration to introduce us to everything things were made even worse upon first impressions of the characters themselves for their relationships felt forced the dialogue is about as cliched and unnatural to human interactions as you might expect and worst of all the acting is bad pretty much across the board z ma who you might have seen in the farewell last year was actually pretty good as mulan's father but even well-regarded performers like jason scott lee jetly and donnie yen were directed to deliver their lines in the most expressionless ways imaginable this is most egregiously noted among the lead actress yifei lou who uses the same blank face for almost every single moment she's on camera you know even if we weren't making comparisons to the original movie the uninspired execution for this version of the story is hardly worth getting excited about sure the fact that disney made a film with a predominantly asian cast will get the momentary brownie points on social media but nothing about this film does asian cinema american cinema or really anyone any favors there is truly no sense of style or energy to compensate for a lack of dramatic tension leading me to wonder what that 200 million dollar budget really was for i mean yeah there's some pretty scenery good production design and absolutely ravishing costumes but nothing pops visually unlike the original that uses color and lighting as a tool for establishing mood like in the reflection song the perfect way i can sum this up is by talking about the big battle scenes in the middle sections of each movie in which i'll address the remake first as the chinese imperial army is advancing towards the emperor's palace they come across enemy forces in an expansive open field while it is cool the use of music sound location and certain camera angles don't really add up to an epic confrontation something about it just feels stale as though the gravity of the situation hasn't really settled in there are a lot of other factors that play into this such as the sanitized poorly edited action boring generic villain characters and then mulan's role in the battle which i'll touch upon shortly but once you compare this battle to the same sequence in the original animation it becomes very clear what was more impactful i mean the scene just kind of speaks for itself what happened um you just gave away our position get out of range hold the last cannon [Music] [Applause] prepare to fight if we die we die with [Applause] honor yeah aim the candidate sean you [Music] hey come back oh watching this scene alongside the recreated battle sequence in the remake yields the unquestionable victor in this debate on top of the reasons i've already mentioned the original battle has an iconic setting within those cascading mountains which raises the stakes much higher than when the opposing armies face off in this bland grassy valley this area was about as interesting as the scenery my wife and i had to look at when driving to and from tucson a couple of weeks ago but ultimately the true reason why this movie fails is that its bland mediocre tone stems from the completely blank slate that is our hero mulan herself no matter who a protagonist is or where they come from there must be a noticeable change from beginning to end that's the first and most important rule of any story not just the hero's journey you always want to make sure that the main character has some kind of personal endgame to reach so that they can prove their worth or else why should the audience care none of this seemed to concern the screenwriters though because character growth is never something that matters for this iteration of mulan this character is basically the same person throughout the film's run time not to mention that the actor is playing the role as frustratingly one note the entire time i would have been perfectly okay with this whole theme of women comfortably showing their true selves if not for the fact that this movie explores those ideas in the most basic played out and simplistic ways but since there is no nuance to the character that naturally feeds into the story itself not having substance either a key reason why mulan is such a compelling character in the original is because we learn very quickly what she's like as a person and it gives weight and reason to why she's considered a disappointment to her honorable family this mulan is clumsy quirky awkward and doesn't really respond well to public social cues in other words she doesn't fit in with other women her age all of these attributes end up working against her during her meeting with the matchmaker and you truly feel the shame and embarrassment that she casts upon her family due to the disastrous meeting but because she harbors these weaknesses it's inspiring when she decides to don her father's armor and assume his place in the imperial army that only becomes more inspiring as we see her overcome her physical limitations in the iconic training sequence especially in being the first to climb this giant wooden pillar as well as using her ingenuity to bring an avalanche upon the huns and eventually taking advantage of her cleverness and feminine nature to defeat sean yu it looks like you're out of ideas not quite now transition back to mulan 2020 and the main character is incredibly difficult to read as a person due to the listless performance and weak definition on the page her key characteristic is that she possesses an unusual degree of chi which basically puts her on the same level as anakin from the prequels in terms of power the difference here is that mulan's abilities are so vague and devoid of any concrete logic that they're basically a scapegoat for disney to force this movie down the viewer's throat as a female empowerment narrative and nothing else that would be fine if again the movie gave us more reasons to care about mulan than that she has always been unnaturally good in a fight no matter her age but no this mulan overcomes all of her obstacles not for any believable reasons in the story the narrative just plays in her favor because well it's supposed to work out that way she's supposed to take her father's place in the army she's supposed to beat that one physical challenge the men couldn't which is really corny in this movie by the way she's supposed to send down an avalanche that overtakes the opposing army which is incredibly corny in this movie and in the end she's supposed to take down the main villain gain favor with the emperor and bring honor to the family that's how the story plays out in the original so by remaking it in a live-action format naturally means that it needs to follow the template of the original right right mulan 2020 ultimately inhibits its own success with all the choices made on a conceptual level the idea everyone had about this movie considering the removal of mushu the musical sequences and several side characters was that it would be a bold innovative take on the source material compared to the other live-action remakes disney has produced thus far but once again mulan is a case where disney took all the familiar beats made them significantly worse and nothing added in contributes anything of merit whatsoever from that standpoint alone the movie does little to justify its own existence the film's case is simply made worse by the fact that mulan as a character pales vastly in comparison to her animated counterpart whereas the original iteration of the character was an unequivocal role model for little girls everywhere this mulan is the complete antithesis of that with her lack of trials and infallible nature rendering her as an empty protagonist so in the end what worth does this movie really have i mean i guess it's more watchable than last year's lion king and dumbo remakes and at least i can say that the movie has good production value but i would much rather have a beautiful disaster like the rise of skywalker than a mishmash of bland boring nothingness mulan 2020 is yet another useless installment in the ever-growing canon of disney live-action remakes and for me it was the last straw whatever faith i had in disney's ability to coherently reinterpret their animated classics has now diminished and i don't expect them to ever make a good one in the future be

Channel: Kircher Talks Entertainment

Views: 2,610

Rating: 4.9384613 out of 5

Keywords: mulan, 1998, 2020, disney, renaissance, make a man out of you, reflection, you'll, you will, bring honor to us all, girl worth fighting for, shang, mushu, cricket, yao, shan yu, china, animation, remake, live-action, animated, lion king, beauty and the beast, pete's dragon, jungle book, christopher robin, aladdin, dumbo

Id: w5mtrQhFtAc

Length: 12min 46sec (766 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 28 2020