2020
Directed by: Niki Caro
Cast: Liu Yifei, Jet Li, Donnie Yen, Gong Li
Summary:
Well, this is a remake and “updated” version of the old Disney Mulan that we all loved.
Review:
The new Mulan movie was a complete let down… there is no other way to explain it.
The expectations were so high that even if the release dates were postponed, the anticipation never wavered.
Until the showing. So many questions were asked… and it was sad that they were asked post-production. Questions like:
Where is the music?!?!
Seriously. You are promising this generation of moviegoers that pretty much grew up with Disney and was molded by Disney a live-action remake of one of their favorite musicals WITHOUT THE MUSIC. Why? To appeal to adult audiences or at least to the-kids-who-are-now-grown-adults?
Yeah, no.
We were very much looking forward to reliving our childhood musical lives. We were waiting to sing along to the soldiers training while singing Be A Man. We wanted to sing along with Mulan as she tried to discover herself while singing Reflection. Now what – are we just to sit there listening to dialogue? Come on! We grew up with music, we should have music. And when are we supposed to sing A Girl Worth Fighting For if Ling will not cue us in? Speaking of which…
Where are they?
I mean where are the characters that we know? Where is Chien-po, Ling, Yao, and all the other funny soldiers? My goodness, where is Captain Shang? If the lack of Captain Shang is due to cementing the ideology that Mulan does not need a man to complete her, well his presence in the first movie neither subtracts nor adds to Mulan’s person in the first place.
Mulan is who she is because she is who she is. Captain Shang did not complete her as her love interest. His lack of presence did not also contribute to the making of an independent Mulan. She is who she is without the presence of Captain Shang. However, we cannot push aside the fact that he was one of the people she wanted to impress during training. It’s not the i-need-to-impress-him-because-i- have-a-crush-on-him type of wanting to impress; its more like he-is-my-superior-so-I-have-to-impress-him-or-else-we-are-all-dead kind of thing. Don’t we all want to impress our boss or our superiors and not get belittled and kicked out by them? Them falling in love is just a side-effect if you will.
Most importantly: where is Mushu and Cricket? Where are the lovable side-kicks that loved Mulan during her highs and lows? The live-action remake was still mystical if not more mystical than the original Disney movie. So why was the small annoying talking dragon not included? As one of the kids who grew up with the 1998 version, these two characters are the ones that brought colour to the film – the comedic legacy that the movie has that we have kept with us during our lifetime.
Where has the comedy gone?
This adaptation was too serious for my taste. Just because a topic is serious does not mean that we cannot address it with a little bit of humour. Adding humour will not remove or subtract from the severity of the issue, but dealing with it through humour could and would make dealing with the issue a lot easier.
I think this reflects so much on us as a society: we have become too serious that we can no longer approach things with humour. We can also no longer differentiate between approaching issues with humour vs making fun of and belittling it. Laughing WITH the situation is infinitely different from laughing AT the situation.
Laughing WITH the situation does not remove you from the situation or belittling the issue. Finding something to smile about can help deal with the situation and holding on to that small yet significant tidbit can help in your handling of the situation a lot easier. As opposed to laughing AT the situation wherein, if said individual does not know the gravity of their words and the gravity of the situation can result in belittling the entire issue. WITH addresses the issue with delicately placed humour, AT laughs at the issue rendering it small and insignificant. I guess we have become a society that can no longer understand these nuances.
I guess part of this is the fact that the funny characters were removed from the narrative. Cause again, I don’t see the point of removing it.
Overall…
The movie was extremely subpar. For a big-budget Disney film that took inspiration from Chinese mythology and legends, the hype around the movie was not delivered properly and fulfilled the audience’s expectations.
It seemed like they forgot who their audiences were: 25-35 year-olds that grew up with the musical and the talking dragon. We were expecting that kind of beautiful insanity when we booked the tickets and braved a pandemic to line up for the theatres.
The movie plot was also boring and expected, to say the least. Before attacking with the: “You have already watched the 1998 version so you already know the plot,” argument, keep in mind this is also the generation that watched the Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, and Lion King remakes and absolutely loved it. So it’s not a question of the story already being seen and used, it’s the question of delivery. I think that this could go either way: to stick with the original and elevate it just like they did the previously said films, or they could change it up and keep key familiar concepts.
Producers, writers, and directors stuck with the second option and gave it subpar treatment. Usually stories would start, have an introduction, will climax (the stories can dip so low or it can elevate to such high levels), then descend or ascend, and then ends. This one just sort of plateaued. It started off the movie with a high note then stayed there until the end. Midway through the movie you just feel the plot getting dragged to the finish line. And it got boring. Not even the fight scenes could save the fact. At some point it felt like they just added fight scenes like that of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon to make it feel more Asian. Other than that… no goosebumps, no excitement.
On top of that, we are in the golden age of storytelling. Plot is getting more creative and ways to present the plot are getting more elaborate. Plus symbolism is getting more and more intricate, so what gives them the reason to explicitly convey everything that is happening or what each symbol means. It takes away from the mystery that symbols carry.
Either way, it was a letdown. It is hard to even say I was glad I watched that film… but so far, I wasted my 2 hours.