"Loyal, brave and true."
Hello everyone!
So every little chick and their mother are chirping about this movie.
And when I say everyone, mind you, I mean EVERYONE.
Everywhere you turn you can see some sort of commentary on this, from good to bad (mostly bad though). There are a couple of positive reviews but, unfortunately, most of this is as negative as it comes, and I do believe only one other got such a bad reception from audiences.
The Disney company used to have a good heading and knew where they were going. I'm starting to believe that might not be the case anymore.
After the Star Wars debacle (still hotly debated all around the internet), the live-action remakes of beloved cartoons was always going to be a dicey proposition.
But I liked two of those. I haven't seen the rest yet, but I'm planning on it.
This one I was unsure about going in, and it turns out I was right. Mulan is one of those things you'd think they couldn't get wrong - but they did.
Links to previous live-action remakes by Disney can be found at the bottom of the page, and of course I'll be adding to them as we go along. I don't have any of the cartoons on here yet, but I'm working on that, too.
First, however, let's dive right into the story of Mulan, shall we? And I'd like to preface this by saying that I'm not going to be looking at it from the perspective of the original ballad - I don't know it, so that would make no sense. I'm also not going to directly compare it to the 1998 cartoon until the end. I'll simply look at it from a marginally intelligent viewer's standpoint, and see where we end up.
The movie begins with introducing Mulan to the story right off the bat, and when we meet her she seems to be a child prodigy doing some moves that would make Tom Cruise proud, especially as he struggled with training so much in The Last Samurai.
The child chases a chicken through the village and ends up doing parkour across the rooftops, eventually landing safely at the bottom with a big grin for her father.
However, her mother later reminds him that this won't do as girls bring honour to their family through marriage - not through performing daredevil feats and beating all the boys around them. So the father tells his firstborn daughter (he has two, mind) that she must hide her chi as it is unseemly for a woman to display such a power.
What is chi? As it plays such a vital role in this movie I thought I should give it at least a word or two. Again, I don't really pretend to have any real knowledge of Chinese culture, but from what I could understand solely from the movie and its message to regular viewers, chi is a sort of magical power that manifests within each individual, but only a relative few can actually use it to a greater extent than most. Notably, these users seem to be men, and women, if found using it, are branded witches.
So Mulan grows up hiding her affinity to this power (it should be noted her sister doesn't seem to possess it in the same measure, nor any other women we encounter in the first little while either). The scene then shifts to reveal the Ancient Silk Road.
And this is where trouble starts.
A woman walks up to one of the merchants in the desert, and seems to ... step into him? Shape-shift into him? Not long after, one of the garrisons on the road is attacked by a group of black horsemen, and the woman reveals herself within the walls and helps them take it down. Thus, by the time news reaches the Imperial City and the emperor (played by Jet Li of all people), more than just the one garrison has fallen, and the Rourans, led by Bori Khan, are advancing rapidly. No one knows how, but a nation-wide alarm is given, and the emperor orders men into his army.
You can imagine how this is going to go over in Mulan's village, where she and her sister are led to the matchmaker to see if she can match them. An unfortunate event with a spider definitely stops that from happening, but the Imperial messenger rides in then and Mulan's invalid father takes the conscription scroll.
Later that night, Mulan argues, and loses the argument with her father about whether he should go, in which he tells her that he regrets not teaching her where her place was.
This doesn't really help as she later on sneaks from her home, dons the armour, and rides out to enlist in the army instead of him anyway.
As she hasn't really ridden far beyond her home though, she ends up getting lost, only for the family phoenix guardian to guide her out and to the training camp, where she immediately gets into a fight with one of the other recruits who wants to help her rise after she's fallen. The fight is broken up by none other than Donnie Yen, their commanding officer, who sends them both into the tents with a scowl.
Yes, he does have a name in this movie, but I'll just refer to him as Donnie Yen.
Then begins training, in which Mulan continues to hide her chi and everyone struggles to adjust to this new life, and equally none of them can master the test of carrying two buckets of water in their hands to the top of a mountain. It isn't until another fight with the same recruit (who coincidentally becomes Mulan's love interest by the end of the movie) that Mulan reveals her powers as she kicks a flying spear out of the air and towards her opponent. Once her mask falls from her, she readily climbs the steps and reaches the top of the mountain no one could reach before.
With the Rouran threat, however, the army soon marches out and Donnie Yen leads his troops into battle. Because she's one of the few who own a horse, Mulan is sent with the cavalry and, because she apparently has something to prove (don't ask me the wisdom of this here) she rides on alone after everyone in her company is either killed, or flees.
Thus she comes face to face with the witch who recognizes another woman when she sees one, and taunts Mulan that she'll never amount to anything even in disguise, before sending one of her throwing knives into the girl's chest. As Mulan wears some sort of leather wrap to hide her female attributes, however, this serves only to knock the wind out of her, and she rises, discarding her armour (again, don't ask me for the smarts in this idea since she's riding back into battle without any protective gear on) and her disguise, appearing on the battlefield as a woman this time.
She orchestrates the snow avalanche by turning the enemy catapults around, and ends up saving her future lover before heading back into battle. The Rourans, believing she's a witch (since she flips on the galloping horse to do some spear-kicking, I'd say they're right) flee, but Donnie Yen is of course livid that he's had a woman under his nose this entire time.
And he even offered to marry her to his daughter, too! (That has to be one of the more giggle-inducing scenes in the entire movie, I'll give them that)
Anyway, she's cast out in disgrace, and the witch reappears to her later, saying this was as expected. The witch herself was thrown out because of the strong chi she possessed, so she and Mulan aren't really that different. She also lets slip that Bori Khan is already in the Imperial City, so Mulan rides back to Donnie Yen in haste, and he decides she's going to lead them to save the emperor.
The emperor really does need saving as he's tricked into thinking his enemy wants an honourable duel, when in reality Bori Khan just wants to kill him in revenge for his father's death.
The rest of the troops are boxed in during an ambush, at which time Donnie Yen and his recruits arrive. He takes one look at what's happening, sends the lot of them on with instructions that Mulan MUST reach the emperor, and resigns himself to stay behind and solve the mess of an ambush single-handedly, because he's Donnie Yen.
Who else is going to do it in this bunch of idiots if not him?
The recruits do just that, giving Mulan time to reach the scaffolding where the emperor is being held, and she engages Bori Khan in a duel a la Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, and to avenge the death of the witch who came to warn Bori Khan how his plan was failing, after which she takes an arrow meant for Mulan and dies, having seen that it IS in fact possible for a woman to lead men, instead of just being their puppet.
Mulan and Bori Khan do their parkour fight, she manages to free one of Jet Li's hands, and he tosses her the arrow which she kicks to kill their enemy.
Afterwards, presented by none other than Ming-Na Wen (to any non-affictionados, the ORIGINAL Mulan voice actress), Mulan is offered a place in the emperor's guard, but she politely declines, saying she must return home to her family. This she does, finding out her sister is now matched, and because this is a movie Donnie Yen somehow couldn't bring himself to escort her home but rides in with the rest of his guard troops minutes after her, gifting her a new sword from the emperor and repeats the job offer.
The movie cuts here, but it's safe to say there MAY be a sequel.
Or at least, there was a sequel in the works, but I'm not sure if they'll be making it after the reception of this one.
This is, as they say, what Americans believe Chinese culture is about. When they announced that they're cutting most of the fantastical aspects from the production (meaning Mushu, the lucky cricket, and then Shang, the original love interest), I was skeptical, but willing to see what the end result would be.
In short: it was bad.
Oh sure, it was mildly entertaining. It had sweeping camera angles and scenery with lots of vibrant colours.
But it destroyed Mulan right off the bat when it introduced her as a child prodigy, a chosen one.
See in this movie, unless you have this chi thing, you're basically nothing. So the only way Mulan can ever hope to compete with the men is if she has more of the chi than they do - if, essentially, she's magic. Her hiding it only means that she needs to control herself in every training session, because SHE ALREADY KNOWS IT ALL AND IS BETTER THAN EVERYONE THERE.
This effectively shoots the movie right where it hurts.
Because the message of the original Mulan is WILDLY different: in it, Mulan is a girl driven by loyalty to her family, love for her ailing father, and someone with no gifts or training, who starts at the bottom and works her way up through perseverance, sheer stubbornness, and uses her wits and intelligence when all else fails.
She needs none of that in this new movie. She's already perfect in every way - and this destroys any character arc she might have had, because her character doesn't need growth at all.
It also destroys the message to young girls - or young people really. Where the original Mulan was relatable because more than just many of us struggle to find our place in this world, and she taught us how to push through and come out on the other side even when all seems lost, this one tells us we're already lost causes and hopeless because we're not special. Only a chosen few are special, and it's none of us.
So for a movie trying to be liberal, fueled by feminism, and other modern-day movements, said movements basically kill it. And any hopeful message with it.
There are other things I could think of - like how the horses Bori Khan rides have no business in this movie as they wouldn't survive in the desert, or the fact that if they cut out Mushu to make the movie 'more realistic', what was that phoenix thing then??? At least Eddie Murphy could have salvaged it! If he even signed on to it, which I'm guessing he probably wouldn't have, having some sense between his ears.
And more, from the fact that Bori Khan isn't really scary (whereas Shan Yu in the original is creepy as all get-out) to Jet Li looking like he isn't even the one speaking when the emperor talks (never mind that him playing the good guy is a bit weird too), this movie keeps trying to be 'realistic' and ends up being less so than the actual cartoon.
They even renamed the horse!
In short, if you're planning on watching this - you've been warned. This is NOTHING like what you're expecting, and even if you're expecting nothing, it'll disappoint you. I knew going in that this would be different than the cartoon and had no issue with that (other than missing the songs). I had issue with the changes in the fundamental story that rendered everything null and void.
I'd suggest watching the cartoon instead, or the 2009 version (for which our 2020 Mulan actress was also considered, but passed over). THOSE still hold up, and they weren't filmed in a wildly disputed region of China either.
xx
*images and video not mine
No comments:
Post a Comment