Mulan

Holy hell, what a jumbled, misguided mess. Good stuff out of the way, because I don’t have a lot to say about it: cinematography was lovely. Score was decent. Fight choreography was good too. There, now let’s tear this apart. I’m no great fan of the original, but this makes the original look like a top 10 all timer. This is a lifeless, listless, inert movie when there isn’t action. The script cannot portray drama at all, at all. Problem #1: Disney sold this as a realistic reflection of the legend. Because SORCERERS AND THE FORCE ARE REALISTIC?!? Sweet Jesus, that has to be the dumbest addition of all. It doesn’t improve the movie in any way, and sorceress meets her end in a damp squib of a moment, a quick character turn that isn’t earned and feels like a hasty write-off. But problem #2 is worse, and that’s Mulan herself. The original Mulan was portrayed as a regular girl. When she takes her dad’s place in the army, she is in over her head. She is not strong or skilled in any way, and she is afraid. All she has is the determination not to screw it up and bring shame to her family. This Mulan is super-powered, with the grace and agility and fighting skills of Black Widow and Inigo Montoya combined. She is flawless. It sucks all joy out of seeing Mulan’s journey, because there are no stakes. We know she can kick the ass of every conscript alongside her (especially since the movie keeps telling us she has so much chi, like she’s the Kwisatz Haderach), so we never see her grow and discover herself. And that’s made all the worse by a terribly wooden performance. Is she afraid? Nervous? Hopeful? Sad? Gassy? ANYTHING?!? IS SHE EVEN HUMAN?!? You could never tell from the movie. And the movie even knows this and tries to lampshade it early on by Mulan saying how she doesn’t show emotion. But if SHE doesn’t care about anything in her world, why the hell should I? That’s the whole purpose of acting — to convey emotion so the audience’s emotional triggers are pulled. She’s not pulling the trigger; she’s not even holding the gun. Give Mulan emotion and take away her being a superhero? This movie easily gets to 3 stars, maybe as high as 4. But stripping the main character into a cardboard cutout with god-level ability strips away all emotion and all the gravitas from the movie, requiring you to fill in the blanks with memories and nostalgia (especially when they make callbacks to the animated movie). There offers nothing the animated movie doesn’t, except a big waste of time.