Thoughts on Mulan (2020)?
I just finished watching it (pirated, because I wasn’t going to give Disney money after all the controversy regarding Taiwan).
Uhh, it.. was bad? I mean I’m usually pretty positive especially about all the Disney remakes, and I liked the general darker mood of this Mulan version. But what’s with the 90s era cgi physics?
Also, and I get the Mulan plot line is entirely about how ridiculous gender-gating is in general, but whew there is a serious case of The Stupids around a lot of the tradition, much more so than in the original. This felt very tropey to me, convenient idiocy. I mean yes okay this takes place 1200 years ago but …
I appreciated not seeing mushu, but the Phoenix could have just been a lot lot lot more subtle.
And I’ve never seen snow look so much like party foam. This is the same studio that produced Frozen?!
Man, this movie felt like it was written, produced and directed in 1998. I would say I watched the wrong one by mistake but the original was actually good for its time.
What happened, did I miss something? This could have been an amazing movie full of great music, awesome choreography, and a super dark take on the original. Instead, I watched the equivalent of a machine learning exercise in turning anime to live action.
It has some of the worst editing I’ve ever seen.
Here’s a breakdown of it: https://youtu.be/Fqksc-mDxGk
And this is a good rundown of how they messed up the story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZmaqyLFD3M
Since we're doing YouTube Mulan criticism links, Xiran Jay Zhao's Everything Culturally Wrong With Mulan (2020) and Everything Culturally Right and Wrong With Mulan (1998) are both indepth and fascinating.
And a satirical/humorous take that I thought was good for mocking how bizarre some of the choices were: Disney's Live-Action Mulan Pitch Meeting
So many of these I caught… glad to see them broken down like so.
Is this a good YouTube channel?
It's a great YouTube channel. I've been watching it off and on for almost four years now.
Some videos I love:
Bohemian Rhapsody's Terrible Editing
Malick's Obsessions First video I ever saw from him.
Which Film Should’ve Won The Oscar for Best Editing?
Editing Lessons From the Best Editing Nominees
I absolutely loved it. But it's largely because I had zero expectations of quality going in. To be honest, it was exactly what I wanted it to be, which was not a 1:1 remake of the animated film, but a fun wuxia flic in the English language. And in that respect, it really blew that ball right outside of the park.
Mulan is an absolutely beautiful film in every visual respect. The framing is excellent, the sets, costumes, and makeup are all very beautiful, and the action choreography is so good it feels like it's the reason why we invented movies in the first place.
Sure, the plot wasn't great. But a good story is something I long stopped expecting out of live-action Disney films (and honestly, the same applies to pretty much every big hollywood production now). But I really did like the addition of the witch character, who makes an excellent foil to Mulan and is an excuse to make some of the more impressive fight scenes.
I will say, though, that we saw an early cut of the film before all the CG was finished, and when I asked if he'd be interested in seeing the final cut that he didn't watch it because there was too much phoenix.
Part of the reason why I love Mulan so much is because it feels like big budget wuxia films have become extinct, at least so far as ones I have access to here in the US. I was so excited when The Great Wall was announced; directed by Zhang Yimou, my wuxia film hero who made Hero and House of Flying Daggers, given a record-breaking budget and even starring Matt Damon. And it was a huge CGI monster disappointment. And then a few years later we see Mulan and it's everything I wanted to see once more.
And as a side note, no, it was not made by the same studio who made Frozen.
Sorry for double-posting, but I just wanted to put a bit of an aside. Shortly after Mulan was released, we got two new Ying Yang Master films released at about the same time on Netflix. So if you liked what I said about Mulan and wanted to see some nice high-concept fantasy wuxia films, go see them! Both of them are great! Either one of them have better stories than Mulan did. And at about the same time we got some really great Chinese animated action films. I really strongly recommend watching Ne Zha; it has an extremely childish sense of humor but it's soooooo good.
I'm with you Akir.
I liked it. It was definitely watcheable. I also had low expectations. I had not even seen the cartoon version.
Samurai/ martial arts movies don't typically focus on character development, and I am perfectly fine with that. Most have terrible editing to hide the terrible martial arts skills, and I am also fine with that.
I also don't fault a movie for explaining weird magic away as Chi, just like I wouldn't fault a movie for explaining weird magic away as "The Force."
But, I am also able to empathize with people who didn't like it. Not everyone is a sucker for a martial arts visual extravaganza.
I’m so glad someone liked it!
I really wanted to like it as well and I am soooo trying not to be cynical. But I mean you say it had amazing choreography and framing, and I’m like, this was Bollywood stuff man. Dune had amazing fight choreography, but Mulan was plagued with such awful editing during the fight scenes.
This was so visible right away in the movie too. Mulan’s scene as a little girl jumping from the roof and doing her thing was such a botched photoshop job through and through I genuinely wondered if I didn’t accidentally end up on a fake movie.
But I would love to hear more about the stuff you liked and disliked in it.
Honestly, that was about it. You're right that the editing was terrible. There's a lot that's not good about this movie, and I just don't care about those things.
To put things a different way, most Marvel movies are kind of mediocre (especially the ones before Disney bought them), but they're full of what most people want to see. Mulan was mediocre, but it was full of what I wanted to see. It's just as simple as that. And as much as I enjoyed watching the film, I'm not rushing to buy the Blu-Ray.
That being said, I'm upset about that diss on Bollywood. Bollywood makes good movies too.
Not a diss! Just, it's jarring and doesn't belong in the atmosphere that the movie is trying to create.
I'm with you on Marvels. I hear you, really appreciate your positive perspective on this!
I didn't outright hated it but I had an iffy feeling. It was somewhat very... American ?
Then I watched Accented Cinema take on it, and it made me realize what's wrong with it. It's not so much the cinematography itself, but it's some key plot details that are perverted and make the film deliver a questionable message.
I recommend watching the video, but for the sake of the discussion, let me parrot one of his grievance that resonates with me the most: In Mulan (1998), we see her succeed in a men's world by rejecting hypermasculinity and bringing her own flair into it. So she has wits, works hard, and everyone learn from each other (manly girl and girly men are not a ba thing, and gender is not a limiting factor).
In Mulan (2020), she succeed in a men's world by... out-manning them. She's just better because she's special (she as chi you know). If you are not special (her sister) then too bad you get married by a matchmaker. Sorry, not everyone is special
There's one last infuriating detail that he chose to finish his video with. The 2020 movies explicitly reference the OG poem by having Mulan see to rabbits running side by side. However the poem goes like "[...] but when two hares are running side by side, how can you tell the female from male?". How did they not interpret this as a message of equal opportunity?
I didn't watch Mulan just because every single Disney live-action remake prior has been super boring. It's often felt like a pretty straight duplication of the storyboard for the original story with minor tweaks, just with some CGI crap or actors instead. It hits the same story beats but it has no heart.
But at least the other ones had good craft going for them. The CGI is boring and pointless, but objectively looks impressive. But it sounds like Mulan has started falling short on that too?
Mulan 2020 is very different to Mulan 1998. It's nothing like the Lion King remake.
The CGI was pretty bad though. YMMV. I watched it by curiosity and don't regret doing so. I wasn't bored. I was just... Oh man this could have been a lot better.
This will be a rather low effort comment but — never saw it, heard all of the excitement and marketing lead up, heard they dropped Mushu (and Eddie Murphy), lost all interest just from that, and then when it released never heard another word about it. Definitely tells you how successful it is.
Wait, they dropped the dragon mascot? What's even the point of a Disney movie without its wacky companion?
It didn’t immediately click with me that this version of Mulan was much more “mature”. There’s on-screen killing and all, which for a movie about war I like that it’s not being pissy about it. I don’t think Mushu belongs in this version and I think it’s one of the things it got right.
The Phoenix seems to be a symbolic companion to replace him but she is in a role where she is supposed to have more of a “touch of god”.
For example the first time we see the phoenix on screen, is in the morning after a night where Mulan is seemingly lost, and her father prayed for the Phoenix to watch over her. Mulan appears to have woken up in a much better place, yay Phoenix! We even get to see her tail in the sky, cool!
Oh okay we’re gonna keep following the Phoenix. And give it a second shot. And a THIRD one. Make a loop de loop why don’t you. I’m bored. Subtlety would have been rad: “was it really that legendary animal I’ve never seen that saved me?!”. Instead we keep seeing it all movie and it cheapens everything.