Disney, these days, has opted to simply create as many live action remakes of its old movies as it can. Granted, even the best of these remakes seem to be only so-so, but people keep buying tickets, so Disney keeps making them. 2019 saw three, four if you could the Malificent sequel, and the company hardly seems to be stopping now. Next up: Mulan.
Since I’d never seen the original Mulan and the remake apparently contains none of the songs or Mushu the dragon, maybe I should take a look at the original and see how it turned out. I have Disney+. I might as well make use of it while I wait for The Falcon and the Winter Soldier or something along those lines.
In many ways, 1998’s Mulan is very much a Disney animated feature of that era. It’s got far more slapstick than classic era Disney features, gives the female lead a more independent streak, and even the animation style more or less fits that era of Disney. There are some songs, a few animal sidekicks, and a very large bodycount.
OK, that last one is not generally part of these features, but there is a lot of death in this movie. Mulan’s avalanche killed hundreds if not thousands of Huns, and the Huns themselves were clearly wiping out whatever Chinese people they encountered along the way, including a whole army led by Captain Li Shang’s father. This is not the standard bad guy Disney death where just the main villain–think Scar or Ursula–are the only real bad guy fatalities at the end of the movie. Granted, someone has to take care of the Hun army, so burying most of them alive is a safe way to do it for a family-friendly movie. It’s at least as violent and sudden as most of the Chinese casualties happening off-screen.
But what about Mulan? She seems to be the rather standard Disney heroine, a bit of a spunky tomboy type. Sure, she seems clumsy at first, but over time, we see she’s a lot smarter than a lot of the men with her, and she does what she does for the best of reasons. The training montage scene, showing Mulan first coming in last before finally excelling beyond her fellow soldiers works very well, and her general good nature makes her the kind of heroine audiences can and should root for. That she ends the movie in a somewhat ambiguous relationship with Li Shang is a bit of a different twist. Sure, the movie implies a romantic connection, but the movie also doesn’t end with a wedding like so many other animated Disney features, so I’ll call that one ambiguous, and that can be a wee bit risky for the House of Mouse.
Disney took risks in other ways here too. Using a Chinese legend as the movie’s basis and then casting a number of Asian (though not necessarily Chinese) actors is a rough start. It would have been nice if Disney cast exclusively with Asian actors if not outright Chinese ones. Heck, Li Shang’s singing voice comes from the not-at-all Asian Donnie Osmond. But it is what it is, and I don’t know enough about the real story of Mulan to know how faithful this movie is. If anything, the only really problematic casting comes in the form of the movie’s token talking animal.
I’m referring to Mushu the dragon, as voiced by Eddie Murphy. Hearing Murphy’s very distinctive voice coming out of the dragon, I was struck by the idea that Disney was hoping to use Mushu the same way they did Robin Williams’ Genie, where the character was basically just the standard character as performed by his famous voice actor. And while the Genie had a lot of Williams’s charm and fit the narrative for Aladdin very well, Mushu seems more like an afterthought or distraction. His adventures seem to add little to the plot or connect much to Mulan directly.
Overall, I liked this Mulan but didn’t love it. I’m looking forward to seeing how well the remake handles the material later this year.
Grade: B-
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