As a child I wasn’t a very avid watcher of Disney movies. The example I always use is that I only watched ‘The lion king’ last year for the first time.
However, I did have my favourites. ‘Pocahontas’ was magical, watched ‘The little mermaid’ about twenty times and ‘Mulan’ was my obsession. Even as a little kid I recognised that Mulan was really important. It was the first movie that gave me notion of ‘women can do it to’ aka feminism.
And so, I was obviously excited about this live-action coming out.
Last year we had Aladdin, absolute hoot! The year before we had ‘Beauty and the beast’ – another one of my animation favoutites – and that was a hoot too! Now…Mulan? Of course it will be a hoot too right?
It was more of a oh-nooh.
Trying to put a blind eye into the culture distresses of this movie, for which it had terrible PR, it was still not a good movie for a strong and fierce ‘Mulan’.
Call this movie ‘The sword warrior’ and I’ll give you four stars. Mess with my ‘Mulan’ and I give you two. Meaning, the movie was a good one but they completely destroyed the important message that moved girls and told them they can do anything.
First of all I’ll try not to get offended with the fact that they took my ‘Mushu’ and ‘Cricket’ ou the the movie – they gave ‘Cricket’ the name to one of the warriors, like that is going to replace it.
Second of all, where is my inspiring music? Dying in the background? With no lyrics and beautiful coreography? I don’t want to shout “Make a man out of youuuu”, not murmur “mhmhmhmhmhhhhmh mhmhmhh mhmhh”.
Aladdin did it right and it was amazing. The changes away from the animation made it more exciting, inspiring and modern. ‘Speechless’ gave me more of an important feeling than the whole ‘Mulan’ film did.
Now, moving on to specifics and away from spoilers.
‘Mulan’ in the animation was strong and didn’t let gender and society make her a good wife but a great fighter.
‘Mulan’ in the movie has a ‘Chi’. Everyone has it but some have more connection with it than others, it’s about practice. Sort of like you are Harry Potter and the wand can only do so much as you tell it to do.
It’s not because you can do what others do because you are a women. Everyone has a Chi. Like a magic with nature ‘you are one with nature’.
The family sword was a big deal for this movie. I believe that was the way they intended to show that she wanted to bring honor to the family.
I would have prefered to see more of a connection between her and the family than her with an engraved sword but there were far more things problematic with this movie than that.
The animation also carries nice ‘chuckling moments’, this movie is, in good portuguese ‘seco que nem um carapau’ (drier than a horse mackerel). It’s simply gone. All my favourite parts are replaced with swords and plans and evil.
As a family-friendly movie, I would think it would be more kid-friendly. Kids like cute and humor and mistakes.
Appologies that this review was biased but get triggered when someone messes with childhood memories. Let alone all the other things they messed with when creating this movie.
Overall a disappointment as ‘Mulan’ but good movie as ‘The sword warrior’, seriously Disney, think about it.
Random Chipmunk 