Film Review: Mulan (2020)

Director Niki Caro's new rendition of Mulan deserves a certain amount of credit. Where most live-action Disney remakes skew too closely to their source material, Mulan instead tries something new; the film is a solemn martial arts war epic about duty, honor and realizing one's potential. However, Mulan only gets credit for the attempt and nothing else. It tried and oh dear lord, did it fail.

Comparisons to the 1998 "original" are inevitable. The film even invites them, using notes from "Reflections" in its score and using lyrics as dialogue. The casting of Donnie Yen and Jet Li further call Chinese martial arts films like Hero and Ip Man to mind. None of these comparisons are favorable.

Mulan feels and looks like an assortment of different tones and styles held together with hope and duct tape. The film tries to be a serious affair, but there are constant nods toward other media and unbelievable wire work that take the viewer out of the experience. The best martial arts are entirely behind their tone from the get-go, but that isn't true here.

This is especially true of Mulan's opening. The film opens with a sequence detailing Mulan's experience as a child and climaxes with Mulan parkouring down from a roof. The sequence immediately cratered the rest of the film's expectations and, as a kicker, was entirely unnecessary. Mulan already employs a voiceover from Tzi Ma as Mulan's father, which is more than enough to set up Mulan as a character without making her seem dropped in from a different (maybe even better?) movie.

The script does not get better from there. It replaces the 1998 film's development of Mulan as a warrior with a different concept; she's already a great warrior and has an abundance of "chi." Mulan just has to realize her true potential. The rest of the film generally follows the same beats as the 1998 film.

The concept of Mulan already being a great warrior before the invasion is in the original ballad. The "chi" is not. Its inclusion suggests films such as the Star Wars prequels or Captain Marvel were inspirations for Mulan. However, Captain Marvel did literally everything Mulan tries to do, but better.

Four people co-wrote Mulan and it feels like a movie-by-committee; characters'motivations change from scene to scene and make abrupt decisions that aren't telegraphed anywhere before they're made. Certain choices make no sense for these characters to make; much of the character development seemingly happens off-screen.

Granted, it's not a given it would've been much better on screen. For all it's $200 million production budget, Mulan looks shockingly low-grade. It has bad lighting and sloppy, overactive editing. Some shots have obviously artificial lighting that doesn't even consider where the light is in the rest of the scene. Light sources appear and disappear from shot to shot.

However, I'm partially convinced the lighting team was completely unaware of the camera's position in a given scene. The audience certainly isn't! The editing is so frenetic that medium-length shots are few and far between. It induces a certain whiplash in the audience that turns otherwise fine battle sequences into an incoherent mess.

This is all a shame because the cast is universally good. In particular, Jason Scott Lee and Gong Li are great as the Big Bads and have a believable power dynamic. Liu Yifel is probably the weak link as Mulan; her performance mistakes gravitas for lack of emotion. The screenplay even calls this out 15 minutes into the movie and her performance doesn't change.

It's easy to see a world where this version of Mulan is great. Unfortunately, we're not in it. The film is far from worth the $30 on Disney+ and it might not be worth the time when it's available to everyone in December.

Final score: 5.5/10