An average movie

Even though this movie didn’t get much love when it was released (it has a rather weak 5.5 rating on IMDb), since this movie was finally available for free on Disney+, I thought I might as well check it out. Well, I thought it was a decent live-action adaptation but, to be honest, not much than that. I mean, Disney at least did their best to be respectful by avoiding any whitewashing and by toning down most of the humor displayed in the animated version (so no Mushu here). In fact, the first half was fairly identical which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing but they could have fleshed out to the supporting characters. Eventually, the only major deviation was to make Mulan revealing her true identity instead of being discovered more or less by accident. Even though I understood this choice (it did make her more honourable and stronger in general), I’m not sure if it really worked though. Indeed, the whole point of this tale was that Mulan makes a conscious decision to dishonour herself and her family so she could fight to save her kingdom and prevent her father from dying in battle. However, to double back this way, it did make her original decision rather pointless. On top of that, it seemed actually rather selfish to decide to reveal herself in the middle of a war going on with the Rourans, as if they really had the time to deal with her identity crisis and new sense of guilt. To make things worse, after this reveal, she was first banished and shamed but, then, a few minutes later, she was already leading a squad of soldiers and this switch was just jarring, probably even more than in the animated version. Finally, it always seemed to be some kind of wishful thinking to believe that Mulan would be eventually heralded and seen as a true warrior by the emperor and the rest of the Chinese empire, even after accomplishing so many incredible deeds, but and that was always the weakest point with this tale. Anyway, to conclude, even if it seemed to be another rather pointless live-action adaptation from Disney, I still think that Niki Caro did a solid job, it is still an entertaining tale so I think it is worth a look, especially if you like the genre.