The hype surrounding Disney’s new Mulan seemed to paint a more encouraging picture than what audiences have come to expect from the studio’s live-action remakes of its animated classics. And in some ways, the film does deliver on the promise of an improvement. A few years ago, this U.S./China co-production might’ve been the victim of Hollywood whitewashing (see: The Great Wall), but Disney has now prized authenticity and assembled an all-Asian cast of Chinese megastars and Hollywood regulars. At the helm is the underrated Kiwi director Niki Caro, one of the few women afforded a production budget larger than $100 million. It’s not a beat-for-beat re-creation or a joyless rehash of the animated original like last year’s The Lion King or Aladdin; aspiring instead to a slightly more serious action-adventure saga, it throws out the talking dragons and catchy musical numbers. Yet this Mulan makes its adjustments while still aiming to be as widely palatable as possible, and in the process, ends up short on both character development and emotional heft. Rather than lean into the more mature elements that make it stand out, the movie does frustratingly little with its noteworthy upgrades on the original, resulting in a version of the story that’s only superficially more sophisticated.
It’s no big secret that Disney envisioned Mulan as a means of conquering the lucrative Chinese market, the second-biggest box office in the world and poised to soon be the first. The absence of Mushu, for instance, isn’t exactly an inspired creative decision so much as a strategic one—the silly dragon sidekick, voiced by Eddie Murphy in the original, did not play well with Chinese audiences back in 1998. The animated Mulan is a deeply stereotypical depiction of China—an American’s understanding of the country—so the live-action remake necessarily takes a different approach. At the very least, the outcome is visually stunning, with otherworldly production design and lush costumes that recall the vivid, fantastical style of Chinese wuxia films.
Hua Mulan, still a small girl at the start of the film, chases a chicken across the rooftops of her walled, donut-shaped village, a setting modeled after the Hakka communities of southern China. From the get-go, she demonstrates preternatural physical abilities, flipping and twirling with ease to the shock and awe of disapproving neighbors. Time passes, and Mulan (now played by Liu Yifei) struggles to bring honor to her family. Caro speeds through the ceremonial makeover and jumbles the comedic notes of a tight-laced tea session with the local matchmaker. These moments might have functioned as palpable examples of how the culture’s gender norms stifle the free-spirited Mulan, but they’re never allowed room to breathe. We understand she’s suffocated because her father, Zhou (Tzi Ma, sadly given little to do), sounds like a broken record, countlessly mentioning honor and dishonor.
Mulan assumes a male identity and heads to training camp in her aging father’s stead when he receives a draft notice from the emperor. A radiant phoenix appears and guides her in the right direction when she loses her way—an unnecessary recurring bit that plainly reads like an excuse for Mulan to get lost and visit as many breathtaking locales as possible. At camp, she meets and immediately impresses Commander Tung (Donnie Yen) and her fellow soldiers, including the handsome and capable Chen Honghui (Yoson An). In a deviation from the animated movie, Mulan doesn’t become a gifted warrior through the course of her training so much as gradually reveals her latent powers.
Disney prides itself in bringing timeless values to the screen, and Mulan’s mix of feminist-lite individualism, commitment to family, and patriotism continues this trend. “Loyal, brave, and true” are the words branded on her family sword (and the name of the new Christina Aguilera song tied to the film’s release). Remembering that Mulan is in fact a children’s movie may excuse the innocuous messaging, but there’s a general apprehension to go beyond the lessons of the original in this purportedly edgier and more adult take.
The most meaningful change comes with the introduction of a shape-shifting witch, Xian Lang (Gong Li), enlisted by Böri Khan (Jason Scott Lee), the leader of the Rouran invaders from the north. Xian Lang, a practitioner of black magic and the Rouran’s most valuable weapon, has something to gain from Khan’s revolution: acceptance and the ability to live among others in peace. The sorceress goes out of her way to remind Mulan that women like themselves will never be accepted for who they truly are, which adds dimension to the heroine’s own journey of self-discovery. Xian Lang works outside and against the system to better her circumstances, but these methods prove self-sabotaging. Mulan, on the other hand, will be rewarded for her steadfast loyalty to father and crown. We’re given just enough to make sense of these implications, but Xian Lang’s storyline peters out prematurely once the action ramps up. That the script was written and rewritten by four different writers might explain the film’s disjointedness and awkward, anticlimactic emotional beats.
Meanwhile, Böri Khan and his black-clad marauders never really seem to pose the dire threat intended. Their desire for vengeance is only ever briefly touched upon. Could their anger be justified? The Rouran’s nemesis, the Chinese emperor (an unrecognizable Jet Li, donning gilded threads and topped with a luminescent halo), conveys an almost frightening godliness. The film emphasizes his strength and power, which makes him seem all the more capable of wronging the incensed northerners. What are the film’s politics, anyway? It goes unquestioned that the emperor means good and the invaders mean bad, though we’re not given many reasons why beyond the patriotic call of duty and the emperor’s visually inscribed Mandate Of Heaven.
As Mulan, Liu Yifei holds her own against Gong Li’s steely enchantress and Donnie Yen’s exacting, impassioned commander. When she releases her unruly, flowing hair and charges into battle, unfazed to be recognized as a woman, the moment is triumphant. But yet again the scene is cut short by the need to move on to the next big thing. Rather than keep up the momentum, the film’s constantly shifting backdrops—and its introduction of new elements and obstacles—flattens the mood. When our characters arrive at the Imperial Palace, shades of Zhang Yimou’s House Of Flying Daggers and Hero promise epic large-scale action. But Mulan’s wuxia parallels prove disappointingly minor, despite a brief but impressive scene of Jet Li single-handedly fending off his assailants, and the gratifying tricks of Mulan’s final showdown, an intricately choreographed, acrobatic tussle on wooden scaffolding.
These visceral, dancelike moments of action choreography are too rare; one gets the sense that Caro wanted to strike a middle ground between more realistic-looking sword-and-shield combat and the magic of wuxia-style wire-fu, and ended up inserting the latter haphazardly. Rather than exploit the dazzling setting, the director bizarrely limits the final battle scenes to small, mostly colorless spaces that throw off our sense of location. Given the impressive scope of the movie, and its lengthy runtime, it’s disappointing that Mulan never manages to breathe life into its many environments, or its plot points for that matter. Instead it rushes thoughtlessly past what matters most, hoping the pretty spectacle and cultural accuracies will suffice.
186 Comments
The Great Wall didn’t have white-washing. I do not know why that falsehood is still spread.
It was a Chinese production that cast a famous white actor so that the movie would get a worldwide release (and, hey, it worked!). The movie was also accused of the white savior trope, except that Matt Damon plays a totally ineffectual and useless character in a movie that was otherwise essentially glorified Chinese military propaganda.
Thank you for saying this. He’s a white actor playing a white European mercenary who isn’t the hero of the movie…
“Matt Damon plays a totally ineffectual and useless character in a movie that was otherwise essentially glorified Chinese military propaganda.”The Martian?
Do you ever get a kick out of watching late-80s/early-90s movies and seeing the Barely Concealed Terror of the Japanese?
I imagine we’ll get a similar kick in 20 years from watching movies of this era and seeing the And Now a Moment to Thank Our Benevolent Chinese Sponsors moments
Ha, I just watched Black Rain the other week, a classic of anxiety-fueled assimilation. Damn Japan, sending Yakuza to our country and then being too hidebound by manners and bureaucracy to catch them! Luckily some loose cannon cops can show them how it’s done (and show them up at karaoke), and maybe learn something about honor themselves.
Ridley Scott’s finest hour! Well, perhaps not, but don’t you love how much the poster sounds exactly like how you described the film?
Rising Sun!
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/JapanTakesOverTheWorld
No, Rounders.
So he was Kurt Russell off Big Trouble In Little China?
It’s an example of a sadly prevalent phenomenon where the Twitter reaction to the first trailer still dictates the perception of a movie years after it came out and much of that criticism proved to be unfounded.
But then to make an educated argument for/against that you would have to actually watch the movie, and that’s asking a lot.
Its unfortunate that so much of the criticism of The Great Wall is from people who have never seen The Great Wall, since there’s a ton of weird propagandist nonsense in there that is a lot more interesting to unpack.
I can’t be the only one who was introduced to Zhang Yimou through his earlier social dramas and finds something deeply upsetting in the lush, party-line-toeing actioners he’s made post-ban. He’s a fabulous artist and that will always come through. It’s just upsetting.
Because most of the people who bring that up never saw or researched it, just made an assumption based on trailers.
The marketing in the US did, or at least focused a lot on Damien in a way that read like the usual white guy inexplicably at the center of an otherwise non-white story. I was a big misstep because if they’d actually marketed it as a collaboration between Hollywood and the Chinese film industry, that probably would have enticed more people to see for the novelty.
Probably because it’s recent enough that people remember it, but also a lot of people didn’t see it and so will immediately buy whatever ill-informed factoid that a writer claims about it.
Oh A.V. Club. When will you ever learn?
I know, right? “[D]eeply stereotypical depiction of China,” AND they even linked that lame-ass hot take of the original. Why does AV Club seem to hate the original?
It’s like, they keep going to see movies and then reviewing them. How deluded of them!
If Mulan were in modern-day Hong Kong, what would she do?
Given her public statements, rat out her neighbors to the secret police.
Oh no, not Liu Yifei, I mean the character.
Ah, ok.
rat out her neighbors to the secret police.
So did I. This movie is basically propaganda
never watch an american superhero movie then
I’m not outright disagreeing, but what American Superhero films function as propaganda?
Hey, don’t slander Captain JoinTheAirForce Marvel! What the hell? Why does this happen whenever I type Captain JoinTheAirForce Marvel?
Don’t you mean “Ecrofair eht Noij”? Like in that chorus of that very popular, extremely non-threatening song?
This is a weird example, since the depiction of the Air Force in Captain Marvel is a toxic organization where good pilots are excluded from roles they want (combat duty) because of their gender, the male pilots are at best louche and at worst sexual harassers, and the organization as a whole covers up the “death” of a major scientist and a pilot.
That’s true, but Carol Danvers – superhero Air Force pilot – is still the hero of the movie, and the plot is about her reclaiming her identity as a human, more specifically as an American, and even more specifically as a member of the USAF. Logically, the movie’s depiction of a corrupt, toxic Air Force should translate to negative press, but the idea of a good person transforming a corrupt institution is a powerful American myth. (If nothing else, the USAF saw the movie as a sound investment.)This is why we have trouble believing in institutional racism and why there’s been so much discussion of an innocuous show like Brooklyn 99, which depicts the NYPD as riddled by corruption but also depicts heroic cops improving the system with their decency. We like the idea of broken institutions being reformed from within – it’s a conservative fantasy that masquerades as progress to assuage the conscience.
I just don’t agree with your assessment of the movie. The story is certainly about Carol reclaiming her identity as a human, but I’m not sure that it really hits that hard on her identifying as a USAF pilot. And the movie certainly doesn’t imply that Carol “transformed” the USAF in any way. She ends the movie by flying off into space and leaving the Air Force, America, and Earth behind. If anything, the fact that she is able to fly by herself at the end reinforces the Air Force as yet another set of institutional shackles that only allowed her to fly when and how they wanted her to.
I also don’t agree with you about Brooklyn 99. I don’t think the show really depicts the 99 “transforming” the NYPD at all. If anything, all it’s showing that humanity can still be practiced by individuals within an inhumane system, even if they don’t succeed in changing the system as a whole. Systems are, after all, implemented and reinforced (or undermined) by individuals.
And further, I’d push back on the idea that broken institutions being reformed from within is fundamentally a “fantasy:” whether it’s too slow or too limited in scope, that is often how progress happens in real life.
The first Captain America movie is a far better example of propaganda.
This is true, though in its defense, it was planned as part of an arc in which Captain America starts as literally an agent of propaganda, then rejects working for the government.
“A few years ago, this U.S./China co-production might’ve been the victim of Hollywood whitewashing (see: The Great Wall),”Wasn’t Matt Damon signed on at the insistence of the Chinese companies funding the movie, because otherwise Chinese audiences themselves wouldn’t have cared one way or the other about the movie?
Yeah, most people in Asia don’t really care much about the whitewashing stuff. It’s more the appropriation that hollywood does to eastern cultures that ticks them off. That example was an odd choice to use in the review.
Ding ding ding. The complaints about whitewashing are purity police in the US thing mostly.
A bit less these days – esp due to the raging nationalism in China these days – but rent-a-white-guy was a pretty big thing. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/4wb84b/chinas-rent-a-foreigner-industry-is-still-a-real-thing
yeah whitewashing as a concept doesn’t exist for Asian audiences because they don’t lack representation in their films and tv: it’s almost always all Chinese actors (or Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese, Indian, Indonesian, take your pick). This is also why the director of the original Ghost in the Shell didn’t care about Scarlett Johansen playing the lead (which didn’t make it okay, but lots of fanboys used that as proof that it was).
It’s also kinda an interesting situation because American movies are so popular in China. If you’re a huge fan of Matt Damon in The Martian, wouldn’t you want to see him in more movies, and wouldn’t it be cool to see him in a domestic movie? Since Americans typically don’t watch foreign movies (or movies produced outside of the Anglosphere, at least), there’s no similar comparison for us. The biggest foreign star in America who doesn’t make Hollywood movies is, what, Song Kang Ho?
Plus Scarlett looks a bit more like the character than critics would imply.
Plus Damon’s character is a mercenary who the actual Chinese warriors see as being a less than honorable man.
Totally. That was a classic case of everyone deciding they had a new thing to righteously fume about without really analyzing if it made any sense to do so
Yeah, but he was playing the original Chinese soldier who killed… checks notes… all those alien style monsters. Seriously, I don’t think the author even knows what the American centric term whitewashing even means.
I know that this is just one parenthetical in the entire review, but the claim of whitewashing really bugged me too. The Great Wall just doesn’t meet the definition. They’re not changing a character who used to be Chinese into whatever ethnicity Matt Damon was supposed to be. (Seriously, his accent was all over the place).
But also Zhang Yimou, one of the most important living directors, defended his choices against critics. The character was always supposed to be white, and the film basically goes out of its way to show all the ways in which China is superior to these westerners.
So you basically have a bunch of Americans yelling at a person of color auteur that his film doesn’t represent his own culture enough. It was a ridiculous situation then, and it’s still pretty ridiculous that this claim is still being trotted out years later.
The majority of Native Americans didn’t have a problem with the name “Redskins.” Not that that should stop anyone from getting angry on behalf of a group of people.
Wasn’t the whole point of Damon’s character to act as a white cipher to show how awesome the Chinese are?
Not to mention, he was playing an european character. That’s not whitewashing
Chinese fail at being Chinese enough to suit woke Americans. Irony dies some more.
Let’s get down to business: no songs?
Just the way that Chinese focus groups prefer it, I guess!
It was obvious from the beginning, honestly speaking.
Lee Suhyun from the the group AKMU sang on the soundtrack (at least for the Chinese version). Korean but home-schooled in Mongolia as a child.
Question for archers: Does that look like good bow technique? I’m not an archer, but that doesn’t look like how Legolas does it, or Hawkeye.
Its garbage- youd never hit anything with that technique. Although Hawkeye often has terrible form at least when he aims, he puts the arrow in front of his eye so he knows where its going
I’m reminded of a “The Last Samurai” thread from the old days of IMDB message boards. It started with the title “As a real life samurai, I have a few problems with this movie.”
Hahahahaha! I can only imagine his fury watching Ronin.
“As a real life samurai, I have a few problems with this movie.”That’s how I’m going to open all conversations about movies from now on, regardless of the presence of samurai in said movie.
I’m not an expert, but I see 3 big problemsString should be drawn to her face, there’s no strength or control where she’s holding it.The arrow is on the wrong side of the bow, should be on the inside.Her fingers are wrapped too far around the string. She’d have a hard time loosing it.So with all 3 points, the arrow will go nowhere near where it’s supposed to. It won’t travel very far anyway since it must have a very light draw if she can hold it that far away from her body the way her front arm is angled.
Just to add, also she needs to have that hair up. She is gonna end up seeing host fast a bow string can rip out a chunk of hair
I was going to say at least she’s smart enough to wear sleeves but I don’t think that matters much since she’s not going to get any good shots off with such poor form
Not totally sure about this but I believe the bow she is using doesn’t have an arrow rest, so there might be a logical reason for it being on the outside. (I’ve shot a Mongolian bow exactly once. I do not remember details, but I’m now even more impressed by their accuracy on horseback.)As to her positioning, it’s not that off. I was taught to keep my hand slightly off my cheek and – checked in the mirror – at the angle they’ve shown her, it looks far.
It’s been a long time since I shot a bow, I actually looked up pictures on grip and posture to make sure I wasn’t completely off base. So I might not be 100% accurate. I even generalized to pulling to the face. I was taught near the cheek but I found some places online saying to the middle of your mouth/nose.
Just from a biomechanics standpoint though, it’s actually the front arm that is worse. The arm should be more in-line with your shoulders. In her position her shoulder muscles (traps?) are working way harder than they need to in order to keep the arm extended.I just did a GIS for “ancient Chinese archery” (I am very white) and pretty much all of the drawings and pictures show the arrow on the outside, so I’m probably wrong there. I’m also seeing some pictures where the arrow is drawn back to the ear or further. Which is kind of what she’s doing there.And I just got stuck down a rabbit hole looking at their peculiar grip on the string. Looks like many of them have a thumb and forefinger grip, and use a leather thumb ring to hold the string against.
Yeah it really looks like she’s putting all the strength into the shot with her shoulders/neck instead of her back, which is bad news bears.
I don’t think the technique of pulling the bow back to the ear applies to the Asian compound bow., That’s a later innovation.
That’s all I could think of, looking at that picture. Pretty sure she needs to have her right hand right next to her eye so she can aim. Probably had to do it this way so she wouldn’t get her hair caught in the fletching. This is why female warriors should have their damn hair pulled back.
The way I was taught, you draw with 2 fingers and you rest your drawn hand on your cheek, allowing you to look either directly down the arrow, or down a sight if you use one (I do, but I learned on a pretty normal compound bow as a kid)
That’s what I mean, her hand is so far away! Like I said, hair whipping about when you are shooting an arrow is probably not a great idea, even if it looks dramatic. (I only ever did archery at Girl Scout camp, so I am far from an expert, but that photo was still distracting.)
i actually learned archery initially at boyscout camp. they also actually taught it as a unit in highschool gym, which gave me a bit of a leg up. i’ve done a bit of bow hunting (since bows make no noise, you can actually hunt in shockingly urban areas and its fine with most hunting regulations.) but mostly, i just enjoy archery- its an interesting skill, with a solid amount of fundamentals and a yet an X factor of ‘this feels like the time to release.’
also, despite what crouching tiger may tell you, you’re almost certain to lose a duel if you try to leap between the tops of swaying trees
Terrible, she’s holding it too far from her face you basically want the string to be right up against it.and it looks like her elbow is too low.
Yeah, that shot is all about framing her face, not actual archery. She is absolutely about to take out that rock right in front of her. Of course, she is going to take way too long to get her fingers released like that, so the arrow won’t have quite as much force as it should have, which might save her eyes some from the rock and shaft shrapnel.
Is this . . . real? A real comment that an adult human made? Jfc.And the fact that y’all are really answering it . . . just fucking kill me.
Military formation archery is basically used as light artillery. A large group of archers fire a mass volley of arrows from max range and it rains down on the close-packed body of enemy infantry. No expertise required.
Come on Disney, go for the live-action The Black Cauldron remake next
The Chronicles of Prydain deserve so much better.
Seems they’ve mostly been forgotten at this point. I read and loved them as a kid a long-ass time ago, but they never even hit the radar for my kids’ generation. You’d have to market them as something completely new, not referencing some supposedly beloved book series that most people probably never heard of.
I’m a children’s librarian in the Bronx and there are quite a few kids who love the series still, it just needs a small push.
But yeah in general agree that it’s hardly a huge franchise name.
That’s good to hear. It’s pretty epic as far as books aimed at kids that age go.
Well, except for the fourth one where Taran goes on his gap year.
“Huh? What’s a quiet story about the importance of gaining independence and self-sufficiency doing in my five-part bildungsroman?”
Eleven-year old me forgave all for the fan-service finale of The High King.
Yeah! It would work well as live action.
Counterpoint: Absolutely not, leave Prydain alone, these morons will only fuck it up again. But I am sort of surprised no one has gone after Alexander’s Westmark for adaptation, it’s more in the current YA framework in terms of character and plot (young people involved in rebellion/revolution) and the non-fantastical pseudo-19th-century-Germany setting would be fairly easy to reproduce. And it’s a just a good story, the second book in particular gets dark and sad in a no-good-options way that feels very real.
I keep waiting for someone to snap up Prydain and ruin it. Been thinking a lot about what YA epic series have yet to be consumed by one of these entities. They’ve plucked most of the low hanging fruit by now (Ender, Narnia, LOTR, Percy Jackson). While they’ve pretty much exhausted the Dahl catalogue with a few left (The Twits, George’s Marvelous Medicine, even Boy?) I haven’t seen anyone touch the lesser knownEdward Eager “Magic series” (Also illustrated by Quentin Blake). They feel ripe for Netflix or Disney+ original series (and are pretty bland/don’t have a lot of deeper context to mine, so perfect for either one of them).
Prydain, Westmark, and Tamora Pierce’s Tortall books haven’t been touched yet…but it doesn’t feel long. I hope whoever ends up with Prydain doesn’t grimdark it (it already is enough…) but instead leans in the characters and relationships. Taran Wanderer would be wild on screen.
Prydain has actually already been adapted as Disney’s animated movie The Black Cauldron to rather infamous results. Disney still owns the film rights, which is probably why there hasn’t been another attempt. They do have a live action adaptation in the works, though.
Yeah, I’ve of course seen the animated version. I meant as a new,full chronological series starting with Book of Three. A live adpation of just BC? That’s a bummer, it’s the second weakest book in the series!
From what I’ve heard, BC was loosely based off of two books in the series. Granted I’ve never seen the movie or read the books, so I can’t confirm that for myself. Also doesn’t change the fact that they did drop the ball from what I’ve heard.I apologize if I assumed that you hadn’t known. Your original post made it sound like you weren’t aware that there had been a (very terrible) adaptation attempt, so thank you for the clarification. And I completely get how annoying a bad adaptation can be, as someone who was a fan of Avatar: The Last Airbender, Percy Jackson, and Eragon at some point (and I still am for those first two), so I get the desire for a do-over.
Yes, the animated BC they did previously was mostly pulled from the plot of the second book, with some setup from the first. Off to do some googling on the new one! (You’re all good, I wasn’t meaning to sound aggrieved! I just meant “oh yes I have indeed seen that adaptation and erased it from my memory and am thrilled at the thought of the series being appropriately adapted!”) I really think you’d enjoy the series and based on you liking Eragon I think you’ll dig them!
OK, good. I was just making sure that there was no hard feelings because it’s hard to judge tone on the internet. I have too many books on the backburner, but I’ll check them out at some point. Thanks for the recommendation.
They’re short reads! Put ‘em in your bathroom and you’ll probably finish the series in a couple months.
The Prydain books tell one big story of course but they’re also largely standalone, I’d hate to see them yoked to the tedious “plotting” of so much TV these days. And can you imagine pitching Taran Wanderer? “Our hero lives in a world of magic and monsters and this book has almost NONE of that stuff! But it is full of great character work and a deepening sense of maturity you only understand with the passage of time!”
This is why I should be in charge of all adaptations of my childhood faves because THAT WOULD THRILL ME and I would greenlight it faster than Gurgi on some crunchings and munchings. Four episodes are just him learning how to farm poorly irrigated land with a guy who doesn’t talk much.
If you don’t think Burton has a script on his desk for that pickpocket story from The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More, then you… should start thinking that.
Ohh…OHHHH….a Dahl Black Mirror-style anthology series pulled from Henry Sugar, Skin, and The Umbrella Man. His adult shit was DARK. Your reference of Henry Sugar makes me realize I lent that book to someone like 10 years ago and then moved across the country. I wonder if they still have it?
I’m still surprised that no one but Miyazaki has tried to adapt Diana Wynne Jones yet. She has so many books that are like a bit of Dahl but with a magical discovery/education narrative.
A lot of Jones’s stuff is pretty trippy, but that’s what made the Miyazaki/animation thing a good fit. Dalemark could make a pretty cool epic, though.
Oh yes! DWJ good callout (haven’t read those in in over 25 years I think. I wonder if i still have them at my mom’s house?) and actually forgot the origin of Howl’s Moving Castle altogether!This convo sent me back to my bookshelf.
-Also untapped is the full Oz universe Tik Tok of Oz could be pretty cool in the right hands. The Nome King in a fun villain. -I am waiting for Netflix to tap the Stranger Things nostalgia tree further, and start adapting stuff by Mary Downing Hahn, pivoting away from scifi into YA thrillers that lean toward spooky-Paulo Bacigalupi’s “Ship Breaker” is a feature waiting to be made-In more recent books, I am queasy thinking about the eventual film version the Locked Tomb trilogy (once it’s completed) that’s one that in the wrong hands could be terrible and I fear for it.
I’m pretty surprised that Tortall hasn’t gotten farther – do you think it’s because of how much Alanna ages over the course of the books? Doing 4 movies that move your MC from 10 years old to 21 could lose some audiences, I guess? (Except it didn’t lose me as a reader) Or maybe it’s a budget thing. I heard that the TV adaptation of the Raven Cycle was stalled, I think. Maybe Pierce’s Circle of Magic stories would be an easier sell for adaptation – school setting, pretty episodic, but still pretty magic.
Yeah, the variance of age makes it a hard sell, because it really stops being a “kids” show half way through. I feel like to do it successfully (with an adult or teen audience in mind) you’d almost have to begin in a later book and represent how she got there through flashback? I dug the two Trickster books w/ her daughter, could be good training wheels to build out that universe on the screen.
The Wild Magic books stay solidly within a YA age range the whole time, and have all the cool animal magic powers – as long as they closed the age gap with Numair a bit that would work too, then Alanna could be a prequel (which I generally dislike, but other people just seem to love).
the non-fantastical pseudo-19th-century-Germany settingSeems more like pseudo-18th-century France, doesn’t it? It’s clearly set in a Europe that has, at the outset, not yet experienced the French Revolution or anything like it (with an alternate-history YA version of it occurring over the course of the series), and there’s an Enlightenment flavor to a lot of the political discussions. Also, Lloyd Alexander was directly inspired by his wartime experiences in France.Westmark is in my opinion Alexander’s best work, but I wonder if studios would worry that the lack of any supernatural/sci-fi gimmicks means it lacks a hook for the target audience. Prydain might be an easier sell, even if it presumably requires a higher SFX budget.
For some reason I got a 19th rather than 18th century vibe, although now I can’t remember why. The third book and its barricades certainly leans French, you’re right about that. I think that revolutionary aspect would give it an additional edge right now, and it also has more mature relationships that would work better onscreen than Taran and Eilonwy, although I’m sure any Prydain adaptation would mess them up along with everything else.
Prydain would work as a TV thing. Really give it room to stretch and breathe. Helps that the most complex special effects they’d need to figure out are things like Gurgi and one appearance from a giant housecat.
Westmark is barely available as a book. Was looking to pick it up the other week. Paper only (what I prefer, but not during a pandemic) and only two of the three books in available editions at B&N. Probably pick it up at the library at some point…
I think I had to resort to Amazon to find the third book used, which was disappointing (the resorting, not the book). I wonder why it’s hard to find whole, it appears all three books are under the same publisher. Get on the ball, Penguin.
I know! It’d cost them like $6,000 to get new illustrations for an omnibus edition. And they could sell the digital version in perpetuity (I have seen these sorts of contracts). Even if they didn’t make a ton of money on the print edition the trickle from a digital version would add up over the years.
Its on the list, problem is that list is ginormous.
I’m still personally holding out hope for a Black Hole remake with a 3-hour running time that leans into its horror side way, way more. This will obviously never happen, but a child of 80s TV syndication can dream.
Rats of NIMH pls
You probably joke, but Disney actually re-aquired full movie rights to the full Prydain series back in 2016. It’s been reported by various sources (most recently confirmed by reporter Daniel Richtman in June) that some kind of live action adaptation is still definitely in the development phase for the series though details are still very scarce.
So, it’s a propaganda piece for the Chinese government, then? “Just be loyal and beat the foreigners and you will be rewarded, but also, no fundamental changes to social structure.” How utterly unsurprising.
I mean, it’s Mulan. It’s an established children’s movie, based on a 6th century Chinese folktale. Mulan doesn’t overthrow the Communist Party and impose democracy, Mulan joins the military and fights the huns for the honor of her father and the king. It’s on the package, and I think it’s tough to blame the movie for being an adaptation.
I mean, it’s not. Also doubly propaganda-ish in not doing anything about the star saying regretful things about policing in Honk Kong.
It is unfortunate that the actress apparently outed herself as a raging pro-party nationalist.
And she’s spewing all the pro-party nationalism as a US citizen.That’s why she had to walk back her comments (and identify herself as “Asian” vs “Chinese”) when they started marketing the movie in the US. But then now that the Disney+/VOD release may cut severely into the US box office total, Disney now recognizes that the Chinese market is more important once again. Though American-backed movies, even with an all-Asian cast, have not had great success in China. Plus the rampant piracy from the VOD will help ensure a low box office total there as well.
I am intentionally asking my family and friends not to watch this movie because of her anti-Hong Kong views.
Someone claimed she’d been forced to say that by the Chinese government. Don’t know if that was true though.
She’s a US citizen.
True but doesn’t she have family in China?
I mean yeah, of course, but the EXACT same can be said about most american movies: just be loyal, beat the foreigners, no fundamental change to social structures, reward, EVERYTHING.You can even track down real-life political crisis by the nationality of american movies vilain. Remember that time around the Irak War when the vilains were french (even the one in the Zorro movie) ? Now they tend to be russians.
The Nazis are the old standby. Everyone likes seeing them get killed.
You mean like the super popular line of superhero movies where an American billionaire and an American soldier team up with a Norse god to save the world because no one else has the guts?
The difference is that, based on this review, the bad guys in Mulan have no depth or motivation at all. They’re just bad guys doing bad things.In the Marvel movies, both the heroes and the villains have a lot more nuance. That American billionaire might save the world in one movie, but in the next movie, his arrogance (fueled by paranoia and a savior complex) result in him creating a killer robot and the heroes end up destroying an entire city in their effort to stop it. That American soldier fights for the US, but he also turns against the intelligence agency he was unquestioningly serving when it turns out—oops!—they’ve been secretly run by Nazis the whole time. The Norse god is immature and unwilling to do his duty of ruling his people. The heroes are obviously the good guys, but they have faults and nuance.
The villains, too, have their own motivation. Loki’s drive for power is motivated by centuries of being treated like second fiddle to the Norse god you mentioned and a childlike desire to just be recognized for who he is. Thanos isn’t a mindless killer: he’s a deranged environmentalist. Hela is a warrior who felt betrayed when her father shifted his priorities from conquest to peace. Ronan justifies his need for exacting bloody national revenge with religious zealotry. There are some exceptions: Malekith in Thor 2 is pretty shallow; Caecilius (?) in Doctor Strange isn’t very fleshed out; I don’t remember the villains from the Iron Man movies, to be honest.It’s not hard to create villains who are clearly villainous while also giving them some motivation or humanity.
Yeah but general meddling aside, the Russian boogeyman really isn’t the massive geopolitical threat CNN/Twitter makes it out to be.
We’ve hit an interesting point where the actual new cold war is the one brewing between US and China, yet all the billion-dollar corporations are happy to prostrate themselves in front of the CCP in the name of profit so it’s back to Ruskis as the designated bad guys.
I mean that’s the implications of my comment… my comment is: the US movie industry produce a fair amount of propaganda… and propaganda produce acceptable targets.
The french exemple was pretty telling, they were not vilainized because they did something bad:; both countries are have allies for a long time; but because they did something good but impopular at the time: refused to follow the US to Irak.So the Russians being presented as vilain isn’t at all a testimony on weither or not their country poses a threat (they don’t, not to americans anyway, to other countries in the region, yes, absolutly but not to the USA) but weither they are acceptable vilains to the average joe going to the movies.
Aside from the Zorro movie, what other American movies had French villains?
From 2004: Ocean’s 12, for exemple.
FWIW the SWAT movie (2003) features a French drug lord as the bad guy.
Oh yeah, I remember that one now that you mention it. Thanks.
Just a quick fuck you for mentioning SWAT, because I’m going hear Olivier Martinez yelling “ONE HUNDWED MEELYUN DOLLAHRS!” in my head all day.
I don’t know. Should it be “if someone invades your land and kills you citizens and brings an evil sorceress with them, you should totally listen to their propaganda presentation first before resisting them?”I mean, in Infinity War the plot is not “Hey, lets listen to Thanos’ pitch on the snap first before we try to stop him.”
Well, the evil sorceress is a bit of a tough sell, but it’s possible to have invaders who aren’t invading just because they’re mindless evil drones. The Goths invaded the Roman Empire, not out of malice, but because they were facing pressure of their own from invaders on their north and east. And Rome’s response (in some cases) was to allow the Goths to settle in the borderlands in return for defending the border.
And since you mentioned Infinity War, while Thanos is clearly evil for the way in which he tries to implement his goal, he at least has the nuance of being a Cassandra who watched his own planet destroy itself over dwindling resources. He’s obviously a villain, but he has some nuance.
Based on this review, the invading Rouran have a thin justification of “vengeance” for invading China, but it’s not explored, so they’re basically just Bad Guys Who Do Bad Things. Did the Chinese emperor brutally subdue the Rouran decades before? Were the Rouran expelled from their lands so China could build the Great Wall? Without exploring what they are avenging, there’s no nuance to either the heroes or villains.
Yeah, and what’s with that Jeanne d’Arc woman in France? Why is she fighting the English in Burgundy? Doesn’t she understand that the English, with their Magna Carta, were on the path to developing democracy unlike the French, who were centuries behind on that!
The original story is: Even a woman went to war, so if you’re a man refusing to go then you’re worse than a woman. The audience is supposed to be young men, and the lesson is sexist. This is better than that?
Honestly I found all the controversies more interesting then anything else. I wonder if it’ll make more money on Disney Plus.
Not really since stupid Disney just announced you can watch it for free on Disney+ in three months. Most people will just wait.
True. The budget on this film is massive. 270 million I think. Its why they waited so long for a platform release. But announcing it’ll be free in three month’s is a real tactical blunder. I wonder if it’s just a cut your losses sort of move.
They can’t win either way. “It will cost $30″ – How dare they charge that!“It will be free later” – Idiots! Now I will wait!I still think they would have been better off just waiting with it.
I have a hunch that if it does well at all and the theatres reopen, we’ll see a big-screen release of the 3D version come December.
“Caro speeds through the ceremonial makeover and jumbles the comedic notes of a tight-laced tea session with the local matchmaker.”Oh sugar, this is one the funniest Disney animated scenes, and the animated film used it as a way for us to connect to Mulan as a character very quickly. That attempt at cheating on something your parents cared about more than you was I think very relatable for any young audience. But this is the only live action I was excited for since it seemed to attempt doing it’s own thing a little more, so I’ll watch!
“(Tzi Ma, sadly given little to do), sounds like a broken record, countlessly mentioning honor and dishonor.”That’s a shame — considering the addition of the witch, his advice to “float like a leaf on the river of life, and kill old lady” would be very appropriate.
She presumably floats on that river because she’s lighter than a duck?
It’s a fair cop.
These visceral, dancelike moments of action choreography are too rare; one gets the sense that Caro wanted to strike a middle ground between more realistic-looking sword-and-shield combat and the magic of wuxia-style wire-fu, and ended up inserting the latter haphazardly.That’s a shame. I was genuinely interested in seeing someone graft the grandeur of Western fantasy settings (and their sfx budgets) with the choreography and aesthetics of the current crop of wuxia movies. Something like Lord of the Rings meets House of Flying Daggers.
Too easy. I mean it’s true but still too easy.
I mean, did anyone had any hope for this one? By now we have enough evidences that life-action remake of Disney properties:1/suck
2/Often make tones of money nonetheless so there’s little incentive to make them suck less.This one also had to deprive itself from the songs! The writting was on the wall.
Eh I was looking forward to this one more because it was going to be quite a bit different from the animated one. Ill still probably see it, but since I can watch it for free in December, I doubt I will give them 30 bucks for me and my wife to watch it now
Apparently there’s a live action Lilo & Stitch in the works. What a stupid idea.
I thought The Jungle Book and Pete’s Dragon were good. Dumbo was okay; at least it tried to add to the story. I had high-ish hopes for this.
Jungle Book was a snooze-fest IMO
I don’t want to support a movie that might benefit the Chinese regime in some way.
A few years ago, this U.S./China co-production might’ve been the victim of Hollywood whitewashing (see: The Great Wall),Yeah, no. Matt Damon was there at the behest of the Chinese, partly because they wanted a big well known western name to sell it better in the west, and partly because they thought it would actually sell better in China as well. Neither was there any Chinese character replaced by a western actor. There is ZERO instance of “white washing” with that film.
It goes unquestioned that the emperor means good and the invaders mean bad, though we’re not given many reasons why beyond the patriotic call of dutyI mean, that is pretty much unchanged from the original.
I am genuinely curious, which is closer to the original tale? Plain but courageous daughter who goes to fight in place of her father to uphold his honor? Or person with exceptional, almost super human skills who fights? I feel like the first one is more courageous and interesting. The other is closer to a super hero origin story.
Maybe Covid-19 just saved us from a summer of mediocre movies. C+ across the board it seems. Tenet, Bill and Ted, now this.
#BoycottMulan because1) Liu Yifei publicly supports the brutal Hong Kong police, who no longer serve the people but the Chinese regime, an unelected corrupt genocidal dictatorship.2) Donnie Yen publicly supports Emperor Xi Jinping and the oppressive National Security Law imposed in Hong Kong by the Chinese Communist Party.
What a fucking bummer about Donnie Yen.
Yes, it is. Jackie Chan sold out to the Communist regime a long time ago, and Chan is now irrelevant in Hong Kong, but Donnie Yen, who we wanted to follow on Jet Li’s footsteps, well, surprised us with his endorsement of the Chinese regime’s actions. I mean, he was in Rogue One!
Or maybe these actors simply “support” not having their families rounded up and shot or being sold to the highest bidder. The Chinese government has ways of garnering “support” that are usually only found in grindhouse horror movies. Maybe you shouldn’t judge what you clearly don’t fully understand.
Donnie Yen has an American passport. Liu Yifei has an American passport.Donnie Yen doesn’t live in China, and is not a hostage of the Chinese Communist Party. His career however, at least from the studio’s point of view, needs Chinese audiences, so it’s a business decision, if you may. Sure, go ahead and market your new movies in China and show up to promote and all, but do NOT fucking promote policies that destroy previously guaranteed freedoms in Hong Kong. It’s none of his business.Liu Yifei lives in America. Not sure about her parents. She does not live in Hong Kong, and her support of the Hong Kong police is something she publicly posted on WeChat, China’s social media chat platform, while the police continuously escalated their violent tactics against peaceful anti-government protesters in Hong Kong (the second half of 2019). She could simply just promoted her movie, and not mention Hong Kong at all, but WeChat is a tool of the Chinese government that is 100% monitored, and perhaps she wanted a few million likes. I bet Disney’s pissed at her comments. The thing is that she lives in America, with an American passport and nationality, not in China extolling the great things about China and supporting the Chinese regime like a patriotic celebrity, so that makes her a hypocrite too.Disney’s Mulan, by the way, is already in torrent sites.#BoycottMulan
Donnie Yen is based in Hong Kong and so would have family there and freinds and other people he cares about so it probably not just a “business” decision.Lui Yifei is the daughter of a government official and again has plenty of family still in China. It is entirely possible she was pressured or threatened or coerced or even just brainwashed. Modern Chinese political culture shares a lot in common with Nazi Germany plenty of people feign support for the government out of fear of reprisal. Especially those with family in government positions. I just don’t think you get to judge what someone else’s position unless you try to understand it first and I don’t blame anyone for protecting their family.Frankly your hitting on one off my least favorite aspects of cancel culture, that its always the privileged assholes shouting the loudest thinking the should somehow define woke because they read Reddit.
I don’t think Liu was forced to make the WeChat comment she did. Her choice of words appear to prove those were her opinions. Yen has been exposed by retweeting tankie comments, plus there’s video of him enthusiastically shaking Xi Jinping’s hands, and of him appearing on a variety show wearing blackface.Personally everyone is entitled to their opinions and their choice of sides when it comes to politics, and most just don’t voice these opinions. When they choose to do so, they should expect repercussions. Liu and Yen both did. Jet Li and Gong Li didn’t; they’re both Chinese but have Singaporean passports. The latter two knew better.
Going to go out on a limb and say that this movie is getting gently “inflated” by critics who very much wanted to like it more they did. I feel a little bad for the lead actress, who was about to get an enormous break only to have the movie more or less relegated to VOD, but I’m seeing a lot of variations on this review’s “she holds her own” assessment, which generally read like attempts to skirt around the truth that neither she nor the film are that good.
I don’t really feel bad for her, nah. She’s a hypocrite who is all for protesters getting the shit kicked out of them by the Hong Kong cops while she’s in safety thanks to a US citizenship. Liu Yifei can take a walk.
Cops will probably look out for her if she does.
So you’re telling me that they’ve replaced I’ll Make A Man Out Of You, literally the only thing anyone cares about the film with a Christina Aguilera song? Why? Why is SHE doing the theme? Why not hire like Jackie Chan or like a Chinese singer to do the theme? This sounds like a dire film.
… you’re aware that Christina Aguilera sung the climactic ballad in the animated original, right?
Aguilera was the main singer for “Reflection” in the original film.
You’d rather they brought back Donnie Osmond?
Free Hong Kong!
I wanna know if there is blood in this Disney movie, like when people get struck with swords and shit? Curious how graphic disney is willing to get on their streamer
I’m really disappointed that they changed this to give Mulan special powers. One of the things I really liked in the original is that she becomes good by working really hard and by being clever, not by being born with special abilities. Chosen one stories have their place, but I like seeing emphasis put sometimes on working to get good at something you care about. Even pro athletes, while born with plenty of inborn talent, get to where they are through tons of hard work. One of the things I really liked about Alanna in the Tortall book series, for example.
115min is now considered a lengthy running time?
Initial previews had the film looking very impressive indeed. Then we got scenes of the ‘evil witch’ and the CGI swordfighting and I was “…oooooh.”
In a deviation from the animated movie, Mulan doesn’t become a gifted
warrior through the course of her training so much as gradually reveals
her latent powers.
I think you’re under-selling how much of a huge mistake this change really is. It ruins the story on a fundamental level. Now, Mulan the character has no arc!
***SPOILERS***
She doesn’t grow as a soldier- because thanks to introducing magical “chi,” she’s already better than everyone, rather than seeing her work at it. The whole point was this was a girl that could be anybody, and that is something kids can relate to far better than basically giving her super powers. In the original, joining the army was not only dangerous because she would be uncovered, but because she had 0 battle experience. This was scary, and something she had to conquer. It added to her stakes.
When she releases her unruly, flowing hair and charges into battle,
unfazed to be recognized as a woman, the moment is triumphant.
That’s the idea, but it was a hollow moment imo. To connect to the triumph, I need to know exactly what she’s overcome, which hasn’t been much at this point in the story. Disney’s rah-rah message about being yourself, again undercuts her character, because she hasn’t really learned anything. In the original, she’s discovered after her injury, which teaches the lesson that you can’t keep lying forever. She’s shamed, and then has to redeem herself. This movie does none of that work for Hua Mulan. (Besides, she sheds her armor mid-battle, and it makes no sense)
There is something ‘American wealth class’ about taking a story of someone of humble origin who grows and switching it to someone inherently superior by birth. Basically, Mulan = Eric Trump. I’m reminded of TV executives in the 90s who would insist working class lead characters be turned into business owners because nobody cares about the working class. So we got Lorelai Gilmore turning into Leona Helmsley.
1. That change has nothing to do with the “American wealth class”. The remake is now more faithful to the source material: it was the animated movie that removed the chi aspect.2. I challenge you to make one comment that doesn’t feature your irrelevant strolls down memory lane.
It also detracts from the feminist message of the film. The message to young girls in the original was: you too could be a strong warrior if you work hard (and with a little cleverness). Now, the message is: if you’re already super-gifted at martial arts from birth, you can be a strong warrior. It’s no longer “girls can do it, if they are given the chance to try” it’s “this one girl is really special and she doesn’t have to try, she can already do it.”
But that’s the original story. She already knew how to fight and was a badass. It’s the cartoon that changed everything. Don’t blame this movie for adhering to the source material.
Not one change improved on the original animated film SPOILERS:The movie turned Mulan into a freaking Jedi. That was awful. Not one change improved on the original animated film (maaaybe the mid film reveal, because it was her choice, but even that was forced by the villain). The Jediness was also turned off and on randomly (the final beam fight made no sense because she had already showed superlative skills; our Jedi was also followed by a whole squad in her way home and she never noticed). The Sorceress redemption came out of absolutely nowhere, and it follows a modern pattern of never making female villains unredeemable. That’s faux depth. Bori Khan, in a mission of vengeance was far more fit for a sort of awakening. BTW, turning the main invader into an outright sexist (the original animated villain hated Mulan because she was an enemy, not a woman) was a huge artificial stepback. The finale which sees Mulan being offered a post twice in the exact same wording in five minutes makes no sense. The edition in fight scenes was confusing. My main gripe is making her a Jedi. Preternatural skills, basically turning her into a “chosen one” really undoes the message of the story.
It’s a spectacle, you have to at least give it that. The cinematography is gorgeous and the CGI backgrounds are so well integrated that I couldn’t distinguish between the real and the fake.Also, Tzi Ma has been killing it lately — he’s made Tigertail, Mulan, and The Farewell so much better through his earnest performances.Spoiler alert, I guess. Even though we pretty much all know the story because it’s a story as old as time and the animated movie exists……My biggest gripe is that I wish they had injected more humor. Such as:1) When Mulan is holding the witch as she dies, she should’ve screamed into the camera as it zooms out: “KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!” I mean come on, the evil guy is literally named Khan!2) When she receives the gift of the sword at the end of the movie, when asked what it says on the back, she should’ve read: “I SAVED THE EMPIRE AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS STUPID SWORD”.Okay, I’m kidding. But seriously, more humor would’ve been very welcome.Also, I had no idea that the emperor was Jet Li. I’m glad I didn’t, because it was genuinely surprising when he kicked ass. No wonder he said he’d kill another Khan with his hands. Of course he would! He’s Jet Li.Also — the witch actually helped her more than any other person in the entire movie. Give her the MVP, please.
All of my friends who have seen are all giving it a 3/10. It’s not good. So I will pass on “Disney Kung Fu”.