A Spoiler-Full Review of Mulan (Part 1)

While there are many who rightfully compare this to the 1998 animated movie, it deviated so much away from it in the first few minutes I knew referencing it would be like comparing a sword and a spoon.

Here's a suggestion for anyone who is going to watch it: go in with supremely low expectations. You'll at least enjoy some parts of it.

Right, here we go.

1. Chi (pronounced as chee in the movie, like a singular form of cheese)

From the first minute of the movie, you hear about chi. Mulan, the force is strong within her.

Lots of Chi. That's good. But she's a girl. So that's bad.

Because only male warriors with chi can bring honour, females with chi are branded as witches (more on this in a later part). Mulan didn't need training with the sword or spear, she had chi, so she's just really strong because of that.

With the power of chi, she can wirework across everything, pause time and sense/trigger an avalanche. Instead of making her powerful, I thought it actually made her character weak because she didn't have to earn or train her skills, maybe she's born with it. Maybe it's Maybelline. Or chi.

Yes, definitely chi.

2. Honour

Culturally speaking, yes, honour is an important thing but it's not always spoken out loud and hanging at the tip of our tongues. It's sort of a thing we learn about while growing up.

In the lower rungs of society, there's not so much honour to speak of but because Mulan's father, Hua Zhou, fought in a previous war so he hangs on that honour as if his family were nobility. The continuous harping on honour is more reflective of the rigid thinking of older Chinese, so I kinda get it.

And if such values were so important, hierarchy will play a part too. Why would the younger sister address Mulan by her name? By this time in the show, her father and mother have said her name multiple times, so no need to tell us her name.

Heck, it's the title of the movie you're watching. Generally if you call any relative who is older than you by their name, that's rude and disrespectful.

3. Colours! Bright, bright colours!

It's a Disney film so it's going to need bright colours, ya?

The cinematography was good at certain points. The costumes were nice but illogical since so colourful, diverse clothes were not easily accessible, so having everyone so well dressed and armed with colours was already distracting me from historical accuracy.

And the armor they have were so brightly coloured and intricate, no wonder the Rourans were so triggered. Everything the Rourans had was black and dark, and it's the emperor, not only took the life of Bori Khan's father, he took all the colours from their land too.

The enemy soldiers were rushing in because they desperately needed to lighten up.

4. Phoenix

The phoenix looked more like an ornamental competition sport kite than a believable phoenix.

Yes, there's no such thing as a real-life phoenix to draw inspiration from but Weta Digital pulled off Lord of the Rings, Jumanji, Avengers, Justice League, Game of Thrones, etc... did they hand off the work on the mythological bird to an intern?

And the phoenix didn't add to the story whatsoever except for one scene where Mulan sees and follows it to find the camp. All other times the animated phoenix appeared was wasteful use of budget.

Including that one scene where it spread its glorious wings behind Mulan to fight Bori Khan after losing the family sword because the emperor said she is a "mighty warrior. Rise up like a phoenix."

Completely pointless there, it didn't look cool in my opinion.

Plus, how is it that no one goes "WHAT IS THAT?!", "IS NO ONE SEEING THIS?!" because the phoenix, like the dragon, are mythological creatures which will surely make people exclaim if they see it.

Okay, so if the phoenix is something that only Mulan can see, then she is one lucky girl for that vision to lead her to the camp instead of dying in a valley.

For people dying of thirst and hunger I'm guessing they would see an oasis of water, but she might just be hungry for a KFC value meal.

5. Aiyah too many things to put in one post

I'll just share these points for now. I haven't touched on witches, the training, the leadership roles, the voice acting, the big fights, the weird love-but-not-love thing, Gong Li's role (which is a big chunk of what I wanna talk about), and then some others.

#2020MULAN #Mulan2020 #mulandisney #MulanMovie #moviereview #moviereviewer #haolan

FYI, Haolan (#好烂) is a word play on Mulan (#木兰).