Patreon Special: Mulan (Dir Niki Caro, 1h 45m, 2020)

2020 has not been a good year for Disney. Sure, Disney+ has brought them a colossal market share of the streaming arena, but with the parks closed, and with COVID-19 lobbing a cavalcade of spanners into the mechanism of their once-inevitable march forward to ever larger market shares, so their advance into the position of the most powerful media entity of all time has gone into full retreat. The damage to Disney is still untold-nobody knows the future and exactly how society, let alone mainstream cinema will adapt or recover post-pandemic and Disney will enter 2021 as an altogether more vulnerable beast, its pivot to small-scale, easily film-able series like The Mandalorian, together with an upcoming embarrassment of riches for the Star Wars and Marvel universes and beyond, where groundbreaking technology takes the place of at-present unreachable foreign locations, and high quality performances take the place of grandiose effects fests.

But back to 2020. Vast chunks of Disney's release schedule has either slid backwards into 2021 (Jungle Cruise, the majority of Marvel fare, Raya and the Last Dragon), vanished off the radar entirely (Black Widow), gone straight to streaming (the execrable adaption of Artemis Fowl and the upcoming Soul) or had limited or halted release. The long-delayed The New Mutants finally staggered onto a few screens across the world as the lock-down abated, the charming Onward's D&D meets brotherhood soul-searching appeared, disappeared and reappeared on Disney+ as the pandemic rolled in. Yet, in a year where 2020's resident pathogen put many things to the swords, from live music to Christmas, at Disney, its victim was the live-action re-imagining, and its death, in the form of Mulan, is a welcome one.

I've spoken on these marketing exercises in the form of remakes before. My worst films of 2019 were, after all, a three-way tie between the long-since irrelevant Tim Burton making a gothic mess of Dumbo, the technically excellent but entirely soulless Lion King and the nadir of the entire bizarre project so far, Guy Ritchie and what's left of Will Smith's acting career making a complete fucking mess of the high point of the Disney Renaissance, Aladdin in a charmless, ham-fisted, cinematically illiterate car crash of a film. I thought that this was the low point, a wakeup call that would shake Disney execs awake and steer future films back towards the quality of the early reimagining of Sleeping Beauty that was Maleficent and the enjoyable The Jungle Book. Unfortunately, Aladdin made over a billion dollars, a sequel is in the works (surely an adaption of the original straight-to-video touchstone, Return of Jafar?) and the machine rolled on to its next victim

And this is where things get personal. Disney might not be my childhood, may not be this integral thing in my love of cinema, but I know a good film when I see one, and, of all things, it's the odd interregnum between the release of Toy Story in November 1995 and Tangled in November 2010 that fascinates me most. In fifteen years Disney's animation department go from top to second or third behind Pixar and Dreamworks. Their live action division create hits which they then run into the ground. They distribute the works of Studio Ghibli and essentially introduce western audiences to Miyzaki and anime in general. Their parks go from global template to disaster after disaster (for further, and far more nuanced information on this part, I cannot recommend the excellent video essays of Mr. Kevin Perjurer and his YouTube channel, Defuntland enough). Michael Eisner is deposed, and Bob Iger begins to rebuild. A series of films starring B and C list super heroes begins, and so on.

But it is the films that demark this period best. Disney via Pixar begin to concentrate on CGI animated films, and, left to their comparative own devices, Disney, and latterly, Disney's begin to become experimental for the first time since Fantasia in 1940. A dark-toned retelling of Hugo's Hunchback of Notre-Dame, complete with overt religious-and sexual imagery. Treasure Planet in space. A duo of orphaned and soon to be homeless Hawaiian girls encounter an alien creature that changes their life. The tales of Hercules as Vegas show and social satire. A full-blown 1920s/30s adventure serial to find Atlantis. A film exploring native arctic American mythos. An Inca prince is turned into a llama.

I love these damn films. They're weird, they take risks, they're imaginative. And atop them all is Mulan. Alongside Fantasia, Mulan is my all-time favourite Disney film, an adaption of the Chinese legend into this huge-scaled tale of a young woman impersonating a man to protect her invalided father from going to war, in which themes of honour, the horrors of war, and female empowerment are neatly woven into the narrative. It is, please don't mistake me, a flawed film, and absolutely one that is a western interpretation of the legend (even more so after reading translations and watching Chinese made adaptions of the story), albeit one that pays respectful homage to the culture it is in, and if nothing else, bringing wider knowledge of the tale to Western audiences.

So, you can understand my apprehension when, all the way back in the mists of 2015 (before this blog, can you believe?) a live action version was announced-far before we knew exactly how much of a mess Disney could actually make of its existing properties. Fears of a whitewashed tale came and went, and throughout a focus on telling the tale in a more realistic way seemed key to Disney's approach. No Mushu? Well, OK then, it's a realistic version. No songs? Boy, there's at least a few adaptions from China (most notably 1994's The Saga of Mulan) with singing throughout, but OK. The film's delayed till 2020 to make way for (the charming but largely forgettable) Nutcracker and the Four Realms. Uh, Disney...?

And here I have to address the socio-cultural elephant in the room. I am, after all, a white Brit, most of my knowledge of Chinese politics, customs etc., coming from second hand sources. Shang's removal is, unquestionably, a Disney decision. For all the castigation of China's supposed anti-LGBT bias, this is a) politely a misinterpretation of Chinese obscenity laws that ban, uh, all sex, and b) blatantly and provably untrue from the presence of LGBT novels into shows like The Untamed. The flip-side of this is the film's largely white production team, including director, costume designer and screenwriter, telling a Chinese tale, partly shot in China, with a Chinese cast.

And this, honestly, should have sent warning bells even before the delays kicked in, and the film was eventually dumped onto Disney+ as the first, (and clearly not the last) Premium title, commanding a princely sum of £19.99 ($29.99 in the US,) on top of the monthly Disney+ charges, and twisting the knife in the back of the cinema industry, in the UK and beyond that Tenet had already stuck in and No Time to Die would remove to fatal results. A deluge of video essays, bemused tweetalongs, think pieces, enraged fans, and the inevitable comparisons that accompany each of these glorified marketing campaigns came, and went. The film released to Disney+ on 4th December, and onto DVD and Blu-ray, suffering the ignominy of being bundled with its original in what may be the single biggest swipe to this film's very existence.

For Mulan 2020 is a confused dull nothing of a film, a scrambling fudge of a production, trying at once to remake the major story beats of the 1998 film, whilst binding them haphazardly to a Chinese-market-aimed respectful and faithful adaption of the legend, whilst bringing these up-to-date for the 21st Century with the #GirlBoss and token female revisionism that has haunted these films since Cinderella. It fails in every conceivable way, from its mish-mash of Chinese cultural elements from across the country to its halfway-house between the western Synder-esque slow-mo action scenes, and the Chinese wire work typical of wuxia, to its complete and utter failure as either adaption of the existing film, or indeed as a work of cinema period.

The problems are apparent from the start. In the film's first major change, rather than being a reluctant warrior, only turning to it out of desperation, in the animated film's standout scene, she is a warrior from the start, practising with a wooden sword, whilst her father comments on her chi. It, in a single scene, undermines Mulan's character fatally-she is no longer the woman becoming the resourceful hero that eventually saves everyone from the encroaching enemy, as well as defying her own gender, through her own skill and growing talents, but because of destiny and a complete misinterpretation of chi, not as life energy, but as some (plot convenient) magical power. Following a sequence in which the child Mulan chases a chicken around their communal dwelling-a building, by the by-completely out of keeping with Mulan's northern origins-she is scolded, and told to put away such childish things.

It's...a baffling mess of an introduction; Mulan is both gifted and told to put away her gift, the film attempts to co-opt a key Chinese concept, and utterly bungles it, it throws together miscellaneous Chinese architectural styles and clothing styles without care or attention, and it tosses together a strong and attentive father figure who then instantly turns into archetypal Disney stern father, and shuts down his daughter's gift, and reminds her to keep to her place, to be a woman, rather than the warrior he and she both know she could be. It's a compromise of an opening between its three demographics, and it fails at every possible moment, and one is left, even this early into the film, wondering who is this for?

I should, as I have mentioned before, remind our audience I am merely a white Brit who, whilst fond of the culture of China, from wuxia to Chinese heavy metal, from Hong Kong action to China's burgeoning animation industry, am not culturally equipped to pick out the nuances of a majority white production team's hodgepodge of Chinese customs, cinematic tropes and so on. For this, I point you towards the excellent set of videos by YouTuber and novelist Xiran Jay Zhao upon both the original and the live action versions of Disney's Mulan, which lay out the failures as a Chinese-set work far better than I could possibly explain in written format. (I also highly recommend the blog Snow Pavillion, curated by Christine Ni, as a general overview of Chinese culture, in all the forms I've mentioned above and more).

From here we are introduced to the film's two villains, the witch Xianniang (played, in one of the film's few decent performances by Gong Li), who opens the gates of a Chinese fort to Bori Khan (Jason Scott Lee), a so-so adaption of the original film's antagonist, the powerful and excellently animated Shan Yu. The Huns are gone, and in their place, in the film's one smart move is the historically accurate Rouran, who otherwise perform exactly the same role. Their plan, of course, is revenge, but where the original film simply places them in an adversarial role because they are Huns, attempting to invade China, Mulan 2020 overcomplicates it once more. Bori Khan wants revenge for his father's death at the hands of the Emperor (a hopelessly underutilised Jet Li), whilst Xianniang is, for all Gong Li's attempts to give her empathy as a henchman trapped in servitude to the villainess by her gender and the very nature of being a powerful woman in ancient China, a character that exists simply as a foil to Mulan herself.

From here, the film essentially clicks to an on-rails adaption of the original film, with minor details added or subtracted, But even this feels strangely fragmentary, the familiar snap-to of these Disney adaptions into the well-worn path I've walked before with previous films of this type. It is, utterly, lacking the soul, the charm, the fun of the original. No moment captures this better than Mulan's departure. In the original film, it is this wordless, astonishing piece of animation, with Jerry Goldsmith breaking from his symphonic score to back this moment with synthesiser, building it to an almost Rocky-esque moment of decision as Mulan cuts her hair, arms herself, and sets off to war.

Even among the rest of the film, it's a break from the Disney formula; whilst Reflections is absolutely Mulan's "I want" song (its iteration on the 2020 soundtrack by Christine Aguilera, reprising her work on the original film is pleasant but adrift from the rest of the movie), this is her great moment of decision. A lesser film would accompany this with a song, but here the music, the animation, the moment stands alone. 2020 botches this, completely. There is none of the desperation, of the sense of struggling to do the right thing, none of the gravitas to this scene.

Crucially, the haircutting, and Mulan armouring herself, this great moment of physical transformation, this great moment of significance in the very culture that this film allegedly pays homage to, is lost. Mulan remains, even under heavy armour, dirt and the pretence of being male, long-haired and feminine, as though the film is scared in some bizarre way of playing too much into the inherent queerness of Mulan's story that a western audience, and indeed a Chinese audience could read into the film; when she finally emerges out of the guise of Hua Jun, it is as a long haired, scarcely armoured warrior, this overtly feminine image that, for a film about the blurring of lines and equality between genders, leans heavily back into conservative sensibilities.

Around Mulan-as-Hua Jun, once she reaches the camp via deus-ex-phoenix (her family crest, that essentially replaces both Mushu and Kri-kee) are what passes for characters. Gone are the comic relief trio of the original who play perfect foils to the straight laced Ping, in their place are, in honestly, three of the same character, largely interchangeable, Chen Honghu, played by Yoson An, who eventually plays the romantic foil to Mulan, and Donnie Yen's Tung, who plays the leadership half of Shang's character. Neither of them do anything in this film; Yen does his best, but in this flat, featureless film, he and the high quality supporting cast are left floundering in this strange mire where they aren't allowed to do anything; this strange attempt at third-wave feminism ends up with Mulan as the sole practical member of the army, single-handedly fending off the Rouran, single handedly defeated Bori Khan, single-handedly saving the Emperor, whereas the original film placed her in the company of equally practical and skilled warriors.

These fight scenes are, in brutal honesty, the worst single thing about the film. Let's talk about what this film is trying to do; in brutal, exacting honesty, Mulan is trying to, finally, break Disney into the Chinese market, once and for all. To call China unreceptive to Disney in general is, of course, unfair-the country sports more parks than anywhere but Japan and the USA itself-but their cinematic output has been less successful-this is a market, after all, where cultural golliaths like Star Wars have floundered without the nostalgia, whilst Marvel's universality has broken them through to popular appeal where other Western franchises have failed. The original 1998 Mulan was, in all fairness, not a success in China, their cinematic quota to protect native cinema leaving the film high and dry until February 1999 by which time piracy, and the film's general release in other countries left the film with disappointing returns.

I mention this because Mulan 2020 double-downs on making this product as, at least from their point of view, Chinese friendly as possible, from the Chinese cast to the use of wuxia (loosely, Chinese martial arts movie) style action. Except what we get is this bizarre amalgam of wire work, Snyder-style slow motion action scenes, and battle scenes that only highlight how little battle scenes have moved on in twenty years since Lord of the Rings, and Disney's complete inability to shoot pitched battle. Nowhere is this more obvious than the battle scenes that replace the deeply affecting scene in which our heroes come across the destroyed village of the original, nowhere does the film replace the sense that war is wrong and a last resort with empty trudging action scenes more heinously than this. It epitomises how poorly this remake captures the spirit of the original film, let alone the legend.

What results, when the cinematography is clean enough to see what the devil is going on, the action scenes are this bizarre, messy choppy near-parody of wuxia film, turning Mulan into a practical superhero, rather than a grounded hero. The finale is this incarnate, bringing the single stupidest moment and dumbest shot, not just in this film, but in the Disney live action canon thus-far as the phoenix that has protected Mulan throughout appears behind her, and she proceeds to turn into a kung-fu master, defeating Bori Khan with ease, far from the cutting edge spectacle of the original but in a bizarrely low-key fight in a glorified building site with laughable special effects and badly edited action choreography. 

 

Mulan is nothing short of a crushing disappointment, an abjectly miserable slog of a film, absolutely devoid of either fun, charm, or seemingly any emotion other than the dull roar of boredom. It is the Disney live action project running out of steam on a scale as spectacular as it is terrible. It is a complete disaster, whether as an adaptation of the 1998 film, or a faithful retelling of the legend to win a Chinese audience, or as a westernised, feminist take on either or both of these. That this has ended in a $130 million loss may well be down to COVID-19 scything this film's potential release in twain, but its Chinese release, one of the few that, despite movement, was left unscathed, tells it all, as the film's muted opening and poor reception led to a calamitous collapse on its second week, from which it never recovered. At time of writing, despite all the efforts of an increasingly panicked Disney, this film has not made a single cent back, and the release of the altogether more critically beloved Soul without the barrier of a premium paywall speaks volumes as to the failure of Mulan

Who is this film for may well have been the question ringing through my head throughout this film, but, hours after watching it, the answer finally came to me. Nobody. This film is for nobody. It is a Chinese aimed film directed by Westerners with little care or attention to the setting or adaption, an adaption of the Disney classic that features little of what made it such, and atop it all is this curiously restrained attempt to balance the two whilst telling a feminist parable where our heroine is powered by destiny and only becomes powerful when allowed to by men. It is a catastrophic misunderstanding, even in a series of cinematic projects where little of the soul of any of these films has been retained, of what made Mulan work, the nadir, and hopefully end of the Disney Live action project. Mulan is a disaster in a year of disasters for Disney, but none have been as obvious, as messy, as disappointing as this.

Rating: Avoid at All Costs

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