[EN] Mulan (2020) 📽️
Mulan – Disney (2020)
There are things that some people will like, while others will not. Mostly when someone fiddle around old and well known classic story. What happened with live action remake of Mulan? Let’s find out :)
There was a little village, where lived a family. In that family, there was a girl named Mulan, our protagonist. As a girl she was supposed to do certain things, but not that she would like to do. One of the scenes shows us that the Chi is strong in her. She would like to be a warrior, not a housekeeper, as others expect her to be. And that’s the beginning of trouble…
I could write a detailed comparison of both versions, as there are more differences than similarities… For example changing of dragon Mushu to guardian phoenix or changing the lucky cricket to… a guy with such nickname. But I’ll limit myself to my opinion. First of all I’ll state it straight – I have nothing against changes in a convention of a movie as we knew it in an animation. If everything was the same – what sense and fun would it bring? It could be boring and critics would call it a flop, a selling of the same thing twice. Now we have something new in every scene. If you’re familiar with actions from Eastern comics or animations such as running on walls, you’re home then. If else… Well. It will be an opportunity to see them ;) But again, it’s not that those elements were taken in just to be. With the help of them there is some kind of surreal atmosphere, some kind of Far East fairytale. This makes sense, isn’t it?
It’s not about fights, fight choreography or even about conflict of good vs evil. There is something above that, but those are still present. It’s a story about becoming, overcoming your own self, finding oneself. There are no songs (excluding credits roll) and the presence of fights to death (without blood, though) rise the level of the movie from kids movie to the story for more adult viewers. And the message of the movie goes this way too. In life there is more than strict rules, there is a place for something ‘softer’ as heart – and something else, that I’ll not uncover at this point.
Mulan is a good movie. I’m happy to see a vast amount of references to the ‘original’. They’re not so complicated, so you’ll catch them even when you haven’t seen the animation. Subtleties. As for some zealotry in showing superhuman actions – there’s a word for it. Theatricalization. Not as in dramatization – but as showing things in a more exaggerated way. By this mean one can better show others the true meaning of things. I know that some will not like that. Just try to look at the new Mulan as Mulan, not a clone or new version of the old movie’s heroine. I think she would be glad about that ;)
Final grade: The queen is not dead, long live the queen!