What a pity that "Mulan", by Niki Caro with Liu Yifei, Donnie Yen and Jet Li does not appear in theaters, because the film is made for the big screen!
From the first images, everything is striking: the magnificence of the sets, the liveliness of the colors, the precision of the lighting, the elaborate costumes and more. From the first few minutes, you also feel that Lauren Hynek and Elizabeth Martin's screenplay, reworked by Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, will have little to do with the animated 'Mulan' of 1998.
So exit the childish humor (no, Mushu is not there). Only the winks and funny scenes (that of the hen on the roof, for example) are kept. The songs are gone too, making this 'Mulan' 2020 version an epic drama or a dramatic epic of your choice that moviegoers ages 10 and up will enjoy.
This 115-minute feature film follows Chinese legend much more precisely than its predecessor. Mulan (Liu Yifei) is an excellent warrior thanks to the teachings of her father, Hua Zhou (Tzi Ma), a former soldier with fragile health. When Bori Khan (Jason Scott Lee) attempts to invade the kingdom ruled by the Emperor (Jet Li), the latter calls all men under his banner.
Mulan, disguised as a young man, goes into battle and joins Tung's unit (Donnie Yen), who becomes his mentor, while Chen (Yoson An) becomes his friend. For him, it does not take long to develop tender feelings. Following an armed confrontation with Xian Lang (Gong Li), a woman capable of changing form, Mulan resumes the fight under her true identity. This scene is the most beautiful of this film which includes many others.
In this more “adult” version, Mulan is presented as a heroine who must learn to accept who she is and to reconcile her aspirations with the respect due to her family, socially acceptable femininity being made up of sacrifice, pain and straitjacket, as illustrated by the beautiful scene of the presentation of Mulan, her mother (Rosalind Chao) and her sister (Xana Tang) in the company of the matchmaker (Cheng Pei-pei).
In addition to respecting the Chinese tale and the themes specific to it, and omnipresent symbolic elements (the phoenix, among others), "Mulan" is also an action film with scenes of fights filmed with mæstria by the filmmaker NIki Caro .
Large-scale entertainment, “Mulan” is the first live-action “remake” of the Disney studios to be truly successful. So much so that we look at it a second time to appreciate all the details.