True To Your Heart 🐲

**Spoiler Alerts for the remake of Disney’s Mulan ahead! If you haven’t watched it, don’t read this! Unless you want to of course :P**

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I managed to catch the remake of Disney's Mulan last week! I'm a huge disney fan, and have watched most of the remakes of the classic Disney movies. However, I was pretty disappointed with the remake of 'The Lion King'. While watching it, animal planet on discovery channel came to mind. Even though it incorporated the songs from the cartoon, I was still pretty disappointed with the animation. This is more of what I really wanted to see.

So when the remake of Disney’s Mulan was announced, I didn’t know whether to be excited or not. Mulan is another of my favorite disney movies, so I was really worried that they would butcher it. By the end of the movie, I didn’t end up as disappointed as I thought I would be. Here’s my quick review on it.

The Bad

I won't lie, I was pretty disappointed when I heard they didn't put in the musical numbers (I seriously know each song and line by heart). They did try to incorporate bits and pieces of the music into each scene though. ‘Reflection’ was played in the background of each time Mulan had a breakthrough moment, and when she was getting her makeup done in the first scene, you could hear the instrumental from ‘Honour to us all’ playing in the background.

My heart dropped further when I heard they decided NOT to include Mushu the dragon. WHAT?!

They had to change several parts of the story line because of Mushu’s absence. In the cartoon, Mulan essential lights the dragon canon (using Mushu’s breath) to trigger the avalanche. And of all things, he’s replaced by a phoenix (same colour scheme as Mushu) who was essentially pretty useless in my opinion. All it does is fly around to give Mulan inspiration and direction. Okay.. Of course I googled it and here is the reason why they film makers decided not to move ahead with Mushu.

I also felt like the movie should have been shot in mandarin, it probably would have brought on on authenticity. Most of the scenes felt like I was watching a chinese action film, so it was really odd hearing the actors speaking in somewhat broken english. I guess we had to make sure the movie was inclusive to audiences around the world.

Why does Li Shang (okay his name is not even shan anymore - it’s another dude called Honghui) and Mulan not fall in love?! Instead of a young handsome general, we get… IP MAN as the general. It’s nice to see him fight with all his fancy moves but, I felt like they forcefully scoped out roles for all these famous chinese actors, and therefore had to ‘repurpose’ Mulan’s love interest.

Totally wanted to see this scene.

The Good

Easter Eggs were fun to identify! When one of the commanders shouted' Tranquil as a forest, but on fire within', while training the troops, I got all excited and was giggling to myself ‘THIS WAS FROM ONE OF MY FAVOURITE SONGS - I’LL MAKE A MAN OUT OF YOU!’

They tried to add in elements that were missing in some ways. Instead of having an actual Cricket as a lucky charm, they replaced with with a clueless chubby man. I guess he does bring luck (and is considered lucky himself) because he does help Mulan shoot 2 men down towards the end. In the cartoon, Cricket is essential in bringing Shan Yu down!

I do have to give credit to the director on trying to make Mulan as authentic as possible (in her vision). She really did make the effort to get most of the cast from China (which is great representation) - and even as I mentioned before, watching the show really reminded me of watching an awesome chinese sword fighting action show!

I absolutely love that the message ‘Loyal, Brave and True’ comes across strongly several times in the movie - it’s also a song sung by Christina Aguilera . It’s the most important message that is brought across in both movies. Infact, ‘True To Your Heart’ by 98 degrees and Stevie Wonders (one of the theme songs for the cartoon Mulan) is still a song that’s heavily played on my spotify playlist :)

Takeaways

Nothing will EVER replace my love for the original Disney cartoon movie of Mulan (and if you haven’t yet watched it, PLEASE do!), but before I passed my final judgement on the real live action movie, I checked out this behind the scenes video of the director talking through her thoughts on planning part of the movie. I thought she really did her due diligence with her research into Mulan’s history. There were all sorts of other things we don’t even consider like filmography, which honestly sounded very complicated. I think Liu Yifei portrayed Mulan really well, and the lady herself is actually quite talented! She can sing (chinese version of reflection), has experience in ballet and also skilled in martial arts! Totally a real world Mulan! :) Both shows also emphasizes the importance of Family and Love, which most people tend to overlook these days.

Perhaps why i hold Mulan so close to my heart is because she’s someone I always thought I could be. Loyal, brave, courageous, honourable, being true to herself (and honestly she could pretend to be a guy and do all sorts of cool kungfu stuff - which was probably my dream when I was a kid). Her real power doesn’t shine until she decides to truly be herself. Mulan’s breakthrough continues to inspires me till this day because one of the most important values to me is being authentic. I love that this fuels Mulan, and brings out her inner strength. Her journey of self-acceptance is one I personally have been through myself so I can truly resonate with her dilemma.

I think the director did capture the essence of a good chinese action movie, all while trying to incorporate elements of the old cartoon (for fans like me) and showcasing the culture of China, so definitely A for Effort. Although most of what made the cartoon movie funny (comic relief and songs) was taken away from the remake of the live action movie, I felt like they were able to somewhat redeem themselves by bringing the essential, important message across to the audience.

If you’re a true Mulan fan, go satisfy your curiosity and watch the real life action movie. After that, do what I did: rewatch the cartoon movie to relive the good old days of Ping and Mushu and sing-along to the awesome songs :) Get the best of both worlds!