Nicole Liu

When I first saw the trailer I was a bit disappointed that Mushu and cricket were nowhere to be found but understood that it would be complicated to do the CGI. I had high hopes for the live action because the animated movie was incredible. Mulan is a totaly normal girl who takes her father's place in the army and has to fight her way to get stronger and earn respect. In the end she turns into a badass warrior who is different from any other Disney princess. And to me one of the most simbolic scenes on the movie was when she cut her hair and put the armor on, which shows that if her father's life is on the line she won't hesitate to sacrifice her honor. That itself is incredible act of bravery. But in the live action, Mulan had already been trained since her childhood. She was already a prodigy and barely struggled when she arrived at her camp. She willingly revealed her identity and it was relatively easy to convince her peers that she deserves respect in the army. This obviously wouldn't happen in so easily in real life (just like it didn't in the animated version), specially during the Han Dynasty. So there was basically no character developement and it wasn't cohesive. There was no General Shang or musical, which for me was a bummer but it didn't bother me as much as the plain character development. I do understand that Disney changed a lot of things because the 1998 movie was not received well in China, but the elements that were cut off took away everything that made Mulan such a great and inspiring movie. And I recently found out that they filmed some shots near camps at Xinjiang where Muslims are being detained and most likely murdered because of their culture and religion. I can't believe Disney had the guts to film in a place where a cultural genocide is happening. Throughout it is was disappointing, specially since Mulan is my favorite Disney princess and I'm a chinese descendent so it's amazing to see a strong representation of a chinese woman. But in the live action, she was just plain. And Disney turning a blind eye on human rights (which isn't surprising) is disgusting.