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Even if you view this movie objectively, without the nostalgic lens of the animated Disney film, it still comes up short. The lead actress gives a wooden performance. Her fans in China respond to this sort of criticism by saying she is improving, which in itself is self-damning of her abilities. There are some big names and excellent actors like Donny and Jet but they are underutilized and often seem to have their martial art skills being shown off in the most jarring ways. The new rendition of the story by the director is not interesting. It for some reason keeps aspects of the animated film that weren't particularly great and fills in the rest with poorly developed characters, a terribly explored B plot regarding the two villains, and inspid, badly edited battle sequences that do a disservice to both the Chinese style cinema that they are reminiscent of and the battle epics Hollywood is known for. A cheesy, poorly edited, and irritating mess. Perhaps the most damning criticism that needs to levelled towards this version is the lack of female empowerment that made the original Disney animation so fantastic in the method it portrayed. No longer does Mulan become the woman China bows to because she on her own exceeded her societal expectation, no, now she only achieves her monumental success through the unlocking of her chi... The movie tells us that she can only succeed because she has super powers. This is all besides the political issues with the movie that can be researched in their depth outside of this commentary. Simply a terrible movie, whether you have nostalgia goggles on or not. **The end credits song is rather fantastic, well done Christina Aguilera.