lil'asian squat

Visually beautiful. I liked how the writers attempted to make changes instead of directly copying from the cartoon. Gong Li was epic in this film (her part was totally unnecessary to the story though). She radiates power, wisdom and grace and her costume design is gorgeous. That being said, the film itself had many flaws. Mulan in this film was already a perfect warrior from the beginning of the movie when they showed her as a young girl. I get that the director wanted to showcase a strong woman, but a strong woman does not need to be perfect. A woman who is imperfect, who struggles and fights for what she wants is, to me, is a strong woman. Throughout the film, Mulan barely struggles to get what she wants. She breezes through every obstacle that was thrown in her way, from the training, to her gender reveal, to the final battle with the main villain. None of her successes feels earned because she does not have to work hard for them. Also, I do not understand why the director wanted Mulan's facial expressions to be so limited. She was acting in a poker face and speaking in a quiet, monotoned voice for the entire film. I thought Disney wanted to make a movie that was more true to the legend of Mulan and Chinese culture. The director overly uses the words "HONOR" and "CHI". Whenever I heard those 2 words in the film, my eyes rolled so hard. To me, this is the most stereotypical theme to do. There is more to Chinese culture and kung-fu than honor and chi! We already know the concepts of honor and chi because it has been told to our faces for every single American-interpreted Chinese movie that has ever existed! Mulan's story and all Chinese legends in general have so much to teach us; that is why their stories are still being analyzed and studied to this day! Why didn't the director try to explore other themes? Why does it always have to come down to honor and chi? Though the theme has been overdone, I know it can be done well. I do recognize the cartoon Mulan is an example that took the concept of honor, and went into depth and complexity. Plus, they didn't just talk about honor, they SHOWED important aspects of honor through the characters' actions and SHOWED what honor meant to each character. In the live action, there is too much talking about honor and not enough showing, making the script extremely saturated with the usage of the word "honor" and the story very one dimensional. Same goes with the live action's concept of chi. This movie was advertised to be ground-breaking and was supposed to represent Chinese culture well. I mean, that's why Mushu and the music was cut out, right? After watching the movie, I can say the ads were just bluffing in order to hype people up to pay THIRTY-SIX DOLLARS to watch the film. If they truly wanted to make this film accurate, they should have also skipped out on including a useless witch and the annoying phoenix. And if they wanted to represent Chinese culture, they should have included some Chinese language in the script like how Pixar included Spanish for COCO.