Mulan 4K 2020 Ultra HD 2160p

Disney introduced viewers to Mulan in 1998. The plot is based on an ancient Chinese legend about a girl who went to war with the leader of the nomadic Huns Shan-Yu. With the help of her faithful companion Mushu, she disguises herself as a man and hides her real identity.

Mulan 4K Review
Hua Mulan is a lively girl from an ordinary Chinese family, whom her parents unsuccessfully try to turn into an obedient daughter and a desired wife. She has to hide her gift of war from everyone around for a long time (after all, girls are not supposed to fight), but when the emperor issues a decree from each family to send one man to fight the Mongols - and in the Mulan family, only her father is disabled, a veteran of the last war - Hua is tricked into sending in his parent's place. Now she has to stop the invasion of nomads, while not revealing the secrets of her identity.

Disney's Mulan remake is an interesting phenomenon in and of itself. Past reincarnations of the studio's animation heritage - like Favrov's "The Lion King" with "The Jungle Book" and "Aladdin" by Guy Ritchie - were promoted primarily as old stories in a new way, as a way, once again, but in a different form, to experience "the same" children's experience. With "Mulan" everything is a little more complicated: you see, the original cartoon about the Chinese folk heroine was liked by almost everyone except the Chinese themselves. Because the dragon Mushu is an offensive character (it is useless for majestic dragons to be ridiculous), and Mulan herself (who is actually Hua Mulan) suddenly became an individualistic feminist, and not a devoted defender of the Chinese Empire and the Chinese national idea. In 1998, the discontent of one separate closed country, for example, could easily have been overcome. In 2020, Disney producers find it easier to endure a lack of home distribution than a non-release in China.

Therefore, the main support in the marketing of Mulan was not the exploitation of nostalgia, but, on the contrary, all sorts of admonitions that the film adaptation would not at all resemble a cartoon. That it will be more down-to-earth, historical and harsh - supposedly that is why Mushu, a character clearly fantasy, did not find a place in it. The reality turned out to be somewhat more prosaic: there is no talk of any down-to-earthness and historicity in the new "Mulan", as in the original cartoon - the fresh film adaptation has not become closer to the original legend of Hua Mulan. There is even more magic here: there are witches and phoenixes, and the strength of the main character is explained not by perseverance and work, but by a predisposition to "qi", a kind of Force from "Star Wars" (more precisely, the relationship is the opposite, but it doesn't matter). If you are looking for a down-to-earth story of a heroine - as it was already filmed by the Chinese themselves in 2009, Hua Mulan is called. And this is just another fairy tale, only with the optics slightly strayed towards communism.

Western journalists have long been alarmingly trumpeting that Hollywood is increasingly openly indulging the Chinese market - censoring its own paintings, removing references to Taiwan and Tibet, or wiping the face of John Boyega from the Star Wars poster, because the Chinese do not particularly like black (after which all the screams of Disney about diving seem at least a little hypocritical). The new Mulan is generally one big act of apology. Disney's attempt to make not just a movie that will be shown in China without any problems, but originally tailored for the Chinese audience. Hence the phoenixes, the witches, and the colorful visual bad taste - a bright marker of popular Chinese blockbusters like Monster Hunt and The Wandering Land. "Mulan" is obviously trying to seem his own (what is important, not to be, namely to seem), feverishly snatches out individual national and genre elements, mimics a typical "wuxia". But either from a lack of skill, or from a lack of understanding of culture (although it is unlikely that there were more consultants on the set than useful people), the picture in its mimicry fails and resembles rather not the works of the conventional Ang Lee, but Bollywood blockbusters. Minus self-irony and a sincere desire to do crazy cool things.

Mulan is basically - and this is very strange for a blockbuster from a mega-corporation like Disney - disgustingly made on a purely technical level. Everything here is like in a mothball musical from some "Blue Light": fake, inanimate, plastic - and this even taking into account the initially fabulous setting. The point here, I think, is in noticeably sham theatrical scenery, and in completely unsympathetic cinematography, which does not hide, but, on the contrary, emphasizes every weak point of the film. A separate pleasure when watching Mulan (and perhaps the only pleasure) is counting how many splices the film will need to show one simple action. Such unmotivated editing has never been seen anywhere, probably since the days of Catwoman with Halle Berry.

At the same time, it would be fine "Mulan" was just a pro-Chinese picture - it could be understood, this, after all, is not a sentence. The worst thing is that the film tries to adapt itself to every viewer and every culture - inevitably revealing itself as a purely commercial, algorithmically calculated project, which was probably tested by more than one or even ten focus groups. Therefore, on the one hand, there are languid monologues about patriotism, on the other, the obligatory strained mention of patriarchy in every conversation (which is generally strange, given that the original Mulan was already a convincing feminist story). On the one hand, there is individualism and the emphasized subjectivity of the heroine-girl, on the other, the communist idea of ​​collectivism, which can be traced in all Chinese blockbusters. Therefore, Mulan's friends-soldiers at the end unexpectedly, for no reason, turn out to be no less important actants than she herself - and instantly turn into an elite squad, although before that they did not show any signs of exclusivity. Mulan is not a film, it is a punchline to a bearded anecdote question about two chairs. Freedom for Tibet. Freedom to Hong Kong.

Info Blu-ray
Video
Codec: HEVC / H.265
Resolution: Upscaled 4K (2160p)
HDR: HDR10
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1

Audio
English: Dolby Atmos
English: Dolby TrueHD 7.1
English: Dolby Digital

Subtitles
English SDH, English, Danish, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Spanish, Swedish.