Mulan was released onto Disney Plus Sep. 4, 2020. Customers have to pay a fee of $30 to watch. This movie is a live-action remake of the cartoon version which was released June 8, 1998. Mulan is about a girl named Mulan who is trying to save her father from serving in the Imperial Army so she disguises herself as a man to fight in the war with the northern invaders in China.
According to Google, Mulan, live-action made $64.4 million, and Mulan 1998 animated version made $239.9 million more dollars than the live-action.
Looking through movie review websites, the ones that contain reviews from the viewers that watched Mulan did not seem to find the movie as enjoyable as they hoped.
“That magic isn’t present here, and the action scenes don’t achieve lift-off,” said Adam Graham, top critic on Rotten Tomatoes.
Mulan is said to be very different from the cartoon since most of the characters are not in the live-action, like Mulan’s grandma and Mushu the dragon, which was a major turn off to viewers. People also expected more action to occur throughout the movie. The major complaint about the movie is that people want their $30 back for their time being wasted watching the movie.
“Apart from the lack of singing, romance, comedy, and a mouthy dragon, this is just like the original. You might wonder what’s left. Well, $200 million buys a lot of scenery and sets and quite a few stars. This new version has spectacle in mind.” Paul Byrnes, top critic mentioned.
There were very few people who actually favored the live-action Mulan and thought very much of it. Fans of Mulan felt that the movie was a very inspirational story, some liked the live-action better than the cartoon version.
“…it seemed really unfinished and like the producers didn’t ‘“try’” to make it look good… the filming seemed very cheap and unfinished. It seemed like they went with their own story instead of taking it from the classic animated Mulan. As if they went a whole other direction…,” said Addison Lake, freshman.
On IMDB Mulan was rated 5.4/10, and on RottenTomatoes, the total count was rated 75%. The reviews on either website mostly had ratings with one to three stars, and each review says the same thing, how they wanted to see the original characters and there was not enough action presented in the movie.
Although the live-action movie of Mulan was a flop, at least the cartoon was one of the two Mulan movies that was a hit. The cartoon Mulan on IMDb got a star rating of 7.6, and the live-action received a star rating of only 5.4.
“Mulan delivers a straightforwardly heroic narrative of a capable woman battling her way to respect. It just doesn’t have much else to add,” said David Sims, top critic.
