Mulan: Rise of a Warrior is a Chinese film which probably inspired some elements of the Disney live action film. It is one hour fifty-four minutes long, and there are subtitles so while I preferred the Chinese 2009 take on the heroine over the Disney version, I did not love it so much that I would want this film to be your first foray into Chinese or foreign films. If you are interested in seeing it, the full film is available on YouTube complete with subtitles, and when it starts with a white guy singing, don’t worry, you found the right film. Apparently Vitas is a famous Ukrainian-Russian singer who successfully crossed over to Asian markets, and his music is featured in the soundtrack so I guess that the film was trying to pander to potential younger viewers.
Mulan: Rise of a Warrior stars Wei Zhao, who is wildly gorgeous and a much better actor than Yifei Liu. Zhao actually acts through a range of emotions, and we see her transform from a devoted, mischievous daughter to a woman haunted with what duty has made her do and give up. This version of the story really addresses the impact that war has on people as individuals, even the enemy. The first time that Mulan kills a soldier, it is not a moment of triumph, but horror. I actually liked that unlike the Disney live action version, anyone could die even Mulan.
Because Mulan: Rise of a Warrior is supposed to be a grim movie, there are times when it feels as if it is a black and white film. The movie’s palette is very monochromatic as it unfolds. There are no magical or fantasy elements. The fighting is realistic and eventually monotonous, especially the epic battle scenes, to emphasize the point that war is anything but glorious. The violence is rarely the kind that you can cheer on like John Wick or a Marvel movie. I did prefer the fight choreography in this film over the Disney live action film because Mulan’s personality is reflected in her fight scenes. Mulan is all about strategy, cunning and swiftness, and when Zhao threw her hands, I believed that she could kick any opponent’s butt. When she broadens the application of her ability as a commander, her fighting style has not changed, just expanded to meet the challenge of higher stakes. I wish that she had more fight scenes, but it would have ruined the lesson of the film that war is bad, and later on when I found out that Michelle Yeoh, my fave, was considered and passed over for Zhao, I began to wonder if I really wanted that lesson if it meant not getting Yeoh (no disrespect intended to Zhao, who was great).
I read that some people did not find the denouement believable, but Mulan: Rise of a Warrior once again showed how the titular character’s skills were transferrable to other situations and actually gave her an edge over the guys on either side. It leads to a great confrontation turned collaboration with another character, which I did not see coming, and elevated the other character from a trope into a delightful foil to the titular character. It definitely gave the film a pre-season eight Game of Thrones vibe that I enjoyed and made me realize retroactively that the film’s story could have been better.
Mulan: Rise of a Warrior really emphasizes a potential work romance with Wentai, the next best fighter after her. I actually thought they were a good pair with a lot in common though I was not amused by Wentai’s drama queen antics (he loves a good plot twist and if there was not a war, he would become a soap opera writer). In terms of sexual situations, this film is clearly rated G and pulls a few Xena: Warrior Princess moves by making Mulan and Wentai’s physical exchanges such as hand to hand combat or tending to wounds the equivalent of sex in their reactions. While I do not begrudge the idea of romance playing a role in any depiction of Mulan, I do not think that it should be at the expense of other storylines which felt severely and comparatively abbreviated and short-changed such as the power struggle among the Rouran tribes or the resentment of Mulan and Wentai’s superiors. These storylines play equally if not more important roles in the denouement so that tension was not developed enough and too understated.
If I had one major problem with Mulan: Rise of a Warrior, I could not find it credible that anyone would think that Hua Mulan would fool anyone into thinking that she is a guy. At some point in the movie, I just pretended that her gender was an open secret among her troops which contributed to her subordinates’ loyalty as a model of courage and fearsome strategy skills and a reminder of home and explained her superiors’ saltiness at her success. If it was not, then those same troops needed a homoerotic storyline because how could Wentai and Mulan be so openly in love and work together with so much emotion with no one at least talking about it, especially since there is a storyline when everyone is drunk. Dudes talk more that women. I get that we want our heroes to be beautiful, but I think that studios need to consider casting a butch woman actor. Instead of pandering to audiences by casting the most beautiful women in the role, have better fight scenes and sacrifice the lofty principles of war is bad. Sadly no one is listening or cares. Apparently even a pandemic we drop bombs when dropping a couple of unmasked Americans gently in a parachute would wreak the same damage if not worse.
The following comment is not a slam on Mulan: Rise of a Warrior, but about the limits of imagination when depicting Mulan’s story. If and when another Mulan comes out, we need to stop ending the story with her being a caretaker as if her sick dad lived her entire life. She goes to war, and he is already sick and old, but in a time of widespread death, he defies the odds and survives for her to resume taking care of him after she finishes her tour of duty. Fine, but who took care of him while she was gone. Caretaking cannot be all consuming yet he survives all that time around her. It has been hundreds of centuries, i.e. multiple millennium, since the story was told, and we still cannot get a well-rounded story that imagines a woman kicking ass and fulfilling certain gendered expectations. What does that look like after years of commanding scores of men, but you have to care for your father. As a caretaker, taking care of adults has a lot of unexpected overlap with taking care of a kid and caring for an adult who is used to having a different power dynamic is challenging now, and we still have not tackled that psychological landscape. Then at some point, her dad has to die. What does Mulan’s life look like then? We can imagine talking creatures, but not what a woman veteran’s life looked like in the Northern Wei dynasty? The quotidian always gets the shaft.
I enjoyed and recommend Mulan: Rise of a Warrior. It is definitely superior to the Disney live action film. It is not graphic, but it can be narratively uneven though the charming cast will keep you invested until the denouement.
