Always factual, never incorrect, objective satire.
"There’s a reason they sunk $200 million into it."
By Marini Uba
2020 Disney Live action adaptation of Mulan watch official trailer here
Objectively speaking, live action movies are the highest form of entertainment, yet there’s been a surprising pushback against live action adaptations, especially with everyone’s favourite media monopoly: Disney. This criticism is entirely unwarranted though. With Disney taking a special break from its amazing second renaissance to remember its already very successful first renaissance with live action remakes, it’s about time to truly sit and appreciate just how much thought and care has been put into these live action remakes.
Prior to modern animation, there were people who stood awkwardly in front of crowds of more people. They told the stories of the wolf they hunted with only their words and the crowd used their imagination to fill in the gaps. Simple stories of picking berries and stumbling upon a nest of tomorrow’s poached egg breakfast turned into great fables of giant thorny stalks and the promise of golden eggs. The thoughts of a wandering mind can lead to innumerable possibilities, some so fantastical they can only be passed by oral and written tradition. They offer the endless creative outlet that humans have been so wonderfully blessed with.
This is why live action is needed. Humans needed to be grounded to the grittiness of reality. Golden eggs don’t exist. Giant thorned beanstalks have giant thorns, which make them all the more dangerous and impractical to climb. Humanity cannot thrive off of the frivolity of imaginary scrambled eggs alone, and it’s up to the power of theater to remind us of what is possible while still abiding to the natural laws of physics.
1988 Original Disney animation and 2020 live action side to side
Mulan, the 2020 retelling of the 1998 Disney retelling of “The Ballad of Hua Mulan”, the original telling of a female war heroine, is not only the most current and controversial of these live action remakes, but the most honest in its intent. The over decade old movie, despite the place it holds in many hearts, did inaccurately portray portions of Chinese culture, Mushu the comedic relief dragon is only one of several. Despite the female representation that Mulan offered, the movie’s cultural workings were not as sound. The 2020 Mulan was a means to fix this problem. Gone were the fantastical elements of the original, but the grittiness of war and the still strong female protagonist who used nothing but her own grit and willpower to gain the same strength as her male counterparts.
And with this, the 2020 Mulan was a success in its intent! She was born a chosen one completely capable of heroism and skill and could… kick arrows in mid air. While this may seem excessive, great skill could certainly pull off a feat such as this, and with enough momentum it is possible to run horizontally along a wall for a few steps. And you could certainly chase a chicken up walls at age six, right?
Okay, so they exaggerated how far she ran: fine. Overall she was still brought down by gravity and still used her physics classes to calculate her momentum while jumping on a horse.
But that doesn’t explain the witch who could turn into birds or the phoenix or the chi or- wow. Wow they really just messed this up.
Or, it’s perhaps as if, in the grand scheme of things, it’s not the graphics or visual beauty of a story that make it great, but the overall story, meaning, and reasoning for the work existing in the first place that really makes a great story. The cheeriest monopoly on earth may be trying to revitalize its glory days, but what’s the point of trying to remake something great for its time when we can make something new?
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