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• To save her father from death in the army, a young maiden secretly goes in his place and becomes one of China's greatest heroines in the process.
• This retelling of the old Chinese folktale is about the story of a young Chinese maiden who learns that her weakened and lame father is to be called up into the army in order to fight the invading Huns. Knowing that he would never survive the rigours of war in his state, she decides to disguise herself and join in his place. Unknown to her, her ancestors are aware of this and to prevent it, they order a tiny disgraced dragon, Mushu to join her in order to force her to abandon her plan. He agrees, but when he meets Mulan, he learns that she cannot be dissuaded and so decides to help her in the perilous times ahead. — Kenneth Chisholm <[email protected]>
• Mulan is a girl, the only child of her honored family. When the Huns invade China, one man from every family is called to arms. Mulan's father, who has an old wound and cannot walk properly, decides to fight for his country and the honor of his family though it is clear that he will not survive an enemy encounter. Mulan, who just got rejected by the matchmaker because she had set her on fire, decides to prove that she is worth something and steals away to fit her father's place in the Chinese army. She prays to her family's ancestors for protection and luck before leaving as a man in her father's armor with her family's horse. The ancestors awake and decide to send Mushu, a little dishonored dragon to aid Mulan in her quest. Weeks later, Mulan and the other troopers have survived the training camp and are on the way north to stop the Huns. After being spotted and pursued by the enemies, an impass situation in the mountains forces Mulan to come up with an idea. But then, her real gender will no longer be a secret. She decides to risk everything in order to save China. — Julian Reischl <[email protected]>
• The Fa family's only child, tomboy Mulan, fails to fulfill a Chinese girl's traditional duty as desirable bride. When the empire mobilizes a man from every family to fight the invading Huns, Mulan fears her father, an honorable veteran, is no longer up to fighting and joins in his place, masquerading as fictitious son Fa Ping. The ancestors designate the mighty stone dragon as her magical protector, but only eager baby-dragon Mushu actually goes. Ping is assigned to general Li son captain Fa Li's training unit. He does an amazing job preparing the peasant recruits, yet only Mushu and the luck cricket grandma gave Mulan overturn the mandarin adviser's negative report. When the reach the front, the Huns have already wiped out the regular army. Now the novice company must save China or perish honorably. — KGF Vissers
• During the Han Dynasty in ancient China, the legendary Great Wall fails to keep out the notorious Hun army and their ruthless leader, Shan Yu (Miguel Ferrer). The alarm is raised, and the Emperor (Pat Morita) entrusts General Li (James Shigeta) with mobilizing an army to protect China. The wise Emperor reminds the general that "one man may be the difference between victory and defeat." Fa Mulan (Ming-Na Wen), the teenage daughter of prosperous farmer Fa Zhou (Soon-Tek Oh), nervously prepares for her meeting with the village matchmaker (Miriam Margolyes). Though clever and kindhearted, Mulan is a tomboyish klutz who has little faith in her ability to become a poised and dignified bride. After rushing through her morning chores, she meets her mother, Fa Li (Freda Foh Shen), and grandmother (June Foray) in town and is bathed and dressed before joining the other girls at the matchmaker's house ("Honor to Us All"). Mulan's eccentric grandmother insists that Mulan take a live cricket with her for good luck, but the insect escapes from its cage and wreaks havoc at the meeting. Mulan is deemed a disgrace, and is told she will never bring honor to her family. Deeply ashamed, Mulan returns home and laments that she is not the daughter her parents deserve ("Reflection"). Her father, however, comforts her with the metaphor that the cherry blossom late to bloom may be the most beautiful of all. The Emperor's smug councilman, Chi Fu (James Hong) arrives at Mulan's village to draft one man from each family for the imperial army. Mulan watches in fear as young men are called forward to receive their orders, knowing that her aging and weak father will be called up as well, being the only male member of the Fa family. As Fa Zhou is summoned by Chi Fu, Mulan pleads for her father to be excused from battle, as he is already a veteran and is afflicted with an injured leg. Fa Zhou reprimands her for her interference, and insists he will go to training camp the next day with the other soldiers. Knowing her father will die if put in combat again, Mulan makes a desperate decision. After her parents are asleep, she cuts her hair short, dons her father's armor, and takes his draft information before riding out to the camp in his place. Fa Zhou and Fa Li awaken and discover with horror that their daughter has left to join the army. They cannot go after her, for impersonating a soldier is a capital offense, and Mulan would be executed if her identity was revealed. Grandmother Fa prays to their ancestors to protect Mulan. In the small temple on the Fa's property, the spirits of the ancestors awaken to discuss what to do about Mulan. Mushu the dragon (Eddie Murphy), a disgraced former guardian, is sent to awaken the Great Stone Dragon, the most powerful guardian, to bring Mulan home safely. While grumpily trying to wake the statue by ringing a ceremonial gong, Mushu accidentally reduces it to rubble. He manages to hide this mishap from the ancestors, and encounters Cri-Kee, the "lucky" cricket who had accompanied Mulan to the matchmaker. The two eventually decide to go after Mulan themselves. Mushu plans to help Mulan excel in the army, thus earning back his place among the ancestors as a guardian. As China continues to prepare for war, Shan Yu and the Huns are riding quickly through the wilderness toward the city. Hun soldiers capture two imperial scouts, and Shan Yu tauntingly instructs them to tell the Emperor to send his finest troops to battle the Huns. Reasoning that it only takes one man to deliver a message, Shan Yu has one of the scouts executed. Mulan arrives at the outskirts of the training camp, terrified of her task and dejectedly telling her horse, Khan, that it would take a miracle for her plan to work. As if on cue, Mushu and Cri-Kee appear, with Mushu falsely introducing himself as a trusted guardian sent by her ancestors and promising to help her become a model soldier. Mulan timidly enters the camp and, following Mushu's bizarre instructions on how to impersonate and interact with men, inadvertently causes a brawl. The ruckus is quelled by Captain Li Shang (B.D. Wong), the son of General Li, who was appointed by his father to train the new troops while Li takes his army to protect the Imperial City. Shang is unimpressed with the sloppy new recruits, especially awkward Mulan, who presents herself as "Ping," Fa Zhou's little-seen son. The next morning, training begins in full. This is especially harrowing for Mulan because her fellow soldiers are still angry with her for the camp-wide fight the previous day. None of the recruits are especially skilled or athletic, but Shang proves to be a diligent coach ("I'll Make A Man Out of You"). The troops steadily improve, and Mulan finally redeems herself by being the first soldier to conquer the seemingly impossible task Shang set them on their first day. The troops had been burdened with heavy arm weights and told to retrieve an arrow from the top of an enormous wooden pole. Mulan, after some trial and error, cleverly uses the weights to her advantage, scaling the pole and reaching the arrow. The other troops begin to warm up to "Ping," especially grouchy Yao (Harvey Fierstein), goofy Ling (Gedde Watanabe), and enormous but gentle Chien-Po (Jerry Tondo). Mulan has an increasingly difficult time keeping her gender a secret, especially since the men all bathe together in a nearby lake. Mushu is called upon to provide distractions when Mulan's identity is in immediate danger of being discovered. Shan Yu plans to move his army through a mountain pass, which is the swiftest route to the Imperial City. Though he determines that General Li and his army are already guarding the pass, Shan Yu confidently leads the Huns to battle the imperial troops. Chi Fu, the Emperor's council, has remained at Shang's camp to compile a report on the new troops. Though the soldiers have successfully completed training, Chi Fu remains unimpressed and behaves rudely toward Captain Shang. Mushu, continuing his plan to transform Mulan into a war hero, has Cri-Kee forge a letter from General Li, requesting backup troops at the mountain pass. The ruse works, and Shang marches the troops out of camp the following day. During their trek, Mulan's friends keep their spirits up by daydreaming about their ideal women ("A Girl Worth Fighting For"), but their optimism is short-lived. When they reach the mountain pass, they find the village razed and General Li and his entire platoon slaughtered. Shang is shocked and grief-stricken at his father's death, but is all the more determined to stop Shan Yu from reaching the city and the Emperor. As Mulan, Shang, and the troops progress through the snowy mountains, Mushu accidentally sets off a cannon and gives away their position. The Huns immediately attack, and it is evident that they greatly outnumber the soldiers. As the Hun army charges toward them, Shang instructs Yao to aim their last cannon at Shan Yu. Though now in direct combat with the Hun leader himself, quick-thinking Mulan swipes the cannon and fires it at the mountainside, causing a huge avalanche that buries Shan Yu and the rest of the Huns. The soldiers run for safety, with Shang and Mulan narrowly avoiding falling to their deaths over a cliff. Shang thanks Mulan for saving their lives, and gets her medical attention for an injury she sustained from Shan Yu's sword. While unconscious in the medic's tent, Mulan's gender is discovered and she is ousted to the rest of the troops. Chi Fu pressures Shang to execute Mulan immediately, but Shang, though angry at Mulan for her deception, refuses to kill her. He orders the troops to march on, leaving Mulan in the mountains with her horse and supplies. Mulan miserably tells Mushu that entering the army was a mistake, and that she was fated to dishonor her family. Mushu finally admits that he was not sent by the ancestors, and that his mission was a selfish one to get his job back. Even Cri-Kee confesses that he is not a truly lucky cricket. They are all about to give up hope when they discover that Shan Yu and many of the Huns had survived the avalanche and are emerging from the snow. Mulan, Mushu, Khan and Cri-Kee rush to the Imperial City to warn of the coming attack. In the city, Captain Shang and his troops are being hailed as heroes for defeating the Huns. Though surrounded by cheering citizens, Shang, Yao, Ling, and Chein-Po are noticeably dejected. Mulan, presenting herself as a woman again, confronts Shang during their victory parade and tells him what she saw in the mountains. Shang dismisses her as a liar, and members of the crowd are deaf to Mulan's words. On the steps of the palace, the Emperor begins a speech of gratitude to the Chinese army, but Hun soldiers had beaten Mulan to the city and disguised themselves as members of the parade. To the crowd's horror, the Huns emerge and seize the Emperor, carrying him into the palace and barring the doors. Knowing of Mulan's knack for creative problem-solving, Shang, Yao, Ling, and Chien-Po turn to her for a rescue plan. With all except Shang disguising themselves as concubines, they infiltrate the palace and attack the Huns guarding the chamber into which the Emperor was taken. Shan Yu threatens to kill the Emperor if he refuses to bow to him and accept him as the new leader of China. The Emperor stoically refuses and Shan Yu prepares to strike, but Shang leaps into action just in time. As Shang and Shan Yu battle, Chien-Po carries the Emperor to safety. Mulan then attracts Shan Yu's attention by proving herself to be the soldier who started the avalanche, luring him to the roof of the palace for a final fight. Mushu, armed with an enormous firework rocket, launches himself at Shan Yu. As the Hun leader is blasted to smithereens in a colorful display, Mulan and Mushu drop to safety on the palace steps. As the chaos subsides, Chi Fu berates Mulan for her actions. Shang angrily defends her until the Emperor appears. He explains to Mulan that, despite her fraud, she has saved the entire nation of China. In the ultimate display of respect, the Emperor bows to Mulan, as do the countless people in the attending crowd. He then offers Mulan a place in his council (to the shock of Chi Fu), but Mulan respectfully declines and expresses her wish to return home. The Emperor gives her his medallion and Shan Yu's sword as gifts to honor the Fa family. Back at the Fa estate, Fa Zhou is overjoyed at the return of his daughter. Though Mulan presents him with the Emperor's crest and the sword of Shan Yu, he casts the priceless gifts aside and embraces her, assuring her that she herself is the greatest honor to their family. Captain Shang arrives soon afterward, returning the helmet that Mulan left behind, and awkwardly but happily accepts Mulan's invitation to stay for dinner. Mushu, at last, is restored to guardian status in the family temple. Mulan thanks him for his help in her adventurous plan, and the ancestors celebrate that the Fa family is complete again.

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• The history of Mulan, from a 6th-century ballad to the live-action Disney movie

Mulan is the story of 1,500 years of shifting ideas about gender and virtue.

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“There have been many tales of the great warrior Mulan,” says Mulan’s father in voice over as Disney’s live-action take on Mulan opens. “But ancestors, this one is mine.”

It’s true, there are a lot of Mulans out there. The story of Mulan, a young Chinese woman who disguises herself as a man and joins the army to save her father’s life, has been told over and over again for the past 1,500 years at least. It’s both beloved and iconic, and Mulan, who is as virtuous as she is strong and brave, is an essential heroine. And every time we retell her story, we have to make certain that she is still virtuous — whatever virtue means for the time and place where we’re telling it.

From the very first Mulan story in the sixth century, every time Mulan seems to be breaking the rules in a rebellious middle finger to the status quo, she’s actually following higher and more important rules. And that’s what keeps her transgression against gender boundaries from being too threatening to existing power structures. In the end, Mulan’s virtue might mean that her rebellion stops being a rebellion at all.

The first recorded version of Mulan dates back to the sixth century. It’s short, and it ends with some thoughts about rabbits.

“The Ballad of Mulan” first appeared sometime between the fourth and sixth centuries AD, and it is astonishingly streamlined. It’s a folk song, and it reads like one: just over 300 lines of something to be sung and memorized and passed from person to person. It’s through this ballad that Mulan took her place as an enduring heroine of Chinese culture, and it contains everything we need to know about what made her such an icon.

The ballad begins with Mulan at her loom, weaving. But she’s sad and preoccupied, and her sighing overwhelms the sound of the loom. Mulan’s elderly father is being called away to war, and he has no son to go in his place. So Mulan makes up her mind that she’ll go instead. She buys a horse and rides off to war.

The ballad has no details of what exactly happened during Mulan’s time in the army; we just know that she was away for 10 or 12 years, and that she fought valiantly and distinguished herself. When Mulan returns to the imperial court, the emperor offers her prizes and promotions, but Mulan asks only for a steed — in some translations a horse, in others a donkey — so that she can go back home to her family.

Upon arriving at home, Mulan takes off her soldier’s uniform and dresses in her old clothes, putting up her hair and applying makeup to her face. Then she goes outside to meet her old war buddies, and they’re astonished. All these years fighting side by side, and they never knew that Mulan was a girl.

It’s like rabbits, Mulan explains. If you trap a rabbit, you can tell whether it’s male or female. But if you just see a rabbit sitting in a field, you’ll never know its sex. And on that enigmatic note, the poem ends.

Because the ballad is so simple and elegant, we can see exactly what elements are important to the story at this early stage. The ballad cares that Mulan is a strong and brave warrior, but it doesn’t care enough about her acumen as a soldier to spend time enumerating her deeds. It’s interested in the time she spends crossing the barrier between gender binaries. Her transformation into a soldier — buying a horse and a saddle and a bridle and a whip — takes up half a stanza. When she puts on her old clothes, the process gets a full stanza of its own.

And what the poem is deeply, deeply invested in is the idea that all of this exciting, potentially transgressive boundary crossing is justified, because Mulan is only doing it for her father. She’s not really breaking imperial China’s strict gender rules when she crossdresses, because she’s obeying the most important rule of all: filial piety. And once she’s completed her tour in the army and saved her father, she goes back to her old life of traditional femininity without a qualm.

Mulan is following a particular understanding of virtue, and it can seem counterintuitive to Western audiences. That’s just not how the European tradition teaches readers to think about cross-dressing warrior women, argues Lan Dong in her survey Mulan’s Legend and Legacy in China and the United States . “While some European amazons or military maids dressed as men to pursue power, individual liberty, true love or happiness,” Dong writes, “the Chinese heroine steps out of the family quarter to fulfill her duty as a daughter, wife, or mother in particular circumstances.”

But in the Chinese literary tradition, these two conditions are what allow Mulan to be transgressive and a beloved icon at the same time. She breaks rules when it’s the only way to reassert the importance of filial piety. And as soon as she’s finished following her highest duty, she returns happily to the gendered status quo.

“I am embarrassed that I just have returned from weapons and war, not good enough to be a match for you”

Dong describes the legend of Mulan as a palimpsest, a story that keeps shifting and reforming over time but always bears the traces of its original forms. It began as “The Ballad of Mulan,” and then out of that ballad’s legacy came a literary tradition of Chinese Mulan stories.

Over the millennium and a half since the sixth-century ballad was first recorded, Mulan has been the star of plays, of prose epics, of silent movies and children’s picture books and operas and Communist propaganda films. And all of them focus heavily on Mulan’s extreme virtue as the justification for her exciting and transgressive cross-dressing.

Sometimes Mulan’s virtue takes the form of her deep commitment to traditional femininity. In Xu Wei’s 16th-century play Female Mulan Joins the Army Taking Her Father’s Place , Mulan has bound feet, and when she unbinds them to fill her warrior’s shoes, she worries that her beauty will be ruined. “I will still get married after I come back,” she frets. “What will I do then?”

After she returns successfully from the wars, her parents inform her that they’ve found her a husband, and Mulan enters happily into an arranged marriage. “I have long heard that you are highly respected in the world of letters,” she tells her bridegroom. “I am embarrassed that I just have returned from weapons and war, not good enough to be a match for you.”

In many versions of the story, Mulan’s virginity is what makes her pure enough to withstand the potential corruption of cross-dressing. In Chu Renhu’s 17th-century Historical Romance of the Sui and Tang Dynasties , Mulan must choose between loyalty to the emperor and her commitment to chastity after the emperor summons her to be his consort. Unwilling to sacrifice one virtue for another, she kills herself over her father’s grave.

As China entered the 20th century, Mulan became a powerful figure of political propaganda. During and after the Sino-Japanese war, films and operas about Mulan showed her fighting off a Japanese invasion. During the Cultural Revolution, female members of the Red Guard donned male uniforms in a nod to Mulan’s legacy, and the Mulan opera Who Says Women Are Not as Good as Men made the argument for female equality in China.

In 1976, Maxine Hong Kingston’s seminal Asian American memoir Woman Warrior made Mulan a recognizable name in the West. She would go on to star in American children’s picture books and folklore collections for decades.

And then, in 1998, Mulan became a Disney princess. And America began in earnest to put its stamp on one of China’s most iconic heroines.

“She is a Western lass who grew up eating bread and butter”

As Dong reports , China had a lukewarm reaction to Disney’s animated Mulan . It made only $1.3 million at the Chinese box office, about one-sixth of the revenue Disney had been hoping for. And while some commenters gave it points for effort, commending the film’s “sincere effort in understanding Chinese culture,” nearly everyone agreed that Disney’s Mulan was a creature of America. “She is a Western lass who grew up eating bread and butter,” said one popular magazine article, although it also admitted that this new Mulan was “lovable.” Some filmgoers dubbed the movie Foreign Mulan .

Much of the distaste for the movie stems from the idea that 1998 Mulan has entirely different motivations from the traditional Chinese Mulan. She goes to war to save her dad, sure — but she also goes because she’s a tomboy who rejects traditional femininity.

The 1998 Mulan follows classic ’90s Not Like Other Girls pop feminism rules, and as such she believes in individuality and standing apart from the status quo. “Maybe I didn’t go for my father,” she muses. “Maybe what I really wanted was to prove I could do things right, so when I looked in the mirror, I’d see someone worthwhile.” Those values don’t mesh with the structure of the classic Mulan story.

That 16th-century Mulan who blushingly assured a stranger that she didn’t deserve to marry him would never have failed a matchmaker’s made-up marriage test the way Disney’s does, and 1998 Mulan would never have fretted over the idea of her feet getting bigger the way 16th-century Mulan did. 1998 Mulan sings a whole song about how she’ll “never pass for a perfect bride or a perfect daughter,” but the traditional Chinese Mulan only worked in the first place because she was both a perfect bride and a perfect daughter. The classic Mulan is unthreatening because she returns home to her old life as a good daughter at the end of the poem, but 1998 Mulan is so revolutionary that she single-handedly changes the entire empire’s opinion of women.

None of this should suggest that 1998 Mulan is a bastion of progressivism. Mulan’s revolution of Chinese opinion only becomes possible in Disney’s 1998 movie because the writers rejiggered the story structure to give her deception greater stakes. In Disney’s animated take, Chinese gender roles are so strict that Mulan’s cross-dressing is a capital crime, and we know early on that if her secret is revealed, she’ll pay with her life. In contrast, the classic version of the story has Mulan’s army buddies react to the big reveal at the end with a bemused shrug: Mulan’s a girl! they say. Who knew! And then Mulan says the thing about rabbits. Gender barriers are more porous and more fluid in this much older Chinese version of the story than they are in the 1998 Westernized version.

And while Disney heavily marketed the 1998 Mulan as a butt-kicking pop feminist heroine of girl power, its filmmakers held on for dear life to part of the traditional story structure that keeps Mulan’s gender-bending ways from ever getting too threatening. At the end of the animated Disney movie, as in nearly every version of Mulan written since that sixth-century ballad, Mulan goes back home to her family to resume her life as a daughter, and she picks up a respectable husband for herself. Her days of rule-breaking are behind her. Now it’s time for her to devote herself to the task she failed at in the beginning of the movie and land a husband.

In the end, Mulan hasn’t broken the rules of femininity that really matter in Disney’s gender coding. She followed the most important one: She got her man.

In 2020, is it possible for Mulan to be truly subversive?

Disney’s 2020 Mulan nods to its earliest predecessor within its first 15 minutes. When we meet Mulan as an adult for the first time, she’s chasing two rabbits. She thinks they’re a boy and a girl, she tells her family later, but — echoing the closing couplet of the sixth-century poem — “it’s hard to tell when they run that fast.”

This Mulan also features instrumental reprises of the 1998 film’s “I want” song, “Reflection.” That’s more or less the course this movie is trying to chart: a middle path that nods to the legacy of both the 1998 animated Western version and more traditional Chinese versions of the story.

In 2020 as in 1998, Disney’s Mulan is a tomboy who disgracefully fails her matchmaker’s marriage test, and in this version, too, Mulan’s deception is a capital crime. But this new version is careful to make it clear that Mulan’s highest motivator is still filial piety. When she asks the emperor whom she just saved to send her home and the court gasps in shock, the emperor informs the watching crowd that “devotion to family is an essential virtue.” And when he presents Mulan with a ceremonial sword in recognition of her great deeds, it’s engraved with a list of virtues: the army’s cardinal three virtues of bravery, truth, and loyalty — and now, following Mulan’s example, devotion to family.

Moreover, while the 1998 Mulan’s sex was revealed against her will, and all of her army buddies immediately turned against her, in 2020’s version, Mulan makes the decision to reveal her true identity to her commander in service of the virtue of truth. She’s briefly punished by being exiled from the army. But when she returns to the commander with a warning that the emperor is in danger, her friends, more or less in the spirit of “The Ballad of Mulan,” rally around her. In the end, the battalion rides to the emperor’s defense with Mulan openly in the lead, dressed as a woman.

Gender roles here are not exactly as porous as they are in the original ballad. But they are certainly less stringently defended than they were in 1998.

The new film also gives Mulan a foil, a fellow unruly warrior woman named Xian Lang, who fights against the Chinese with the villainous Roran army. Xian Lang was, we learn, once like Mulan, a young idealist who wanted to use her supernatural strength and acumen for the highest of purposes. But she was exiled from her own country, and now she serves the Rorans so that when they come to power, they will pass some of their strength along to her. Unlike Mulan, Xian Lang’s strength is threatening, and so it’s been blunted by the uber-masculine Roran-leader Böri Khan, who sneers that Xian Lang is a “curbed dog.”

Xian Lang ostensibly exists to show us the dangers Mulan faces from the dark side of the patriarchy. Mulan, too, might be rejected by her country, and she, too, might be forced to work for those who fear and sneer at a woman’s power. But it’s hard to avoid a sense of a good woman/bad woman binary with this pairing. The notion seems to be that what makes Mulan good is that she wields her power in favor of a good man (the emperor), and what makes Xian Lang bad is that she wields her power for a bad one. The idea of a woman wielding her power on her own, for herself, doesn’t seem to exist in the landscape of this movie.

Still, there’s a moment in the live-action Mulan that is genuinely new to the story, and maybe even subversive. It comes at the film’s conclusion, after Mulan has returned home to her family and received her father’s blessing for running away with his sword and armor. Her commander follows her into her home village, presents her with the emperor’s accommodation, and begs her to reconsider her decision to return home. Won’t Mulan, he asks, become a member of the emperor’s personal guard and continue to fight for China?

Mulan’s eyes widen, and she turns her gaze up to a phoenix — the mythical bird that has become her guardian and her totem throughout the film — spinning lazy circles overhead. Then the screen fades to black, and we leave Mulan there, on the precipice of answering the question that has haunted her legend from its first moment: Is it possible to tell a version of Mulan that doesn’t end with the woman warrior renouncing her sword to become a dutiful daughter and wife again?

Is it possible — finally, and at least 1,500 years after her story was first written down — for Mulan’s assault against the gender binary to begin to stick?

This Mulan doesn’t have any answers available for that question. But at least it bothers to ask at all.

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Its origins date back centuries, and its animated predecessor is beloved within the ‘90s Disney canon, but the latest version of “Mulan” couldn’t be more relevant, vital, and alive.

Director Niki Caro ’s live-action take on the classic story of a young Chinese woman who disguises herself as a man to become a warrior is thrilling from start to finish. It’s steeped in traditional cultural locales and details, yet feels bracingly modern with the help of dazzling special effects and innovative action sequences. You want gravity-defying, wuxia-inspired aerial work,  and  elaborately choreographed martial arts battles and horse stunts? You got ‘em all. And a truly impressive array of veteran actors helps keep the emotions grounded, including Tzi Ma , Donnie Yen , Jet Li and the goddess Gong Li .

At the center is the lovely Yifei Liu, who’s called upon to show a great deal of range as Mulan transforms herself from brazen, impetuous rebel to mature, commanding leader. Just as important is the fact that she finds her voice over the course of this journey—a phenomenon specific to this character and this story, but one that couldn’t be more resonant for women of all ages watching all over the world, right now. Liu’s performance might have been more powerful if she’d been a bit more emotive, but the steeliness and physicality she displays make her a convincing fighter.

Caro is a perfect choice to helm this live-action “Mulan,” having made her name nearly two decades ago with another story of a determined girl who dared to buck the patriarchy, 2002’s “ Whale Rider .” Working from a script by Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver and Elizabeth Martin & Lauren Hynek , Caro interweaves the story’s ancient poetic roots with Easter eggs from the 1998 animated film—although there’s no wacky dragon sidekick, alas—but it’s very much its own artistic endeavor, and is by far the most effective and necessary of all the live-action remakes of Disney’s animated catalog that we’ve seen in recent years.

Caro’s take on the tale, as mainstream and family-friendly as it is, also carries the unmistakable spirit of the #MeToo movement: women standing up for themselves and each other and demanding that men hear and believe them. One particular moment of solidarity and validation caused my heart to get caught in my throat, and it’s one of many instances that made me wish I was watching “Mulan” in a packed theater. As gorgeous as the film is—the work of countless talented women behind the scenes, including cinematographer Mandy Walker and costume designer Bina Daigeler —it’s not quite the same watching it at home, even on a giant TV, even with an enthusiastic, movie-loving kid on the couch next to you.

The bones of “Mulan” remain familiar, though. We first see the character as a playful, acrobatic young girl (played by Crystal Rao ), climbing up and leaping across rooftops in her village to chase a chicken in a bit of foreshadowing of the action to come. Her father (Ma, as warm a presence here as he was in “ The Farewell ”) seems proud of his daughter’s plucky nature, but her mother ( Rosalind Chao ) reminds her that “a daughter brings honor through marriage.” A meeting with a matchmaker (the veteran Pei-Pei Cheng) that goes comically wrong is one of many indications that a traditionally servile, female path is not in Mulan’s future.  

When invaders led by the villainous Bori Khan ( Jason Scott Lee ) threaten the emperor (Jet Li) years later, the imperial army fans out across China to amass soldiers to protect the palace, gathering one man from each family. Mulan’s family has no sons, so her father—a wounded warrior himself—must join to maintain honor. Instead, Mulan grabs his sword and rides her horse under cover of darkness, reporting for duty to the stern commander (Yen) with her hair tucked under a cap and her voice slightly lowered. In the tradition of gender-bending movies ranging from “ Yentl ” to “Just One of the Guys,” Mulan must find convoluted ways to avoid changing clothes and showering in front of her fellow soldiers, including the handsome Honghui ( Yoson An ), with whom she enjoys a verbal and physical spark. She also struggles to avoid the shapeshifting sorceress Xianniang (Gong Li), Bori Khan’s menacing right-hand woman who keeps finding her. Despite her malevolent nature, she and Mulan have more in common than the young woman would like to admit, and the complicated and uncomfortably honest nature of their relationship gives the film an intriguing, feminist spark. (Li also gets to wear the most fabulously ornate costumes, including ones inspired by Xianniang’s ability to transform herself into a hawk.)

But the movie loses some momentum when it’s about the actual nuts and bolts of the plot against the emperor. Sure, it’s the narrative machinery that drives Mulan’s transformation, but it gets bogged-down and talky, and it’s not nearly as compelling as the character’s ultimate acceptance of her undeniable inner strength. The regal and fierce Xianniang has her number early on, and when they finally meet each other for battle, she wisely tells Mulan: “Your deceit weakens you. It poisons your qi.” There’s a bit of a Darth Vader-Luke Skywalker, love-hate dynamic to this showdown, but the underlying truth of that statement resonates. Her feminine strength has made her an outcast in this male-dominated world, but she recognizes that Mulan can’t achieve her own full potential until she’s fully honest about her identity.

When Mulan finally lets her hair down, literally, it’s a declaration of independence, a joyous moment of self-love. Pieces of “Reflection”—the 1998 theme that helped make Christina Aguilera a superstar—punctuate Harry Gregson-Williams ’ score here and in other key moments, allowing them to soar but also tying back nicely to the animated movie that means so much to so many. (Stick around through the credits to hear Aguilera performing an update of the power ballad as well as a delicate Chinese-language version from Liu herself.) Loyal, brave and true: She’s all of the above, on her own terms.

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series "Ebert Presents At the Movies" opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Film Credits

Mulan (2020)

Rated PG-13 for sequences of violence.

115 minutes

Liu Yifei as Hua Mulan

Yoson An as Chen Honghui

Gong Li as Xian Niang

Donnie Yen as Commander Tung

Jason Scott Lee as Böri Khan

Ron Yuan as Sergeant Qiang

Jet Li as The Emperor

Tzi Ma as Hua Zhou

Utkarsh Ambudkar as Skath

• Amanda Silver
• Elizabeth Martin
• Lauren Hynek

Cinematographer

• Mandy Walker
• David Coulson
• Harry Gregson-Williams

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Table of Contents

Story in a Nutshell

The story is about Mulan, a teenage girl, who saved China. When there was a war in China, the Emperor announced that one man from each family should join the army. Mulan dressed herself as a man and joined the army as her father was old and her brother was a child. In the army, she proved to be a brave soldier.

• The Emperor : Ruler of China
• Mulan : The main protagonist of the story is a woman who dresses up as a man to get into the army
• Mulan’s Father : An old man who is incapable of joining the army because of his age.
• Mulan’s younger brother : the boy who is too young to join the army.

Army needed one soldier from every family

When China was in the middle of a war the Emperor asked one man from every family to join the army. Mulan is a teenage girl who lived in a remote village in China heard the news while she was washing clothes outside. She went to her father who was craving a piece of wood to inform him about what she heard. Turns out, he had heard it when he was in town and stopped craving to pack for leaving. Since he was not keeping well Mulan didn’t want him to go as he would not be able to keep up with the young men in the army.

Mulan knew her brother would be too young for the army so she wanted to join instead of her father. She went into her room cut off her long black hair and put on her father’s garments. She pretended to be the son but her father was protective and didn’t want her to send to the army.

For years Mulan was being trained in Kung fu, her father even taught her to use a sword and she assured him that it was the best option for their family. She knew the consequences if people found out that she was a woman but still she climbed on the family horse and rode to join the emperor’s army biding her father farewell.

Mulan won the battles

Mulan proved to be a brave soldier and was put in charge of other soldiers. Her battles went so well that more soldiers were added under her and soon she became the general of the army. Just after that, a very bad fever swept through the army making many soldiers sick including Mulan.

When the doctor discovered the truth, he yelled to the soldiers and told everybody that The General was a woman. Many soldiers were outraged and wanted to punish her yet many didn’t want it to happen as Mulan was the reason behind the success of all their battles.

Just when people were revolting an announcement was made that a surprise attack is on the way and they need to act soon. Mulan as soon as she heard, dressed and went out of her tent even when she wasn’t very strong, stood tall and guided the soldiers to hide. The soldiers against her and with her, all acted as she said because everyone knew her capabilities even though she was a woman.

China won because of Mulan

With Mulan’s help, they won the battle. It was such a great victory that the enemy gave up and the war was over and China was saved by Mulan and no one cared anymore that she was a woman. The Emperor was so glad for Mulan that he removed the rule of women not being allowed in the army. He wanted her to stay in the palace as his royal adviser but she wished to return to her family.

The Emperor in gratitude gifted six fine horses and six swords so that when she returns everyone must know of her victory and how highly the emperor of China thinks of her. The villagers cheered at her arrival and were proud that she was safe and the reason for the country’s victory.

The story depicts the daughter’s love for her father and her bravery. Her father taught Kung Fu for her self-defense but she turned out to be better than all the soldiers in the country. Her acceptance of her identity is the main objective of the story. The message is clear, that is,

“Embrace your own identity and Defy what society expects”

“Reflection”: A History of the Best Song From ‘Mulan’

In celebration of the Disney classic’s 25th anniversary, one writer takes a deep dive into the movie’s standout song.

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The renaissance era of Disney princesses — which spanned from the late 1980s to the 1990s — gave us such childhood icons as Beauty and the Beast ’s Belle, The Little Mermaid ’s Ariel, Aladdin ’s Jasmine, and the eponymous Pocahontas and Mulan . It also gave us banger soundtracks to go along with them, including Aladdin ’s love song “A Whole New World,” “Colors of the Wind” from Pocahontas (sung by ’90s icon Vanessa Williams), and pretty much the entire track listings from Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid . Mulan , which celebrates its 25th anniversary on June 19, has some pretty stiff competition for its best song, including “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” and “A Girl Worth Fighting For,” but the one that endures all these years later is “Reflection,” the lead track from the movie.

“Reflection” comes at an inflection point in the movie for the titular Mulan (voiced by Ming-Na Wen with vocals by Lea Salonga) after she’s failed her matchmaker assessment and just prior to her aging father being drafted into the imperial Chinese army. Mulan feels stuck between two worlds: the traditional one of her family and culture, and wanting to be a good daughter and marry well, versus her innermost desire of wanting something more.

“Reflection” is not only a song of female empowerment but is also seen by some fans as a trans allegory based on the lyrics:

Who is that girl I see

Staring straight back at me?

Why is my reflection

Someone I don’t know?

Must I pretend that I’m

Someone else for all time?

When will my reflection show

Who I am inside?

It certainly appears as though many people read Mulan that way , with some viral tweets in 2017 likening Mulan’s passing as a man to Donald Trump’s anti-transgender military policy . To be sure, Mulan is not an explicitly trans character , but gender-diverse viewers have long felt a kinship with her prior to openly trans characters appearing in pop culture to the extent that they are today.

Adding more gravitas to “Reflection” is the fact that before hitting the big time with “Genie in a Bottle” in 1999, Christina Aguilera released the song as her debut single in 1998. The track soon reached No. 19 on Billboard ’s Adult Contemporary chart. While the aforementioned Lea Salonga, who also played the singing voice of Jasmine in Aladdin , sang “Reflection” for the movie, Aguilera recorded her version for the soundtrack.

“When we heard her sing, it was like, ‘Oh, my God. This kid sounds like she had the phrasing and understanding of lyrics of someone who had been singing for 25 years,’” lyricist David Zippel said in 2020. “Even then it was so palpable. She was a perfectionist even as a 17-year-old.”

Aguilera had long been affiliated with Disney, performing alongside Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, and Ryan Gosling in The Mickey Mouse Club . In the ’90s and 2000s, Aguilera was often perceived as second fiddle to Spears, whose debut single and album of the same name, … Baby One More Time , set the tone for the year and indeed much of pop culture for the next 20 years. Viewed this way, “Reflection” could be read as a personal anthem of sorts for Aguilera. “But somehow I will show the world … and be loved for who I am” certainly reads like someone looking to break out of others’ shadows and move into the reflective light.

Though Aguilera was not available for comment for this article, it appears as though “Reflection” has stayed in her heart all these years, with Aguilera rerecording a new version of the song for the soundtrack of the 2020 live-action remake.

Despite the clear meaning it holds for many, “Reflection” almost didn’t make it into Mulan at all, according to Insider . “Word came down from on high that they wanted us to cut the song from the score,” composer Matthew Wilder told the site. Test audiences apparently felt that “Reflection” “overstayed its welcome” and was conducive to a “popcorn moment”— when viewers would tune out and break for snacks.

“We believed so strongly in the song, and the compromise that we came to with the powers that be was that we were only going to showcase half the song in the movie,” Wilder said.

Salonga recorded that version in 1995 and was asked to rerecord the shorter one in 1996.

“Every time I sing it in concert, it’s always the longer one,” she said .

Yet for some reason, the 2020 live-action Mulan subbed out the iconic music, including “Reflection,” in favor of scenes that angered viewers and bloated the movie out to more than two hours. “She knew in her heart of hearts that she just wanted this movie to be different and not necessarily be a rubber-stamped version, if you will, of the animated film,” Wilder told Insider in a different article about director Niki Caro ’s decision not to make the 2020 Mulan a musical.

Instead we get instrumental hints at “Reflection” and “Honor to Us All” played in the background, and “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” is mentioned in a passing line of dialogue. A Mandarin version of “Reflection,” sung by the film’s star, Liu Yifei, plays over the credits.

“I’d be lying if I told you that there wasn’t an element of disappointment there,” Wilder said. From the critical and fan response to the remake, it would appear he wasn’t the only one.

At least we’ll always have the original “Reflection.”

Scarlett Harris is a culture critic and author of A Diva Was a Female Version of a Wrestler: An Abbreviated Herstory of World Wrestling Entertainment . You can follow her on Twitter @ScarlettEHarris .

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Mulan (1998 Film)

By barry cook , barry cook, mulan (1998 film) essay questions.

How does the film engage the theme of gender?

Even before the famous cross-dressing that Mulan undertakes in the film, she finds herself having an identity crisis related to gender. Having failed to impress the matchmaker and bring honor to her family, Mulan finds herself having a crisis of identity, wondering if she will ever be the woman she is meant to be. Then, when her father gets conscripted into the Imperial Army, she chooses to leave behind her gender altogether and pretend to be a man. In this journey, she comes to understand herself more, and the performance and charade that she undergoes becomes a way that she sees her authentic self more clearly. By the end of the film, she is comfortable in her skin as a powerful, skilled and adventurous woman. She does not feel pressured to fit either a feminine or masculine ideal as dictated by society, but create her own authentic identity in a way that feels honest to who she is.

What is the role of Mushu in the movie?

Mushu used to be a guardian to the family but has since been demoted. He is a small dragon and his job is to simply to wake up the ancestors by ringing a gong. After messing up in awakening the actual guardian who is meant to help Mulan, Mushu takes it upon himself to help Mulan become a great warrior, which will hopefully impress the ancestors enough that they will promote him.

Mushu helps Mulan to disguise herself in the army and engineers a situation in which she can shine as a soldier by faking an order from the General for Shang's men to join the main troops. Throughout the film, Mushu both acts as comic relief, throwing around goofy one-liners, and as a legitimate advisor and helper in Mulan's journey, proving that he is as competent as he is comical.

What is the tone of the film?

The tone of Mulan changes quite a bit throughout the narrative. At times it is playful, rambunctious and silly, in line with the potential of animation to create outrageous visuals and broad comedic scenarios. At other moments, it is epic, dramatic, and moving, such as when Mulan returns home after war, or when Shang finds that his father has been killed by the Huns. The tone of the film transforms many times in an often sudden, but seamless way.

What does Mulan's father tell her when she returns home at the end of the film?

When Mulan returns to her family home at the end of the film, she tells her father about all she has accomplished, and the fact that the Emperor honored her with a medal and an offer to serve on his council. While Mulan's father is undoubtedly impressed with this, he tells her that he is just proud that she is his daughter, suggesting that her value is not in what she has achieved, but in her innate existence.

Why does Mulan enlist in the army?

Mulan first gets the idea to enlist in the army as a man because she cannot bear to see her elderly and ailing father do so. He is not up for the military and has already served, so Mulan wants to take the pressure off by serving in his place. Then, later, when her identity has been discovered and she has been banished from the army, she considers her decision and wonders if maybe she also partially chose to undertake the mission in order to learn more about herself. Thus, we see that her motives are at once selfless and selfish, having to do with her desire to self-actualize.

Mulan (1998 Film) Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Mulan (1998 Film) is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

If you were Mulan, would you choose to stay to avoid your family’s disgrace or do the same thing as she did to protect your loved ones? Why?

This is really asking for your personal opinion rather than mine.

Mulan Calgary soldier

I don't know what you mean by "Calgary Soldier".

Who is the author of Mulan and what can I actually learn from the author

Robert D. San Souci

Study Guide for Mulan (1998 Film)

Mulan (1998 Film) study guide contains a biography of director Barry Cook, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About Mulan (1998 Film)
• Mulan (1998 Film) Summary
• Character List
• Director's Influence

Essays for Mulan (1998 Film)

Mulan (1998 Film) essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Mulan (1998 Film), directed by Barry Cook and Tony Bancroft.

• Mulan: Subverting the Roles of Women in the Patriarchal Feudal China

Wikipedia Entries for Mulan (1998 Film)

• Introduction