Down to Business: MULAN

Disney’s first Mulan is a great androgynous adventure musical. The 1998 film about a brave girl in ancient China who disguises herself as a man to take her father’s place in the army is vibrantly animated with fun songs and terrific action sequences, cut with generous comedy and a commitment to being a casually open-minded argument for gender fluidity. It’s fantastic. Now here’s the inevitable live-action remake, because Disney appears determined to regurgitate every one of its animated classics. At this point, I wonder if the studio has a mandate to filmmakers requiring each remake to be twice as long (or more) and half as good (or less). You have to admit the consistency, at this point, is amazing. Some have merit, but none best or equal their inspirations. For a while, Niki Caro’s Mulan looks like it’ll hold its own. Done up like a fantasy — with a new side-villain in the form of a shape-shifting witch (Gong Li), and talk of Mulan filled with “chi” as if it’s The Force — it’s painted in vibrant reds and greens and oranges borrowed from the Zhang Yimou palette. The film follows the broad outlines of the original, with Mulan (Yifei Liu) flunking a matchmaker’s test before stealing the armor, sword, and conscription scroll of her old man (Tzi Ma) and heading off to boot camp. The characterization is efficient, and the early camp scenes with likable fellow soldiers have a pleasant crackle. And who doesn’t like a good training montage? The score, too, has some nice melodic references to the memorable songs that have all been excised here, along with the dragon sidekick, in favor of aping the historical epics that are better done when its a Yimou or Tsui Hark.

That’s about the extent of the call-backs, though, and, while I much prefer the attempt to deviate somewhat from the original (far better than the soulless carbon copy of The Lion King that disgraced our screens last year), the attempt has nonetheless removed its sprightly energy, and its sense of character-based cause-and-effect. Instead we have beats hit and lessons learned, with clunky exposition (or paraphrases of missing song lyrics) and clumsy speechifying reducing the dramatic stakes instead of heightening them. Secrets are revealed when the movie needs them, not when they make the most dramatic sense. Gentle romantic tension between Mulan in drag and a male soldier is strangely tamped down, and the movie consistently elides the original’s gender fluid undercurrent. It’s also, one coy nighttime dip aside, strangely unconcerned with the actual bodies involved. (Why bother transcribing an animated movie into on-screen humans if you’ll put less attention to the physical form?) And because the film is a more somber affair, it really starts to drag in the back half. Most of the comedic relief has been removed. It has too few action sequences, despite kicking up some mildly Wuxia-adjacent energy in its better moments—and despite casting Donnie Yen and Jet Li in choice supporting roles, only to have them stand around in fabulous costumes instead of, you know, getting in on what they’re among the best in the world at. The cast is so great, one wishes the movie was at their level. The movie is totally functional, but often empty, too often missing a reason for being beyond the cash at hand.

Dark Side: ROGUE ONE

Rogue One takes what could’ve been trivial noodling around in Star Wars lore and turns it into a proficient sci-fi action movie building to intimations of grand space operatic tragedy. It’s the second film made after creator George Lucas sold his remarkable galaxy to Disney, who have thus far been studious, respectful, and cautious custodians. Instead of an idiosyncratic vision from one artist’s mind, it’s a committee polishing up effective fan service. (At least the emphasis is on “effective.”) For promising new narrative future, this latest film has nothing on last year’s The Force Awakens, with its immediately vibrant new personalities and their lingering unresolved promise: the simmering twisted villain Kylo Ren and fresh Force heroine Rey. But in staging Star Wars-ian action, Rogue One is the more complete experience, with a beginning, middle, and end, a style more efficiently beholden to what came before without strain, and a tone more willing to fit the enormity of the sacrifice in this conflict. It’s overly engineered to be a gleaming widget, fitting seamlessly into the larger franchise plan instead of springing from a singular revelation. But at least this is still a film that dreams a little bigger than most blockbuster product, playing in a hugely enjoyable and intricately imagined fantastical universe with some sense of the painful struggle to resisting brutal fascism.

This entry tells a big, confident tale of a dark corner of the galactic conflict we’d long known about but never seen: the process by which the Rebel Alliance discovered the existence of the super-weapon Death Star and stole plans that’ll end up given by Princess Leia to R2-D2 in the 1977 original’s opening moments. A self-contained – despite the endless references and offshoots into other areas of franchise canon – and admirably scruffy combat heist film – think The Guns of Navarone…In Space!! – it has a motley diverse crew of insurgents striking back against the forces of an evil empire. Better symbols than characters, the underwritten rebels make decent action figures. Through swooping, crashing, clamorous adventure sequences across all manner of terrain – deserts, villages, space stations, jungles, and tropical beaches – they fight. Reluctant rebel Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) joins a spy (Diego Luna), a comic-relief combat robot (Alan Tudyk), an Imperial defector (Riz Ahmed), and two monk-like warriors (legendary Chinese action stars Donnie Yen and Wen Jiang bringing fun choreography). Their mission: contact her father (Mads Mikkelsen), an unhappy Imperial scientist who knows how to take the Death Star down.

This leads to varied action beats, like an ambush in a far-flung marketplace, a mountainous recon mission in a downpour, and a dizzying dogfight above a gleaming citadel. Along the way we learn a little more about the Rebellion than the earlier films had time to explore, with different factions of the Alliance debating battle plans and how to deal with extremists (like an under-used Forest Whitaker) in their midst. This mirrors the Empire’s side, as a commander (Ben Mendelsohn) fights off the life-and-death office politics of battle-station life. The script, pieced together by four credited contributors (Chris Weitz, Tony Gilroy, Gary Whitta, and John Knoll) juggles the movie’s hard-charging tough-minded warfare with hit-and-miss cameos, fun one-liners, smart retcons, terse exposition, and shorthand emotion. That’s a lot of balls to keep in the air – and the strain sometimes shows, especially in the final product’s clearly tinkered dropped connections and foreshortened beats – but there’s fun to be had in the tactile look and crisp pace. There’s even a welcome commitment to feeling the losses, culminating in a staggering shot of good characters embracing certain doom knowing they’ve done all they could to win some small hope for their cause.

Although this is a side story, a spin-off, it’s identifiably Star Wars in its concern with family dramas writ large in galactic conflict and a sense of spirituality amidst tactics, plus gearhead love of spaceships taking off and landing and fantasy anthropologist appreciation of interesting creatures and beasties. (We get all the old familiar X-Wings and TIE Fighters and fish-heads and tentacle-haired beings, as well as slick new designs and goofy new aliens, like a massive Force-sensitive slug used as a lie-detector test.) Plus it has a key insight to style the cast like they’re actors from the 70’s – shaggy hair, groovy mustaches – playing the characters. Though cinematographer Greig Fraser shot gorgeous location photography and ILM filled it up with top-of-the-line digital fakery, it has the scuffed retro-future look of the original trilogy, like a modern re-creation of a 70’s vision. The much-ballyhooed lived-in universe aesthetic of Lucas’s original trilogy still draws visual appeal because it’s so densely designed. It proves there’s still a sense you could find a fascinating new story around every corner in every frame of this series. It also proves once more director Gareth Edwards (of 2014’s great Godzilla) is a master popcorn image-maker (despite many eye-popping shots featured in trailers ending up on the cutting room floor).

The movie works best when it has soaring spectacle clued into the enormity of its scale – a shuttle dwarfed by a planet behind it, the orbiting Death Star creating a solar eclipse, a city destroyed by laser-blast sending enormous shockwaves ripping up surrounding terrain in waves, and massive space structures colliding in the way everyone has played with the toys has dreamed about. But even in the moments when it’s merely workmanlike – or overworked franchise caretaking – it has some of the appeal the old Expanded Universe paperbacks did, varying in quality but consistently a drip, drip, drip of more, more, more for fans. It has all the bells and whistles, the immediately identifiable sound effects, music cues, and visual hallmarks of the series, even if it now has an over-polished committee’s recreation of what was once a singular personal pulp remix. The best thrills – a sensational final battle like something out of N64’s Rogue Squadron video game – feature dazzling effects and action better staged than Abrams’. It may still be imitation Lucas – or maybe imitation Kershner at this point – but it’s sturdy and entertaining nonetheless.

Dull Blades: CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON: SWORD OF DESTINY

Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is as lyrical and moving as Wuxia epics (Chinese tales of ancient martial arts and magic) get, and was a rare crossover hit back in 2000. With masterful enchanting wirework martial arts choreographed with balletic intensity, combatants’ limbs moved so deftly and precisely they lifted off the ground, lighter than air. In moving flashbacks and smartly structured narrative, the storytelling took on sweeping scope and lush romanticism. What a lovely movie. But, alas, it set the bar too high for a sequel to clear, especially one arriving sixteen years later done on the cheap with almost none of the cast and crew returning. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny is a cash-grab on the part of the producers and studios who owned the rights to a title with some name recognition. But maybe it’s a tad unfair to compare it too closely to its predecessor. Is it a good Wuxia film on its own terms? Not especially. It’s so unmemorable, I found it slipping out of my mind on a scene-by-scene basis.

Director Yuen Woo-Ping, action choreographer for the original, and a decent action filmmaker in his own right (he helmed Jackie Chan’s Drunken Master and the fun Iron Monkey), and screenwriter John Fusco (Hidalgo – remember that?) proceed to make a film full of decisions that strip its world of magic and majesty. It’s in English. It’s shot flatly by generally reliable Newton Thomas Sigel (Bryan Singer's usual cinematographer) in sets and on locations flooded with bright light. It’s loaded up with conspicuously computer generated establishing shots. Scenes play out in textureless medium shots and rote shot/reverse shot, erupting in action framed in expressionless utilitarian coverage. Where’s the lyricism of the original, or the energetic excitement of a typical Yuen Woo-Ping production? Every indication points to a movie done quickly and cheaply, governed largely by business decisions and other bland-making forces. The result is a generic Wuxia knockoff that’s somehow roped in some genuine talent. It’s as weightless as its fighters’ feet.

The plot focuses once again on the legendary sword Green Destiny, which is clearly destined to be an eternally coveted MacGuffin. The great Michelle Yeoh – always a welcome sight, compelling and dignified, even in this dull claptrap – is the only returning cast member, playing Yu Shu Lien, a humble master swordswoman who is dragged into conflict over the weapon. A snarling bad guy (Jason Scott Lee) wants it. He sends a bunch of warriors (including Glee’s Harry Shum Jr.) after it. Others – like a woman named Snow Vase (Natasha Liu Bordizzo) and a man named Silent Wolf (Donnie Yen) – want to protect it. There’s the story. Fusco’s script spins its wheels on overlong and underdeveloped characterization and backstory, somehow stretching the whole thing out to a mere 89 minutes before collapsing into the end credits. (It somehow feels twice as long.) He provides tedious connective tissue between bouts of combat in a handful of locales, none as striking or memorable as the rooftops or treetops of the original.

While it’s nobody’s best work, it has its moments. A few sequences – like a Donnie Yen-centric brawl or a quiet fight in a room full of vases where the characters are carefully trying not to break anything – feature enough fancy footwork and clever choreography to rise to the level of mildly diverting. But these are surrounded by so little of interest, with a plodding plot achingly predictable filled in with formulaic motivations and sparsely decorated and populated sets. There’s an overwhelming sense that the bare minimum is on display. And that’s too bad, because this is a film built off an all-time classic, and filled with a talented cast of people woefully underrepresented in Hollywood productions. There’s not a white face in sight, and many fighters here are cool women slicing and floating through combat. It’s disappointing they’re stuck in a movie so flat and empty, lacking even a hint of the pulse or poetry it deserves.