In the live-action Mulan, a remake of Disney’s 1998 animated feature, the studio’s kiddie-inspiration brand gets literalized. The young female Hua Mulan (played by Liu Yifei) no longer moves with a cartoon’s fantastic fluid quickness or magical buoyancy but is a gravity-defying rule-breaking figure from China’s sixth-century folklore. The voice-over narrator addresses “ancestors” impiously, favoring new social-justice ideas over their ancient moral codes.
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