Unmade: The Legend of Mulan
By: Andrew G.
Tags: Live Action Remake, Disney, Mulan, Unmade

Mulan and Xianniang jump down from the rooftops into the imperial gardens. Their battle continues among colorful, perfectly arranged flowers. Xianniang again tries to get Mulan to join her as the pair’s fight moves to atop a pond. Mulan refuses, and with a quick movement, buries her sword in the witch’s chest. The emperor holds the Khan’s head up and tells the Rourans their leader is dead. They scatter, wanting nothing to do with a fight without their Khan. The imperial defenders cheer and celebrate.

Mulan is before the emperor in the throne room. He wants her to stay and take command of all his forces, but she wants to go home. He understands and instead gives the position to Honghui. Mulan goes to the stables, where Gaius is loading stuff on a horse. He wants her to come with him. She’d like to, but she can’t. She has money to pay him for helping her earlier, but he doesn’t want it. She leaves it on the floor and walks away. Lucius walks out of the shadows and teases Gaius.

Mulan is walking on the road back to her village when she hears hoofbeats behind her. But it’s not Gaius, it’s Black Wind. She swings on top of him and they ride for her village. When she gets there, it’s been mostly rebuilt and the villagers are all aware of what she’s done. They cheer her and ask her questions about the war. She spots Hop’s father and gets off Black Wind to give him Hop’s dog tag and to tell him Hop died with honor. Mulan continues walking through the village until she sees her mother, standing alone. Then her father hobbles out from around a corner. Mulan runs over to them and goes to bow, but they pull her in for a hug.

Later, Mulan is in the yard behind her parent’ house, feeding Black Wind, when Gaius appears. They flirt a little before kissing.

THE END.

Thoughts

After reading this, it was not hard to see it as the first step in the final film. A lot of stuff that is in the movie is also here: Chi/wu-shu stuff, the witch, Mulan being trained as a fighter by her father. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Disney bought this script just so they could have the chi and witch from it without having to worry about any legal challenges from the writers. The movie handles things better, but it’s not great itself.

This script is… not great. It’s a story about Mulan, but she’s not the most interesting character in it. She barely has a personality. Gaius is a charming rogue, though. Which is a big problem. The invented white guy shouldn’t be in the script in the first place and he definitely shouldn’t be the most engaging character. And there are problems with both their arcs. Mulan basically doesn’t have one. She starts off as a good fighter who doesn’t doubt herself and ends as a better fighter who doesn’t doubt herself. The entire theme of finding who you are from the animated film is gone. The fact that she’s hiding that she’s a woman barely registers. Several times someone finds out and all but once they accept it on the very same page. The one exception doesn’t carry as much weight as it could because it’s a subordinate and he never gets the chance to tell anyone who might care. A battle immediately interferes.

Gaius fares better, but his arc is still not great. He begins the story as a selfish arms dealer selling to both sides and ends as someone who has seemingly picked a side. But I don’t really know why he picked that side. Sure, the Khan killed his friend, but that was during an ambush of the Rouran camp. The Khan was just defending himself. There’s lip service paid to Gaius’ friends thinking poorly of the Rourans, but it happens early, is over quickly, and never comes up again. Gaius never gets any kind of “I finally found something to fight for” speech and his turn is so vague and underexamined that I can’t be sure he won’t just go right back to selling arms to everyone.

There is some good stuff. The action is pretty good thanks in part to the physics-defying chi stuff. The end battle has a pleasant ramp up, some beautiful staging, and clever moments. And as much as I hate to say it, because he and his friends shouldn’t exist, but darn it, Gaius and pals are frequently fun. That’s also kind of a problem, though, because moral-less arms dealers shouldn’t be fun.