Fa Mulan gets the surprise of her young life when her love, Captain (now General) Li Shang asks for her hand in marriage. Before the two can have their happily ever after, the Emperor assigns them a secret mission, to escort three princesses to Qui Gong, China. Mushu is determined to drive a wedge between the couple after he learns that he will lose his guardian job if Mulan marries into the Li family. After the princesses unexpectedly fall in love with the Gang of Three, Mulan decides to help them escape the fate of marrying men they do not love. This contradicts the Emperor's orders and forces him to put Mulan's relationship with Shang into question. They are attacked by Mongolians, and the fate of China hangs in the balance. While preparing for their wedding, Shang and Mulan are suddenly sent off on a secret mission. Mushu starts to meddle, and a surprise attack by Mongolians doesn't help either. The story of this sequel seems to heavily favor individualism to an extreme when compared to the original, yet it also paradoxically implies that women (the Princesses in particular) are simply thralls of the Emperor and needed a man to 'bring them to life'. <br/><br/>In the original: the relationship between Shang and Mulan started as trust/friendship -something that would not have been possible between a man and a women if she hadn't hidden her gender, furthermore -Shang's family seems to have a high social status even compared to Mulan's; which would have made a relationship even more unlikely. Here we have 3 Imperial princesses falling in 'love' with 3 less than sophisticated soldiers -just because? um?…they don't want to get married off so they get cozy with their guards?<br/><br/>Everyone is pretty selfish in this movie: the princesses, the soldiers, Muushu, Shang and even Mulan. She appears to do something selfless by agreeing to marry the Gong Prince (becoming a princess and eventually the Empress) but that only lasts until Shang returns. Both she and Shang then abandon their mission to save China and get married -Shang conveniently having forgot that he and Mulan had appeared to 'break up'. Furthermore: Apart from puppet trick outside the tent -Muushu only created situations in which conflict between Shang and Mulan naturally arose (Waking up Shang so that he catches Mulan and the soldiers going behind his back -Muushu only helped make Shang aware of what was going on, he didn't make Mulan or the soldiers do what they did).<br/><br/>So what about the Mongols? you know the whole reason for the marriages and the alliance? They kind of are guilty of treason against their Emperor/country -I can't imagine he is happy about the betrayals. I also wonder how happy-go-lucky they all will be when the Mongols are raping and murdering their way through China because of them. meh. Mulan was fine where it left off. But, what did Disney do? "Let's make a sequel!" I saw this the first time when I wasn't so brutal on film, and I thought it was, "Eh." But, I watched it again. Oh, it got under my skin! I got completely sucked into a black hole-like state of mind, losing all form of reality I had in the first place. I kind of started yelling at the screen whenever a stupid-ass decision was made by one of the characters. I do hate it, but not as much as The Fox and the Hound 2.
Phyberd replied
344 weeks ago