Mulan – 2020/21
So, I must confess myself a little… disappointed in the visual effects for Mulan. I knew going into it that they had changed the story and added the character of a supernatural witch, so I was expecting some eye-catching imagery, and there was a little of that, but not very much. There just wasn’t enough that caught my attention as either innovative or interesting. Then I did some reading in an attempt to see what I was missing. But the articles I read didn’t give me much to go on.
I even watched a three or four minute breakdown of the visual effects for the movie, and most of what they showed was fancy compositing and set extensions. There were also a few CGI animals, some of which actually looked a little fake, like the rabbits running along with Mulan’s horse near the beginning of the film. Even the magical phoenix had moments where it looked too cartoonish. I mean, it looked alright, and I can’t put my finger on exactly what was throwing my eyes off, but there was something that made it look less than real. That being said, the CGI chicken the young Mulan is chasing was not bad at all.
The effect that the video breakdown and the articles really pushed was the compositing to build the vast backgrounds and the enormity of the Imperial City, and I have to give them credit for those things. The best visual effects are the ones you don’t see. I would never have guessed that many of the shots were done against green-screens. For example, the shots where the Huns are riding their horses towards the City walls, had a composited background. Apparently, the landscape where they actually filmed the riders was too flat, so they added a far distant mountain range in the distance, and some dust to be kicked up by the horses. That was well-done, and I would never have known.
But the effect that really impressed me was the avalanche. To my inexperienced eyes, it seemed like it wouldn’t be hard for experienced digital artists to create, but it looked great on the screen. The way the snow and ice slid off the mountain, turned into powder, and flowed like a cloud onto the unsuspecting Hun army was pretty cool. And then there was the new character of Xianniang, a shapeshifting witch. She changed forms, turned into a flock of birds, made the long sleeves of her clothing come to life and attack her enemies, and that sort of thing. And both she and Mulan did a lot of physics-defying acrobatics by means of extensive wire-work. It looks cool enough, but it is certainly nothing new.
And overall, I guess that’s my main complaint about the visual effects of this movie. They were all effects that we have already seen far too often, and in better films. This movie had the potential to be so much more. I suppose I was just expecting more, and for me, the visual effects seemed to be struggling to deliver.