If you like a story about an independent woman then Mulan is the film for you. Mulan is a 1998 family film/musical, The film follows Mulan who, in order to stop her dad from going to war, has to pretend to be a boy so that she can go in his place.
The film Mulan starts with a soldier on the Great Wall of China. When a guy from the opposite side of the war shows up and begins to fight with the Chinese soldier, the soldier manages to get away enough to light a fire and alert people that China is being invaded. The scene cuts to the king of China being alerted of what happened. The king then tells the soldier who informed him to send soldiers to protect his people but also to recruit as many men as he can to fight in the war.
In the morning it shows Mulan waking up and asking her little brother, who happens to be her dog, if he can help her with her chores. She ties a rope with a bone on it around him and sends him off to feed the chickens. The dog runs into Mulan’s dad while he’s praying and the chickens run in after him so he quickly finishes praying and gets up, but ends up running into Mulan who is carrying tea. She ends up dropping the mug but luckily has a backup. She then runs to town because she has to prove herself to be a good wife but ends up a little late so a lady gives her a quick bath with the help of her mom and grandma. They dress her, do her hair and makeup, and send her off to be judged. The appointment does not go as planned and she is deemed unhonorable.
When Mulan gets home she avoids her dad due to being ashamed, her dad goes and starts to comfort her but then they hear drums being rang. Mulan’s dad tells her to go inside while he, her mom, and her grandma go outside to see that a soldier is there to tell the village that one man from each family needs to serve in the war. Mulan, seeing this and not wanting her dad to serve, runs out and begs the soldier to let her dad not serve but is told that she should not talk in the presence of a man.
Later that night, Mulan begs her dad not to go, to let her go instead of him but he tells her no. Late at night, Mulan decides that she is going to sneak out and pretend to be a boy so she cuts her hair, puts on her dad’s old uniform, and heads off with her horse. Mulan’s grandma sees that Mulan is gone and she runs to tell Mulan’s parents and prays to her ancestors. The family’s ancestors respond and try to come up with a way to get Mulan back. The old guardian of the family who was removed from his position takes it upon himself and decides that instead of bringing Mulan back he would turn her into a savior. He goes and finds Mulan and tells her that she needs to “man” up and go talk to all the guys. When Mulan gets to camp she starts to talk to some guys and ends up pissing them off so they start to chase her. They eventually chase her into a line of guys waiting for the food which causes the pot to be knocked over, all the noise causes the captain of the group to come out of his tent and see what was going on. When he saw Mulan on the ground he got her in trouble and then started training.
For the first half of training, everyone in the group sucked so badly that the captain thought that they weren’t going to be ready to go fight in the war, but eventually, everyone started to get good at every part of training, and the captain was confident in them. One day, Mulan’s ancestor decided to forge a letter from the main captain of the war to tell Mulan’s group that they needed to come and fight so that morning the captain gathered everyone and they were on their way. When the group arrived they saw that everyone was dead and the enemy soldiers were coming right to them so Mulan blew a cannonball into a mountain which caused an avalanche to kill all of the enemy soldiers, or so they thought. During the avalanche, Mulan ended up getting sucked up into it and hurt so they had to take her into the tent and heal her, and in the process, they found out she was a girl. The captain ended up leaving her saying “A life for a life.” Mulan ended up seeing that not all the enemy soldiers were killed and she ran to tell the captain but he didn’t believe her.
They were all at the king’s castle when the remaining enemy soldiers showed up and tried to kill the king but Mulan came and saved the day by blasting them with a firework. She was then rewarded by being given a sword and then she rode home.
At the end of the film, Mulan goes home and straight to her dad. She talks to him about what happened when the captain shows up to apologize, so Mulan invites him to stay for dinner. All in all, Mulan is a good film to watch with your family or just by yourself. It’s just a fun movie to watch.
