Disney broke records and brought in a ton of cash with live-action remakes of their animated classics “Beauty and the Beast,” “The Lion King” and “Aladdin.” Even if they all were fine, fun and essentially shot-for-shot redos of their original counterparts, only this time with real people in them (though “Lion King” is just another form of animation, let’s be honest), they lacked a lot of originality.

With “Mulan” the newest addition to the live-action remake of classic House of Mouse titles, this finds a dash of that originality the others lacked, but for the sake of making something new, it still manages to fall short.

The plot is essentially the same. A young woman named Hua Mulan (Yifei Liu), on the verge of being matched and married off to someone, takes her father’s place when one man from every household is called on to serve in the national army, disguising herself as a man to enlist. She half-heartedly befriends a few fellow soldiers who aren’t explored and whose names you don’t really remember once the credits roll (except for Cricket, played by Jun Yu, who manages to eke out a bit more development than everyone else thanks solely to his name), and there is a semi-romantic spark that does not develop fully between Mulan and Honghui (Yoson An). Gone is Commander Shang, who is replaced by Commander Tung, played by the brilliant Donnie Yen, who is woefully underused.

They are brought to fight the invading nomadic Rouran horde led by Bori Khan (Jason Scott Lee) and his witch sidekick/slave Xianniang (Li Gong) who has the ability to transform into anyone at the drop of a hat. Her presence, like so much of the movie, is not fully explored, and while the character could have been a great dichotomy to Mulan’s brave, loyal and truthful characterization, they biff the landing.

Mulan proves herself to be an adept warrior, flowing with the power of qi (or ch’i), a life source that flows through the basis of traditional Chinese medicine and martial arts. Again, this thread is never really explored or gives Mulan anything to overcome, other than her hiding her true identity, which she shrugs off pretty quickly by choice.

The scenery is gorgeous and the fight scenes are interesting to look at, but where the film really falls short is in the script itself.

This new version of the story based on the Chinese folktale the Ballad of Mulan, which dates back to around the 6th century, brings in a few more historically accurate plot points and tries to be authentic, nixing the musical numbers and fantastical elements like Mushu, the wise-cracking dragon voiced by Eddie Murphy in the 1998 original. Instead, we get more of a glossed-over spiritual connection between our heroine and her ancestors with the presence of a phoenix that guides her occasionally but with no real strong connection to the rest of the plot. It’s such an overdone trope I actually rolled my eyes when it was first brought up.

The character of Mulan also falls short in this adaptation, with little growth and a constant hammering of the themes of loyalty, bravery and truth (I lost count of how many times these tenets were mentioned). She springs out of adolescence already being able to harness her qi and use it to do some amazing martial arts, and that continues to her days on the battlefield.

Granted some of this could be down to Liu’s wooden acting but it seems like it is more of a result from a fairly bland screenplay by Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver, Elizabeth Martin and Lauren Hynek.

Overall, it feels like the film is completely disconnected from the culture it’s trying to depict. This isn’t entirely surprising due to the fact that most of the major crew members (director Niki Caro, screenwriters, costume designer Bina Daigeler, to name two) are not Asian.

These are not to say the entire film isn’t a nice watch. It’s a fine, middle-of-the-road action movie made by a company trying to cash in on nostalgia and hoping to do well in the Chinese market (a vital key to blockbuster success nowadays). It is not the 1998 “Mulan” by a long shot, but that doesn’t make it atrocious to watch, just not worth the $30 premium fee to stream it on Disney Plus.

“Mulan”

115 minutes

Rating: PG-13 for sequences of violence

2 stars