The fact she holds Qi is repeated too many times to count, even though the film doesn’t explore it in any meaningful way. The child Mulan can already wield a sword like a warrior. Unlike the animation’s average teenager, who works hard to succeed as a soldier, the new Mulan is ready made. (Before he died, my Beijing born father used to hug me when I was upset in order to get rid of the “bad Qi”.) In the film, Qi gives Mulan superhuman physical powers. Philosophers describe it as a type of energy or living metabolism in all beings – though not a special, individual power. To do this they repurpose an element of Chinese culture known as Qi, which translates as “breath” or “air”. Perhaps most jarring is the decision made by the film’s four credited screenwriters to strip our heroine of any flaws, bestowing her instead with a mystical “force”. But that’s about as close to passion as we get in this film. Li ultimately steals the film with several scenes between her and Mulan (Liu Yifei) that prickle with sexual tension as she attempts to turn Mulan to the dark side. They are replaced with a sister with no purpose, a phoenix who doesn’t do very much but looks pretty, and two new villains, Bori Khan (Jason Scott Lee), a nomadic leader, and a witch called Xian Liang (Gong Li), who operates as Mulan’s Lacanian “double”. The new film follows most of the original’s storyline, but major elements of the cartoon have been removed, including the wise-cracking dragon guide Mushu and Mulan’s love interest, Captain Li Shang (today a bisexual icon).

The presence of Chinese-American screenwriter Rita Hsiao on the 1998 Mulan writing team seems to have been forgotten: she no doubt helped to create the film’s sense of the second- and third-generation immigrant experience, subtly inserting joyful references to Cantonese culture throughout the film. The themes of struggling to fit in, reconciling your own identity, and the pressure of making your family proud were a unique package.

It was a film that reflected the complexities of my upbringing as the half-Chinese daughter of a mainland Chinese immigrant growing up in the former British colony Hong Kong. I am still an unabashed lover of the 1998 cartoon.

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