New ‘Mulan’ Trailer Indicates Disney is Ready to Fix Their Broken Live Action Adaptation Formula

Despite 2019's Disney live-action offerings making boatloads of money, audiences were left feeling hollow by the slavish recreations of their favorite animated moments in Aladdin and The Lion King. It seems that Disney has finally caught on to the fact that people don't want to just continue paying money to see movies they've already seen a hundred times, as their next live-action adaptation, Mulan, seems to be blazing a new trail.

While there are obviously some faithful recreations of moments from the 1998 original animated feature, this looks and feels like a completely different movie. Whale Rider director Niki Caro is at the helm here and in addition to some absolutely gorgeous costume design and art direction, it also looks and feels like the work of a director without endless restrictions placed on her.

Granted this is just a two-minute trailer, so it might not be wholly representative of the finished product, but it's not quite the turn-off that both Aladdin and The Lion King were from their very first trailers. Disney might be afraid that this will perform poorly at the box office like Tim Burton's Dumbo, but at least that film had the balls to expand its story beyond its animated roots. Hopefully this will continue that trend.

Mulan comes to theaters on March 27, 2020.