Disney's Mulan begins with a failure. Mulan goes to the matchmaker, the institution that will determine her value to her family and her society, and she destroys the meeting through a combination of anxiety, a cricket, and a temperament that does not fit the mold she is being pressed into. She is a disaster as a bride. She is also, as the film will demonstrate, a genius as a soldier, and the distance between those two performances is the film's central argument: that the system determining your worth might be measuring the wrong things.

Barry Cook and Tony Bancroft, the film's directors, built the story around the Ballad of Mulan, a Chinese poem that has been retold for over a thousand years. Dr. Lan Dong of the University of Illinois Springfield, in her cross-cultural study of Mulan's literary history, has traced how the figure has been adapted across dynasties and nations, each version emphasizing different aspects of her story. Disney's version emphasizes choice. Mulan does not go to war because she wants glory. She goes because her father is old and injured and will die in the army, and no one else in the family can take his place.

The Training Montage That Was Actually About Thinking Differently

Mulan cannot match the other soldiers in raw strength. She is smaller, lighter, and physically disadvantaged in every drill. Her breakthrough comes not through getting stronger but through solving the problem differently, using the weights that drag the other soldiers down as tools for climbing. This is the film's recurring structure: Mulan succeeds by thinking around obstacles that others try to power through, and this quality, more than any combat skill, is what makes her valuable.

The avalanche scene is the clearest demonstration. Faced with an army that outnumbers hers, Mulan does not fight. She causes an avalanche. She uses the mountain itself as a weapon, which requires the kind of lateral thinking that military hierarchies historically undervalue because it does not fit neatly into command structures.

The Emperor Who Bowed

When the Emperor of China bows to Mulan in front of the assembled population, the gesture is political and personal simultaneously. He is acknowledging that a woman saved China. He is also acknowledging that the system that excluded her from service was wrong, and that acknowledgment, from the person who represents the system, is more valuable than any medal or promotion.