Mulan, Phoenixes, and the Importance of Research

Earlier this evening—or rather, last evening, since this will be published in the morning—I was watching a review on the new Mulan. The reviewer was… we’ll say not pleased and had very good reasons for his opinions. One of them, albeit one of his lesser frustrations, had to do with the inclusion of a phoenix instead of a dragon. The issue was not a lack of Eddie Murphy’s jokes as an ancestral guardian. Rather, it had to do with the pointlessness of the phoenix’s addition and how little it resemb...