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Mulan (Disney+)

We all thought we knew how the cinema year proper would restart. Dates chopped and changed, but it was always going to be

Tenet first and Mulan second – big films that would get cinemas back in business.

Christopher Nolan’s Tenet has taken almost €6million in Ireland and theUK in its first week. But the powers that be at Disney have taken a different tack, deciding that their live-action remake of

Mulan will be available exclusively on their home-entertainment platform, Disney+, where it will initially be available – for as many viewings as you like – for an additional €21.99.

So what do you get for your money? Well, a very different film to the original 1998 cartoon. Out go the songs, the comedy animals and Eddie Murphy’s extraordinary voice performance as Mushu, the small but noisy dragon who protects Mulan as, disguised as a man, she trains as a soldier in the Chinese Emperor’s Imperial Army (above).

In comes lots of female empowerment, a wicked but insightful witch played by Li Gong and a rather poorly visualised and non-speaking phoenix. There’s still a bit of skinny-dipping, some nice comedy with the matchmaker and an extraordinary ‘I’m Spartacus’ moment. There’s some killing too – hence the rare 12A certificate for a Disney film.

Yifei Liu is good in the title role, while New Zealand film-maker Niki Caro, best known for Whale Rider, channels Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon to decent effect but is heavily dependent on wirework and visual effects. It’s not Mulan as we know it but it’s not bad.