To begin with, apparently the writers dispensed with Mushu, the talking dragon voiced by Eddie Murphy in the 1998 animated feature to make the 2020 film more "realistic". Well, okay, but they then wrote in a witch who can morph into other people and change into a bird and/or flock of birds and flap around. Also, they imbue Mulan and several other characters with magical "chi" which is the Chinese equivalent of the Force, allowing those with it to do impossible feats of strength and agility. How is any of this making the movie more realistic? If anything, it's less so.
And speaking of characters they got rid of, where's Grandma? She was pretty much my favourite character in the 1998 movie. Perhaps it's just as well; they probably would have made her just as bland and uninteresting as the rest of the characters in the 2020 version.
This is another problem with the movie: there is very little character development. We don't care about any of these people because we don't know them. What are we told about Mulan's sister, for example? Well, she's afraid of spiders and... that's about it. Note to writers: a quirk is not a personality. This is particularly true of Mulan's soldier sidekicks. It's always going to be a challenge to make each character in a group a fully formed individual, considering their limited screen time (see The Hobbit movies). The 1998 Mulan managed it with clever writing and through their presence in several of the songs. The 2020 movie has dispensed with both the songs and the clever writing, and therefore most of the character development as well. While we're on the topic, using songs from the original musical as background music was a mistake. I know they did it to make people feel nostalgic and want to show the film to their kids, but the problem is, it just reminds everyone of those scenes in the 1998 film and how much better they were. And makes them wonder why they aren't watching that version instead of this joyless reboot.
The other reason Chen Honghui's character doesn't work is because of the 2020 film's Mulan narrative. I'll get into this in depth when I tackle the character of Mulan herself, but Disney's depiction of her character requires every male character- including Chen- to be... unimpressive. In addition, this film also destroys his character arc. In the 1998 film, Li Shang initially regards Ping (Mulan) as puny and weak- which is true. He then begins to admire the kid's determination and intelligence, but this takes a huge turn when the truth is revealed and he turfs her out. Then, as Mulan proves her loyalty and bravery, he realizes that the things he admired about Ping/Mulan haven't changed just because she's actually a woman. Also, he kinda, sorta likes the woman she is. In the 2020 film, Chen is friendly to Mulan when he thinks she's a guy, continues to try to be friendly when she is standoffish, is not responsible for her getting kicked out of the army, and is friendly and accepting when she comes back. This isn't a character arc, it's a character flatline. Between Tung and Chen Honghui, Disney has effectively changed one interesting character into two boring ones. Nicely done.
Okay, in my next post on Mulan 2020, I'll dig in to what makes Mulan such a terrible character. It'll take up the entire post.