Others were not as bothered.

“It’s fine that different screenwriters make up different stories,” Zhang Qin, a military veteran, said after watching the film in Beijing last week. “They can play with imagination and it’s a good thing.”

IT engineer Zhang Fan also had positive things to say about the film. “What touched me is the humanity,” he said.

The remake of Disney’s popular 1998 animation is based on the ancient tale of Hua Mulan, a young woman who takes her father’s place in the army by dressing as a man.

The animated version was a global hit but earned just $30 million in China, where viewers found the movie too Americanized, according to reports at the time.

The original tale, “The Ballad of Mulan,” has gone through multiple renditions. Themes such as filial piety and being loyal to the central government have remained as core tenets, which some find outdated and problematic.

“It’s a very touchy subject in modern China because a lot of people find (filial piety) very constraining, including me,” said Xiran Jay Zhao, the Chinese Canadian author of an upcoming book about the only female emperor in China. “It’s like a moral shackle for people.”

Critics also pointed out inaccurate details such as the use of a southern-style house when Mulan is likely from the north and a depiction of “qi” as a magic power that only boys can wield — in Chinese philosophy, it is a force not limited by gender.