Many blockbuster movies were postponed this year for obvious reasons, but Disney invented a premium video-on-demand service named Disney+ Premier Access specifically for Mulan. Subscribers to Disney's streaming service Disney+ needed to wait three months unless they ponied up $29.99.

Disney abandoned its Premier Access experiment when it released Pixar's Soul directly to Disney+ on Christmas Day. Soul is a wonderfully thoughtful movie about finding your personal "spark", your passion, your reason for living. Mulan inspires only obedience and servitude.

Loyal, Brave, and True is the empire's oath. Loyalty to the empire, bravery to die for the empire, and promise to never mislead the empire. When the emperor commands Mulan's father (who can barely walk) join the Chinese army, she disguises herself as a man to take his place. She eventually reveals her true self, rescues her comrades along with the emperor who makes her a general or something, and the credits roll with Christina Aguilera singing Loyal, Brave, and True.

Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness stands in direct opposition to this message but Disney doesn't care: they want the Chinese market. The Chinese government has strict foreign film quotas allowing roughly 34 foreign movies per year and keeping more than 75% of the ticket sales for itself. Hollywood, India, Japan, and Korea fiercely compete for these slots by co-producing with Chinese companies and bending over backwards to Chinese censors.

I hope the pandemic forces Hollywood stop taking the American movie market for granted, and they stop making movies that need to appeal to every single person on the planet to be profitable.

Anyway, if that was too much negativity for you, here are my favorite movies of 2020 in no particular order: Palm Springs (Sex Comedy), Tenet (Action Drama), Banana Split (Teen Comedy), Vast is the Night (Sci-Fi Drama), and Wolfwalkers (Kids Animation).