The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone and do not necessarily represent the position of ZU Media or APU.
But falls short, yet again
On Sept. 4, Disney released the new live-action movie “Mulan” on their streaming platform. It gained over $35 million on opening weekend. But just as reviews began pouring in, many were disgusted over a certain part of the credits. Which part? The part that mentioned a location in China known to have Muslim detention camps was used for filming.
In the credits, viewers saw Disney thank the government in the province of Xinjiang, where a part of the movie was shot. But, it was in this region that the Chinese Government put over a million Muslims in concentration camps since 2014.
Viewers have since ridiculed Disney. Because of this, the movie didn’t do well in box offices, both in the United States and China. This doesn’t surprise me at all. Disney had a chance to state that they don’t agree with what the Chinese Government was doing, but they didn’t.
The controversy surrounding “Mulan” was already surfacing before its release on Disney+.
Last year, the star actor of the film, Liu Yifei, publicly supported the Chinese Police even though the law enforcement in China used brutal force against the pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong.
The plotline had issues as well. While the movie was rated as average, many complained over the movie’s storytelling. The biggest issue I had was it had too many identical scenes with minimal differences.
The film also introduced the new character of the witch, but the character was considered “wasted potential.” The witch needed further background and purpose to give the character more substance.
Even though it contained amazing fight scenes with katanas, vivid imagery and brought back characters from the original film — except for Mushu — it wasn’t really liked by China itself.
Box offices in China showed the movie only got $23 million in opening weekend. The reviews from China stated the movie was an insult to the Chinese culture and history. Some even went so far to say the movie is a disgrace to the original film.
This primarily stems from the movie portrayal. While the actors themselves were ethnically Chinese, the scriptwriters were white and would not have had the same experience or understanding of Chinese culture. Because of this, the acting looked like it was based on stereotypes and not authentic information. Not only that, but the culture shown in the movie related more to Western, specifically American, ideals.
One viewer said, “It’s full of Western stereotypes and conjectures about China, and particularly ancient China.”
While blunt, I believe Disney used what was most easily accessible to them, which was stereotypical views of Chinese culture.
“Mulan” is a novel story. Taking place in China, a place that is full of history, it’s saddening that a movie trying to be accurate only became more of the opposite. In the end, Disney failed to recreate a story that could have been credible to Chinese culture.