The film I watched for this extra credit assignment was Mulan, released in 2020. It was directed by Niki Caro. It was written by Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver, Lauren Hynek, and Elizabeth Martin. The leading casts were Yifei Liu, who played Mulan; Donnie Yen, who played Commander Tung; Gong Li, who played Xiangniang; and Jet Li, who played the Emperor. It had gross production of $66,800,000 worldwide (www.boxofficemojo.com). The highest gross production is in China, which was $40,722,891 followed by Russia, which was $5,482,738. Since the film was not too long after it was first released, domestic statistics are not available yet. However, when I read several reviews online, a lot of them presented a common theme: the 2020 version of Mulan was not as good as the 1998 version due to incompleteness and confusions of plots and characters as Disney tried (but failed) to please both the Chinese and western costumes. Angie Tian Tian was a bicultural and bilingual author who has a background in Chinese and Canadian culture. According to her review about Mulan (2020), she commented, “The Asian representation, much like the roles of Asians in the movie production, is only surface level. The desperation in trying to please both eastern and western audiences reduced the movie down to a confusing story riddled with inaccuracies” (“Mulan: A Critical Look At Its Portrayal of Feminism and Chinese Culture”).
Similar to lots of contemporary Disney films, Mulan (2020) also attempted to mitigate stereotypical gender standards by blurring the boundary between males and females; however, they made gender roles more obvious as it was overemphasized. For example, When Mulan’s parents discussed Mulan's chi being too strong at the beginning of the film, he emphasized that “chi is for warriors, not daughters” (5:33). Although Disney’s purpose was to portray a female character who acted as valiant as a man, the villagers and her parents think about Mulan as a “witch”. This triggered an opposite effect on Disney’s original intention that it delivered a message to the audience females should not be strong like her. I think this confusion also accounts for the lower rating for this film. As Tian mentioned in her review from an audience’s perspective, she wrote, “To be frank, my expectations going into a Disney film is not to see a story that challenges gender norms and modern feminism. What I saw, much to both my expectation, yet also my disappointment, was the reinforcement of a type of feminism that we need to abandon.”
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