Mulan’s Failure in the Chinese Market
Ever since the first Mulan animation movie came out in 1998, it became one of the most popular Disney movies of all time. Accordingly, the unique story and the independent personalities that Mulan has quickly made this Chinese princess one of the most popular Disney princesses. As Disney adapted more and more of their animations into live-action films, they finally decided to make a Mulan movie too, which hyped up the audience from all over the world, especially those in China. The Chinese all have been waiting for it, and have been looking forward to seeing how Disney will tell this one of the most famous Chinese classic stories. However, the movie really ruined everyone’s high expectations. The failure of Mulan showed that using the Western way of telling a Chinese story does not always work out in the Chinese market.
Even before the movie was officially released in China, it only got a 4.7 out of 10 on the most popular Chinese movie rating website. People really dislike it just based on the trailers and the posters that Disney released. People disliked it for many different reasons, but the most common reason was that they think the movie looks like a movie from 20 years ago and the posters just simply look way too ugly. But could the movie make a turn after it was released a few days ago? The answer was no. The score only went up by 0.2 and most people became super disappointed after the film.
The movie Mulan is an adaptation of the original animation movie released in 1998, however, in order to have success in the Chinese market, Disney put a lot of effort on the movie to specifically fit the Chinese standards. The first major change they did to the movie is they deleted Mushu, the little magical dragon from the movie. In Chinese culture, the dragon is never a small thing, but instead, always a grand and extremely powerful creature. Furthermore, the movie version of Mulan has an overall very serious atmosphere, which creates a strong contrast with the original animation film. Therefore, it would be strange to have Mushu, a funny element character, in the movie. Disney also made many changes on the scenes for the Chinese standards. The deleted one of the most classic scenes, the kissing scene between Mulan and the General on the bridge. It was impossible for a male and female to kiss each other publicly in the ancient traditional environment. These two changes of the movie really showed that the production team spent a lot of time and effort to get the movie as authentic as possible, and make the story much closer to the original story. But why does it still lose all the favor of the Chinese audience, what really went wrong?
The Mulan’s production team had spent so much time and effort on researching the Chinese history and made enormous changes in the movie just to fit the Chinese market. They have invited numerous top tier and extremely famous actors in China to participate in the movie as the main characters to further expand its influence and advertisement. But why did the result turn out this way in China? The stereotypical appearance, the super old fashion make-ups, strange characteristics, and the unreasonable interpretations of Chinese traditional costumes, colorings, and sceneries, are all reasons why people dislike it. The drastic changes of the characters and overall atmosphere compared to the original story really lose the feeling of the original stories. These all make a strong contrast to people’s high expectations and standards for the movie. Other than the high expectations that people had, the movie is using a western way to tell a Chinese story. The movie really failed to fit the Chinese standards.
The production team had always been on the wrong track to fulfill the Chinese standards and didn’t find a correct focus for the film. The story is too far off from the original story that Chinese people expected for. Even the core production members tried their best, but still, they didn’t get what the Chinese people really wanted to see. First of all, they kept all the make-up from the original animation to the live-action film. This really made the characters look ugly and unnatural. They wanted to keep the authenticity of the animation, and at the same time make changes to fit the Chinese standards, but clearly, they failed at both. You can’t just simply move something from the original animation right on to the live-action film because one is purely based on a virtual platform while the other is based on real people and sceneries. To most Chinese audiences, this western way of telling the Chinese story did not work out this time. People accuse Disney of “not understanding the Chinese culture and the essence of the story of Mulan.” Many people claim that it might be the worst adaptation of Mulan they have ever seen. It is definitely not the Mulan in their mind and the one that they want to see.
In conclusion, Mulan’s failure in the Chinese market is inevitable. Furthermore, it not only failed in China, but also failed in the U.S.. The movie loses its key theme, that the story was based on one of the most famous classical Chinese stories.. The drastic changes Disney did to Mulan is not acceptable to the Chinese audience, who had high expectations for the movie. It really failed to achieve what the Chinese standards and ultimately caused its failure in the Chinese market.
Citations:
贺 公子. “豆瓣评分4.7，我期待了四年的《花木兰》真的那么难看吗？.” 知乎专栏, 2020, zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/228560855.
“花木兰 (2009).” 花木兰 (豆瓣), 2020, movie.douban.com/subject/3264045/.
