The Failure of Disney’s Mulan in China

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 of 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. 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. This negative result didn’t seem to be changed after the Chinese audience watched it. Even though Disney spent a lot of effort to fit the Chinese market, the reason why Mulan failed in the Chinese market is due to the stereotype and misunderstanding of the traditional Chinese culture, make-up, costumes and sceneries, and characteristics, which ultimately caused the movie to become nondescript.

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 is they deleted Mushu, the little magical dragon from the movie. In the 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. They also 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?

First and most important, the whole movie portrayed a stereotypical understanding of the traditional Chinese appearance, specifically towards the make-ups, costumes and sceneries. The whole movie kept the overall coloring of the original animation, which means both the make-ups and the costumes of characters followed the color scheme of the original animation film. Disney wanted to keep the authenticity of the original animation film, but at the same time, make the movie look real. Clearly, it did not work out. Purely moving the make-ups and costume from the animation characters onto the real people makes the whole film look very unnatural and provide a sense of violation. This is what caused the movie to look extremely wrong and ugly for the Chinese audience. However, this is not the biggest problem for the make-ups and costumes. What is most unacceptable is how the make-ups and costumes violate the original story’s historical background. Before the gathering, we see a scene of Mulan putting on her make-up. The way she puts on her make-up and the overall make-up style is clearly a Tang Dynasty make-up, which is a huge mistake. Mulan is not a Tang Dynasty story, but a Northern Wei story, so how is it possible for the character to have the make-up from a completely different historical period? Therefore, the make-up not only violates the overall cultural style, but also violates the overall authenticity of the original story. The costume shares the same problem with the make-ups. The color does not fit the overall style of the story, and is also a wrong interpretation of the historical background. After Mulan finishes her make-up and dresses up, the festival gathering starts. Mulan comes out from her living place and stands with her families, this is a place where really shocked the Chinese audience. While watching this gathering scene, many people ask the same question, why does it look so strange? And I also share the same feeling, the whole scenery looks very strange and does not really look like a real ancient Chinese village at all, but rather a place in Chinatown. Furthermore, the building violates the historical period one more time, and this building structure is from another dynasty, the Song Dynasty. The whole scene becomes a combination of Tang Dynasty make-up and costumes with Song building and scenery under a Northern Wei Dynasty historical period. Therefore, there is no wonder why the movie does not look appeal to the Chinese audience.

Other than the problems with the visual component of the movie which can not attract the Chinese audience, the content of the movie is also unable to fit the Chinese culture. Other than deleting elements from the animation movie, the movie also added many elements in the movie, and “Chi”, the inner power is one of them. However, this element does not fit the story of Mulan. In the original story and the animation movie, the most important theme is how Mulan as a female has to overcome the physical disadvantage to compete with male and eventually become a hero. While in the movie, because of the element “Chi”, the whole story changed this theme into a story of a Kung Fu girl who fights the powerful and magical witch with her “Chi”. As mentioned here, the magical witch is another element they added. This character does not exist either in the original story or the animation film. So why did they add it? This change is not only unnecessary, but also brings the whole story onto the wrong track. How is it possible for a witch with magical power to exist for a story that was based on a traditional Chinese cultural background? Moreover, the magical witch was not only the character that does not make sense. Even Disney invited top tier and most famous actors and actresses in China to act as the main characters, the sense of violation still cannot be covered.

Furthermore, due to the wrong cultural base of the movie, Disney emphasized the feminist characteristic of Mulan, but failed to bring out the authentic characteristics of her in the original story. When Disney tried to use this Chinese story to attract the Chinese market, what they forgot about is that Mulan is one of the most famous classical stories that almost all Chinese knows. In the original story, Mulan went to the army for her father because of her duty to practice filial piety, but the movie only gives Mulan the image of a strong and independent woman who can be as good or even better than man. The reason for this is relatively clear, the movie is still using a western way to tell a Chinese story. Disney wanted to focus on the feminist quality of Mulan, however, this was not what the main idea of the original story. They wanted to keep the authenticity of the animation, and at the same time make changes on the movie to fit the Chinese standards, but clearly, they failed at both. Changing Mulan’s main characteristic could work in the animation because everything was based on a virtual world, so people wouldn’t consider about it seriously. However, it wouldn’t work in the live-action movie. The live-action movie is based on real people and sceneries. Thus, the whole movie created a very serious environment and atmosphere. Therefore, the world view of the movie has to follow the original story in order for the Chinese audience to feel emotionally connected. Otherwise, the audience would not be attracted by it and could even be offended by it. In the original story, or in other words, from Chinese people’s perspective, even though Mulan went to the army for her father, she is still a delicate, elegant and feminie woman. However, the movie forced the western perspective and value of a strong, independent and feminist charactersticts onto Mulan, which is a complete contradiction to the Chinese perspectiven and standards. Therefore, Mulan would undoubtedly lose the favor of the Chinese audience and market.

In conclusion, Mulan’s failure in the Chinese market was inevitable. However, Disney’s attempt was totally understandable. Under today’s world context, the Chinese market has already become one of the most important and mature markets. Its huge potential tracked the favor of all major competitors in all fields, especially in the entertainment industry. Disney, considerably one of the biggest entertainment companies, is trying its best to create a bridge with the Chinese market to further expand its world influence. Unfortunately, Mulan as one of their first steps to further open the Chinese market, did not get the result that they expected for. Although this is just the start, what Disney really needs to start thinking is will using the western way of telling a Chinese story always work and get the favor of the Chinese market, especially in a live action film? Can they really copy the success of the animation version of Mulan or Kung Fu Panda over and over again? The answer is clearly negative. Changing and adapting a story and character is never the problem. But in order to be successful in the Chinese market with a Chinese story, Disney really needs to process things from the Chinese perspective.

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, https://movie.douban.com/subject/26357307/.