Hacker Cinema
Mulan
2020 · Film · 115 min
Directed by Niki Caro
When the Emperor of China issues a decree that one man per family must serve in the Imperial Chinese Army to defend the country from Huns, Hua Mulan, the eldest daughter of an honored warrior, steps in to take the place of her ailing father. She is spirited, determined and quick on her feet. Disguised as a man by the name of Hua Jun, she is tested every step of the way and must harness her innermost strength and embrace her true potential.
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39 comments on Hacker News
Is it any different from Disney being criticized for filming Mulan (2020) in Xinjiang?
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/disney-criticized-for-filming-mulan-in-chinas-xinjiang
> All this misandry and trying to portray any masculinity as toxic is just lame. It's very similar to Disney's queer coding of villains. I remember in my teens, while being a sexually confused and closed queer how sensitive I was to that bullshit and how awful and ashamed it made me feel. It's ludicrous how it's being done again, just the aggressor and targeted demographics are different now. I can't tell if that's just Disney's Modus Operandi, or of this is some type of bitter revenge writing. It sucked then and it sucks now, and it will continue to suck. We need to do better.
I disagree with a lot that you say, but I think I can agree with this paragraph.
The story of "Wish" needlessly shat on King Magnifico and I felt pretty uncomfortable about that writing. So I can agree that there's definitely an element of coding the Disney villain in a certain way.
Scar is the effeminate uncle. Ursula is coded as a drag-queen. Moving to the more recent movies: I can also agree that King Magnifico was coded as toxic masculinity (handsome, successful king), but they did a poor job in the movie saying why he actually deserved the punishment he got (or the betrayal of his wife).
That being said, its also just... how Disney movies always seem to have been written? Both the good and bad ones. Not really an excuse mind you, but for a happy-go-lucky musical for children, a lot of Disney Villains get rather harshly punished, and not all of them seem like they deserve said punishment.
> The only challenge these modern Disney SFLs face is not believing in themselves (and as someone who struggles on and off with self esteem issues, I realise how difficult those can be, but also it's not "enough" to base a whole character around just that), usually with a sprinkle of "blame the patriarchy" in there too.
Well lets talk about Live Action Mulan for example.
There's no "blame the Emperor" scene. In fact, the emperor is a badass who takes to single-combat on the frontlines. Maybe you could argue that the Bori Khan (the new name of the main bad guy) and his relationship with Xianniang / Witch / Hawk is a bit of a blame the patriarchy (female witch subservient to a warlord). But on the other hand, villains are often seen needlessly abusing their underlings (Darth Vader needlessly kills his officers. Megatron abuses Starscream, etc. etc.). So I'm not entirely sure if this is beyond the norm in these kind of settings.
People blame Mulan for a lot of faults and say its clear of Disney's issues today. But... has anyone aside me actually watched it? Its a crappy Chinese Kung Fu movie yes that has issues deciding if Wuxia is cool or not... and that's the main problem with it.
But if there's some level of "Woke messaging" going on here, I'm not seeing it.
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Edit: after further thought, Toxicly Masculine male villains were at least a thing since The Sword in the Stone, and Gaston from Beauty and the Beast. I argue it's not really a recent trope either.
> How about the new Mulan?
Mulan sucked, but mostly because "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" did the plot better 20 years ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzkhVVFRIIg
Mulan fell into the same wishy-washy problem so many of these other recent movies fell into. Was Mulan supposed to be a wuxia / Chi-based kung fu movie where one exceptional warrior makes huge differences on the battlefield? Erm, maybe.
Or was it supposed to be a somewhat gritty war movie akin to the original cartoon? Erm... also yes, sometimes.
As such, we never got the spectacular fight scenes you'd normally get from Wuxia, nor did we get the grittier, tactical kind of Mulan that the cartoon was. The directors were faced with a choice and they chose "both", which in practice means "neither".
Turning Red was not released theatrically in the U.S., it was a Disney+ release that did not require a separate purchase (unlike the Mulan remake) so the fact it still made $20m is quite impressive. Based on the numbers for Poland, UAE, etc. in the BoxOfficeMojo link, Turning Red would likely have made over $600m globally if it had been released theatrically in major markets.
As other commenters have noted, Turning Red was the second most watched films on streaming in 2022, across all platforms (Luca was #9.)
Same thing in the new Mulan movie
The movies you listed fail in a different way. There are plenty of explosions and fight scenes in The Last Jedi and Captain Marvel. What they do share is that the main character is an underdeveloped Mary Sue, without character flaws, without weaknesses they must overcome. They're just made awesome from the start. It probably stems from the inability of current Hollywood to portray female characters as having any weaknesses at all, that would be heresy. The result is that it's hard to empathize with and care about the main character. They don't have any dimensionality.
Of the ones you listed I watched The Last Jedi and Captain Marvel. I know what I wrote is also true for Mulan thanks to friends who watched it and the Critical Drinker. He has a couple good films on YouTube actually demonstrating this aspect of modern films:
- Mulan: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIH-eFqBLP4>
- Star Wars: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSj6wEm4zZY>
- Captain Marvel: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKHEjpFF6J0>
Yes, absolutely. From Rotten:
Mulan - Critics: 73 - Audience: 47
The Last Jedi - Critics: 91 - Audience: 42
Captain Marvel - Critics: 79 - Audience: 45
It's clear that audiences - and you can read this as "people who like movies and are willing to leave a review" - and critics are miles apart. This prompts the common retort: "so what?" I continue to argue that the purpose of movie critics, for many decades, has been to tell the broad audience if they will like the movie. That's it. It has not been to, for example, critically deconstruct the abstract themes of power dynamics in inequitable social system. This kind of analysis appeals to a small minority of viewers. It has its place, but it should not be the majority of critics using this kind of lens, which it is.
This leads us to today, where critic reviews are functionally useless for the broad audience. Said movie minority are of course very happy with the entire critic industry catering to their needs, and they argue vociferously to keep it this way, using all kinds of condescending arguments about our lack of culture and refinement. Sometimes I just want to see cool explosions and fight scenes, and there's nothing wrong with that.
> audience typically only goes to see movies that they are likely to enjoy
That doesn't really explain the opposite phenomenon: movies that have higher critic rating than audience rating (e.g. movies like Mulan and Turning Red come to mind). IMHO, if you were to apply that rubric across all movies, the conclusion you should get is that critics and general audiences are simply different demographics and that it is normal for discrepancies to arise from sampling different demographics, not that general audiences are more biased towards what they like to watch. For example, parents wouldn't necessarily pick kids movies as their first choice of entertainment if age appropriate-ness wasn't a consideration (I think a lot of parents can relate to being sick of replaying Frozen, for example)
He literally starts by saying that these modern films are creating "a generation of shit people" and as proof asks you to log into TikTok and flashes up a clip of a young woman.
Why is this person 'shit'? I have no idea. Why is this whole generation 'shit'? Especially compared with a slightly older male Youtuber talking about Mulan, which many impartial observers would place in broadly the same class of pointless internet celeb.
If I wanted to briefly indicate the problems of this (or any other) generation, I could think of better things to flash up than a girl talking on TikTok, but apparently this wholesome nostalgia for the movies of his youth requires him to do this and say those things. And you didn't even notice this?
My viewing is pretty broad, I’ve seen these movies except Magnolia. What you are describing is the placing of a movie in a cultural context. This is criticism, not learning on an individual level. For example, take Mulan. I can generate a feminist counter-critique that the new Mulan is in fact better because women are born with special qualities men don’t have, and often are superior when given equal opportunities. This isn’t a lesson the movie teaches however, it’s academic bloviating.
I mean I think actual existentialist philosophers would laugh if you tried to tell them that Lost in Translation is an existentialist movie. Also I think you mean ennui not anomie.
I think the new Mulan fail was due to some social media shitstorm about the lead actress or something; the spastic Chinese internet trolls had a feeding frenzy on something she said. At the same time, the movie got trashed in the West for being, well, shit.
I think the Mulan update was a huge flop in China FWIW, so maybe Disney tried to thread the needle there and failed. New Star Wars movies also I think didn't do well there.
https://variety.com/2020/film/asia/why-china-hates-disney-mulan-1234770198/
> The most fundamental flaw, most felt, was that Disney’s new heroine starts out from childhood already equipped with superhero-like abilities, thanks to her extraordinary reserves of “qi,” the force that she cultivates and controls to excel as a fighter.
> Turning her into a superhero removes Mulan’s everywoman appeal, and leaves her with no room to grow as a character, huge swathes of Chinese viewers said.
Basically the exact criticism of the youtube video interestingly enough
I think this argument is overstretching into a political argument. The live action Mulan movie is consider a flop in China. The Chinese audience hate it. It is more successful in Singapore and Saudi Arabia. Disney remove one of main major male character to be aligned with the MeeToo movement. For the Animation version the Chinese complained for their foreign looking character and it is too different from myth. China love Kung Fu panda. The find kung fu panda show a sincere love to Chinese culture without over trying too be a chinese.
The Chinese government has seeped its way into nearly every facet of American life. This is most visible in Disney movies (see: the Mulan and Lion King remakes) but it is happening to many companies and universities where they use our own greed against us. I hope America will wake up and realize we have fighting a hidden war, but we are so divided I doubt we'll notice until we've lost, if we notice at all.
Similar situation here in the UK.
Disney+ initially available at what I considered a fair price, and now they want to hike it by something like 50% - which seems totally unreasonable.
Furthermore, it seems like so much more content now is not included in the monthly fee - they want to extract even more money from us! And I take issue with the actual pricing here too, for example Mulan was a whopping £20 - for comparison, an adult cinema ticket is around £10! So again, this feels totally unfair and unjustified.
Disney is meant to be about "fun", but I don't think we'll be renewing, because, frankly, they are taking the piss and making me hate the service.
Disney is the main culprit here. They are making a few significant missteps with their otherwise very well executed streaming offering.
Initially they offered their streaming service at a very competitive price, but I think they have gotten some of the sequencing wrong after that. Initially early subscribers were hit with these up charges for new films. I think Mulan might have been the first one?
It was mid pandemic and they didn't get a chance to release it in theatres, so I think it felt like it made sense at the time and I am guessing they saw it as pretty successful. They quickly started doing it with far less interesting films, and ones that I could see at release time in the theatre.
At home streaming just isn't a "special occasion" like going to the theatre is, and while I was happy to make it a special occasion during the depths of stay-at-home lockdowns, there are a lot of competitive forces now. An extra $20 or $30 might seem to Disney like an amount people will happily pay for every new release, but I think the appetite for that will be pretty low going forward.
Disney also offered an attractive discount for a 1-year subscription initially, so it was pretty easy to do. I've been happy with it, but I notice my kids are on Netflix much much more. That really surprised me.
Now, my subscription renews in April of 2022, but Disney has already started emailing me that it is going to increase almost 50% in cost at renewal time. I don't know why they feel the need to start telling me that so far in advance, or so many times (3 emails now). All it's done is make me thing "ok, that's a lot, let's see if we really use it" and also "hmm, I've spent some $ on these new releases".
They don't seem patient or that they are thinking through this messaging/experience nearly as well as Netflix. Netflix does increase their prices but they do it rarely and they always pummel you with new content around the time they are doing it. They also packaged in lower resolution options, etc so you can keep your costs down if you really want to. Disney hasn't done any of that.
Almost after 2 years of original release date, Disney+ is going to bring Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt’s family-friendly movie Jungle Cruise to the theaters this summer. As like other movies Mulan, Raya, and The Last Dragon, Black Widow you can easily enjoy this film from home only. This is because Disney+ has officially announced that the movie is going to hit the streaming platform on the same day as theaters.
As far as I heared (from youtube ,,conspiracy theorists'') the companies hired outside advisors whose whole role was to see if the movies / series were politically correct, or needed some change. When the pandemic hit, it was a loss quarter for Disney: both the films flopped, and Disney-land had to be closed at the same time. There's a story that the leads got together on a video conference call and decided that it's time to kick out the advisor, and I saw Netflix's stance change at the same time.
I was really sorry about Mulan for example, because it's one of my favourite cartoons, and I was really really looking for the movie remake. They made it politically correct for the US and cut out all the sex scenes and humor because of the Chinese government. I think it's one of the worst remakes of all time at this point.
> But in general, I think there’s good evidence that non-box office releases depress overall revenue (Mulan). Big studios want to be in theaters.
I do buy this.
> It’s not in the movie industry’s interest to let AMC fall.
But, I don't buy this. AMC going bankrupt doesn't mean theaters go away. In all likelihood, AMC would live on as a new corporation after paying out creditors in the bankruptcy process.
An AMC bankruptcy actually seems like a best case scenario for the movie industry. After relieving itself of debt, AMC can afford to lower prices (due to a lower cost structure). And, lower prices means more ticket sales and more studio revenue.
> In the above article AMC said they didn’t want to run ads (non-trailer) before the movie. There’s a lot they can do.
Definitely agree here, but all these opportunities existed prior to the pandemic. So, I'm wondering how you can justify the appreciation in valuation over this period. Was AMC just severely underpriced prior to COVID?
What’s worse for prices in this market is the appearance that your business can’t grow. Based on AMC’s situation (which is zero as far as I’m concerned), all it can do is grow. Sounds ridiculous, but it’s a growth stock.
It’s in the same class as any tech ipo imho.
This gives some insight on where the company was at pre-pandemic:
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/amc-theatres-quarterly-loss-narrows-record-attendance-1253080
But in general, I think there’s good evidence that non-box office releases depress overall revenue (Mulan). Big studios want to be in theaters.
It’s not in the movie industry’s interest to let AMC fall, and AMC and all the pandemic hit industries are going to have to run a lean business to overcome the debt. In the above article AMC said they didn’t want to run ads (non-trailer) before the movie - well, now they will have to. There’s a lot they can do.
They seem like obvious plays to me.
Every remake disappoints some fans, and the biggest reason Mulan lost so much money was COVID, not the quality of the film.
Your last paragraph gives away the game. There is no content in Mulan to give a warning about. The issue you have is with the Chinese government, not the content of the film Mulan.
This is where it gets confusing. If Disney puts these preroll notices in front of lots of content, does it mean content without it has been reviewed by Disney and they haven’t found a problem?
This used to be crazy for me to think, but this article literally says Disney has hired people to review all content. Makes sense that they would review their recent blockbuster, Mulan, before Muppets episodes from decades ago.
So it seems Disney is pretty much saying the concentration camps in China are fine. Or at least are more fine than Petter Sellers dressing as a gypsy. In the spectrum of messed up stuff, I think making fun of gypsies is on there. Maybe 3/1000 on the butthurt-o-meter (with literal Nazis carrying out Holocaust being 1000/1000 and Triumph of the Will being like 600/1000).
So I would guess that just putting money into a region where people are rounded up, sterilized, retrained, etc must rate at least a 50/1000 right?
They have network effect and can destroy a great legal and valid business just because an advertiser doesn’t like it.
As long as they moderate separately, the businesses have chance to survive.
Black Mirror had an episode with social scoring system that looks like the future, but is already happening on a small scale.
Also if you want to see a movie with moderation turned on by multiple parties, watch the new Mulan and compare to the old one.
> Apparently its Mulan release (which required a premium subscription) didn't do so well, but seems risky for Disney to sit on its hands while WB goes all in.
Part of that might have been that the Mulan movie just wasn't good and didn't look that good even from the jump in the trailers. Word got out pretty fast before the release about it having no songs, no Mushu, etc which was so much of the charm of the original.
Based on the prices at a local theater, $20/viewing is about par for one ticket + snacks, and $30 is generally better than two people + snacks:
n=1: $13+food n=2: $26+food n=4 (2 kids): $46 + food
When you factor in being able to have cheaper food, not to mention intermissions whenever you want (bathroom break, making popcorn, etc), I feel like streaming is still better than theater, price-wise, even at $30/movie.
Unfortunately, it doesn't _feel_ that way. We still haven't seen Mulan yet, though, and I'm not sure if price is a factor in that. I suspect it's a small factor -- we subscribed to Disney+ to see Hamilton, for example -- but it just hasn't come up in months. I forgot about it until writing this comment.
It's hard to convince myself that I should pay $20 or $30 for a screening, when a year from now I can likely rent it on Prime for $10 or less.
Mulan had a lot worse things going for it than your average blockbuster though.
Mulan being the first live-action Disney to not have songs, and axing Mushu, were controversial decisions at least amongst US audiences from the get-go. On top of that there was cultural controversy as well, with the actress supporting the HK police and the film credits thanking the Xinjiang Public Security Bureau.
It'll be interesting to see how this effects a culture/mindset shift among large movie producers and directors. Putting aside their artistic concerns that their films are best experienced on the massive widescreen, having a big box office haul seems to be a key part of Hollywood braqfests.
If simultaneous theater+streaming becomes the norm, it would seem the days of multi-hundred-million box office gross will be past. In 2020, the highest grossing film (domestically) so far is the Bad Boys sequel, which released in January and got $204M. The only other 2020 release to break $100M is the Sonic the Hedgehog movie. And many of 2020's top grossing movies were released in late 2019, e.g. "1917" and Star Wars. Even worse, Christopher Nolan's "Tenet" – released in September by Warner Bros – basically bombed at under $60M [0].
Given the huge movies that WB is planning to put on HBO (Matrix 4, Wonder Woman, Dune), I wonder if that'll spur Disney to throw Black Widow onto streaming. Apparently its Mulan release (which required a premium subscription) didn't do so well, but seems risky for Disney to sit on its hands while WB goes all in.
[0] https://www.boxofficemojo.com/year/2020/?grossesOption=calendarGrosses
What movies besides "Mulan" that were originally supposed to be in theaters but instead went straight to VOD due to COVID were more than $20?
Disney wasn't the first to do that. A number of new movies have come out at that price point for a very short window this year before becoming available for purchase or rental. I don't think it's accurate to compare these movies to rentals in the $2-5 range. This scheme is clearly designed to replace some of the revenue from a theater run before it goes straight to rental. If you're looking at it that way, it's not such a bad deal for the consumer. We did the Mulan thing and it was half what it would have cost to take the family to the theater. It was a fun evening at our house and we would do it again as an alternative to going to theaters during covid. The only ones getting screwed by this setup are the theaters.
> Aggregators seek to serve the maximum number of consumers. Integrators seek to monetize consumers to the maximum extent.
I think this hits the point on the head here. The most recent example of this is Disney setting the rental price for their new Mulan film at $30. Keep in mind, that's $30 _on top_ of whatever you're paying for your Disney Plus subscription.
Quality issues with that film aside, the fact that Disney was able to charge _so much_ above the market norm for rentals ($2-$5) forecasts a future where streaming companies slowly increase their prices as bad as the cable television companies of yore.
We can say things against China. China shouldn't do this. Plenty of companies don't operate in China, regardless of the money. Google has struggled with this. Apple surrendered and makes phones there and sells them. Disney is trying to surrender with Mulan, but apparently even those they cow-towed to them in extreme ways (in Mulan the movie they 'thank' the help of the Chinese authorities in some of the places that have the Uighur camps! They literally thank them.
The enormous sums these companies believe they will earn in China, the all mighty growth, that overwhelms their ability to consider the implications.
As an European, I find this _extremely_ weird, and almost as biased as what it purports to counteract.
What if ($DIVINITY forbid) someone decides to do a movie about N.Y. stockbrokers in the 80s, or about the sole survivor of an expedition/starship/civilization? Do animals/aliens/octopi count as “diverse” cast members?
I haven’t had coffee yet so I’m thinking off the cuff, but of all the recent movies I’ve watched/intend to see, only Mulan (which I haven’t watched) would qualify on the first three counts.
Also, I can see a lot of writers and movie directors going “I want to tell my story in my own way and not tick someone else’s arbitrary boxes”. Creativity is like that.
> Disney is under fire for shooting its new film Mulan in parts of China where the government is accused of serious human rights abuses.
Because as we all know, if they’d shot it in any other province, the crimes against humanity basically aren’t even happening!
Did we need a live version of Lord of The Rings? What was wrong with the print version?
The original Mulan legend is good material as is the original movie. If the new movie had been any good we'd likely all be happy for it.
A Star Was Born has been re-made 4 times. The most recent is the highest rated. Pride and Prejudice has been made several times. I personally really enjoyed the mid 90s version. Mutiny on Bounty has been re-made more than once. I liked the 60s version over the 40s version. I liked the 2005 King Kong (and the 1933 King Kong)
There's nothing wrong with remaking. It's just disappointing when it's a bad remake.
That's the thing. These are not normal times so "Mulan on Streaming" is not competing with "Mulan in the cinema" or any other movie in the cinema. You either watch it or you don't.
This movie is targeted at tweens/teens and the FOMO effect will be big. So if you have a tween in the house that wants to see the movie, you will pay those 30$. Not to mention the tweens who will be more than willing to shell out their own pocket money for it.
This is not a mass-market price.
Really unexpected for a company as well run as Disney. A few things:
-Disney+ - Seems to be doing incredibly well. -China market - Both parks and movies will be extremely hard hit near turn, also with Mulan coming out soon will prb be really bad numbers(surprised they did not move release date). -Domestic parks and European parks may take a hit as fares increases(US only?) and virus worries keep people away. -2020 films are not the heavy hitters that 2019 was, expect less revenue here and still less due to virus issues.
So despite disney+ doing well a few dark clouds on the horizon, I'm really hoping its not something health related.
Here [1] is Chan's filmography. He's very active in the American industry still. Using the fact he also acts in Chinese films against him is not very reasonable. And Liu Yifei is American Chinese and literally just got her big break playing the lead in Mulan.
It seems increasingly disturbing to me that people seem to want to assume that anybody who holds a different view from them must be a "troll" or some sort of secret government conspirator or whatever else. Social media echo chambers are making people increasingly incapable of understanding that people can see the same information, without omission or ignorance, and come to different conclusions.
For me I think movies mean less than they used to. We are spoiled with the amount of entertainment constantly being released to us nowadays. I will not go buy a movie or see a movie at the theater anymore - no matter what it is. It could be the most anticipated film in a half a decade and I'll still wait for it to be conveniently streamed to me. Maybe I'm getting old, but I feel like people don't create movie libraries anymore unless they're pirates. We don't have 1 specific night a week where we get everyone together for a special movie. We watch movies and shows all the time and that makes them less special/valuable. I don't think I'm articulating this well.
Disney thinks I'll tack on another streaming service to watch Mulan or Captain America: Civil War - but they're wrong...