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Mulan
Release
Date June 19th, 1998
SYNOPSIS:
When
her father's called to serve in the Imperial army, free-spirited Mulan breaks
tradition by taking his place. Mulan's concerned ancestors send tiny guardian
dragon Mushu to bring her back safely - if he can stop causing more problems
than he solves. Eventually, Mulan proves her worth as a highly-skilled warrior,
impressing fellow soldiers Ling, Yao, and Chien Po as well as Captain Li Shang.
Soon, her true identity is discovered and she is sent away in disgrace.
However, China's future and those she loves depending on her, Mulan must find a
way to convince the others that she has what it takes to be the best and defeat
the Huns.
FUN FACTS:
Mulan is a 1998
American animated musical film directed by Tony Bancroft and Barry Cook, with
story by Rogert D. San Souci and screenplay by Rita Hsiao, Philip LaZebnik, Chris
Sanders, Eugenia Bostwick-Singer, and Raymond Singer. It was produced by Walt
Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures on June 19, 1998.
Ming-Na, Eddie Murphy, Miguel Ferrer and B. D. Wong star in the English
version, while Jackie Chan provided his voice for the Chinese dubs of the film.
The 36th animated feature in the Walt Disney animated Classics, and a part of
the Disney Renaissance, the film is based on the Chinese legend of Hua Mulan.
Mulan was the first of three features produced primarily at
the Disney animation studio at Disney-MGM Studios in Orlando, Florida.
Development for the film began in 1994, when a number of artistic supervisors
were sent to China to receive artistic and cultural inspiration. Mulan
was well-received by critics and the public, grossing $304 million, earning Golden
Globe and Academy Award nominations, and winning several Annie Awards including
Best Animated Feature. A 2005 direct-to-video sequel, Mulan II, followed.
Mulan is set in China during the Han Dynasty. The film's
protagonist, Fa Mulan, is the only daughter of aged warrior Fa Zhou. She
impersonates a man and takes her father's place during a general conscription
to counter a fictitious Hun invasion led by Shan Yu. Along with her guardian
dragon Mushu, her captain, Li Shang, a lucky cricket, "Cri-kee," and
her companions, Yao, Ling, and Chien-Po, she battles the invading Hun army.
Plot
The Huns,
led by the ruthless Shan Yu, invade Han China, forcing the Chinese emperor to
command a general mobilization. Each family is given a conscription notice,
requiring one man from each family to join the Chinese army. When Fa Mulan
hears that her elderly father Fa Zhou, the only man in their family, is forced
to join the army, she decides to stand in his place, disguising herself as a
young man named "Ping". Fa Zhou learns that Mulan has taken his place
and prays to his family's ancestors, who order their "Great Stone
Dragon" to protect her. The ancestors are unaware that the statue of Great
Stone Dragon failed to come to life, and that Mushu, a small dragon is the one
to go and protect Mulan.
Mulan is
initially misguided by Mushu in how to behave like a man, and starts a ruckus
at the training camp. However, under command of Li Shang, she and her new
friends at the camp, Yao, Ling and Chien-Po, become skilled warriors. Mushu,
desiring to see Mulan succeed, creates a fake order from Li Shang's father,
General Li, ordering Li Shang to follow them into the mountains. They arrive at
a burnt-out village and discover that General Li and his forces have been wiped
out by the Huns. As they solemnly leave the mountains, they are ambushed by the
Huns, but use of a cannon by Mulan buries most of the enemy forces in an avalanche.
Mulan is slashed by Shan Yu in his rage at her wiping out his army during the
battle, and she is forced to reveal her deception after receiving medical
attention. Instead of executing Mulan as the law requires, Li Shang decides to
spare her life by leaving her on the mountain as the rest of the army departs
for the Imperial City to report the news of the Huns' demise. However, the
avalanche failed to eliminate all the enemies, as Mulan catches sight of a
small number of surviving Huns, including Shan Yu, making their way to the City
intent on capturing the Emperor.
In the
Imperial City, Mulan attempts to warn Li Shang about Shan Yu, but he refuses to
listen. The Huns appear and capture the Emperor, locking themselves inside the
palace. With Mulan's help, Li Shang, Yao, Ling, and Chien-Po pose as concubines
and are able to enter the palace and defeat Shan Yu's men. As Shang prevents
Shan Yu from assassinating the Emperor, Mulan lures the Hun onto the roof where
she engages him in single combat. Meanwhile, acting on Mulan's instructions,
Mushu fires a bundle of fireworks rockets at Shan Yu on her signal and kills
him. Mulan is praised by the Emperor and the people of China, who all bow to
her as an unprecedented honor. While she accepts the Emperor's crest and Shan
Yu's sword as gifts, she politely declines his offer to be his advisor and asks
to return to her family. She returns home and presents these gifts to her
father, but he is more overjoyed to have his daughter back safely. Li Shang,
who has become enamored with Mulan, soon arrives under the guise of returning
her helmet, but accepts the family's invitation for dinner. Earlier in the
film, Mulan was declared unfit for marriage, but this is not the case with her
budding romance with Li Shang. Mushu is granted a position as a Fa family
guardian by the ancestors amid a returning celebration.
Production
Mulan originally began as a short,
straight-to-video film titled "China Doll" about an oppressed and
miserable Chinese girl who is whisked away by a British Prince Charming to
happiness in the West. Then Disney consultant and children's book author Robert
D. San Souci suggested making a movie of the Chinese poem, "The Song of Fa
Mu Lan" and Disney combined the two separate projects.
Development
for Mulan began in 1994, after the production team sent a select group
of artistic supervisors to China for three weeks to take photographs and
drawings of local landmarks for inspiration; and to soak up local culture. The
filmmakers decided to change Mulan's character to make her more appealing and
selfless and turn the art style closer to Chinese painting, with watercolor and
simpler design - opposed to the details of The Lion King and The Hunchback of
Notre Dame.
To
create 2,000 Hun soldiers during the Huns' attack sequence, the production team
developed a crowd simulation software called Attila. This software
allows thousands of unique characters to move autonomously. A variant of the
program called Dynasty was used in the final battle sequence to create a
crowd of 3,000 in the Forbidden City. Pixar's photorealistic RenderMan was used
to render the crowd. Another software developed for this movie was Faux
Plane which was used to add depth to flat two-dimensional painting.
Although developed late in production progress, Faux Plane was used in five
shots, including the dramatic sequence which features the Great Wall of China,
and the final battle sequence when Mulan runs to the Forbidden City. During the
scene in which the Chinese are bowing to Mulan, the crowd is a panoramic film
of real people bowing. It was edited into the animated foreground of the scene.
Cast
- Ming-Na as Fa Mulan (singing voice
provided by Lea Salonga)
- Eddie Murphy as Mushu
- B. D. Wong as Captain Li Shang
(singing voice provided by Donny Osmond)
- Miguel Ferrer as Shan Yu
- Harvey Fierstein as Yao
- Gedde Watanabe as Ling
- Jerry Tondo as Chien-Po
- James Hong as Chi-Fu
- Soon-Tek Oh as Fa Zhou
- June Foray as Grandmother Fa (singing
voice provided by Marni Nixon)
- Pat Morita as The Emperor of China
- George Takei as First Ancestor
- Freda Foh Shen as Fa Li
- James Shigeta as General Li
- Frank Welker as Cri-Kee, Khan
(Mulan's horse), and Little Brother (Mulan's dog)
- Mary Kay Bergman as various ancestors
Jackie
Chan provided the voice of Li Shang in Chinese dubs of the film and appeared in
the promotional video singing the Chinese version of the song.
Reception
Critical reaction
Reception
of Mulan was mostly positive, gathering a 86% fresh rating from Rotten Tomatoes.
Additionally, the film was ranked seventeenth out of the forty-eight canon
Disney animated features in a 2009 countdown at the same website. Kyle Suggs
described the visuals as "breathtaking," and Dan Jardine described
the visuals as "magnificently animated." Film critic Roger Ebert gave
Mulan three and a half stars out of four in his written review. He said
that "Mulan is an impressive achievement, with a story and treatment ranking
with Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King". Negative
reviews described it as a "disappointment." The songs are accused of
not being memorable, and slowing down the pace of the movie. Some reviewers
suggest that the film is "soulless" in its portrayal of Asian
society.
This
movie was also the subject of comment from feminist critics. Mimi Nguyen says
the film "pokes fun at the ultimately repressive gender roles that seek to
make Mulan a domesticated creature." Nadya Labi agrees, saying "there
is a lyric in the film that gives the lie to the bravado of the entire
girl-power movement." She pointed out that she needed to become a boy to
do it. Kathleen Karlyn, an assistant professor of English at the University of
Oregon, criticizes it suggesting "In order to even imagine female heroism,
we're placing it in the realm of fantasy". Pam Coats, producer of Mulan,
aimed to produce a character that exhibits both masculine and feminine
influences, being both physically and mentally strong.
Box office performance
Mulan's
opening weekend box office figures were $22.8
million, placing it as the second highest grossing movie that week to The
X-Files. It went on to make $120 million in the U.S. and Canada as well as $304
million worldwide, placing it the second highest family film of the year,
behind A Bug’s Life, and the 7th highest of the year overall. While Mulan
outgrossed the two Disney films which preceded it, The Hunchback of Notre Dame
and Hercules, its box office returns failed to match those of the Disney films
of the early 1990s such as Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King.
Top international releases include United Kingdom ($14.6 million) and France ($10.2
million).
Awards
Mulan
won many Annie Awards. The film itself won the award for Best Animated Feature.
Individual achievement awards were awarded to Pam Coats for producing; Barry
Cook and Tony Bancroft for Directing; Rita Hsiao, Christopher Sanders, Phillip
LaZebnick, Raymond Singer and Eugenia Bostwick-Singer in Writing; Chris Sanders
for Storyboarding; Hans Bacher for Production Design; David Tidgwell for
Effects Animation; Ming-Na for Voice Acting Mulan; Matthew Wilder, David Zippel
and Jerry Goldsmith for music and Ruben A. Aquino for Character Animation. Tom
Bancroft and Mark Henn were also nominated for Character Animation. The music
score also received significant praise. Jerry Goldsmith won the 1999 BMI Film
Music Award and was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score
in 1998. It was also nominated for an Academy Award for Original Music Score in
1998, but was beaten by Stephen Warbeck's score for Shakespeare in Love.
Matthew Wilder and David Zippel were also nominated for a Golden Globe Award for
Best Original Song the same year for "Reflection". They were beaten
by The Truman Show and "The Prayer" from Quest for Camelot
respectively.
The American
Film Institute nominated Mulan for its Top 10 Animated Films list.
Reception in China
Disney
was keen to promote Mulan to the Chinese, hoping they might replicate
their success with their 1994 film The Lion King, which was one of the
country's highest-grossing Western films at that time. Disney also hoped it
might smooth over relations with the Chinese government which had soured after
the release of Kundun, a Disney-funded biography of the Dalai Lama that the
Chinese government considered politically provocative. China had threatened to
curtail business negotiations with Disney over that film and, as the government
only accepts ten Western films per year to be shown in their country, Mulan's
chances of being accepted were low. Finally, after a year's delay, the Chinese
government did allow the film a limited Chinese release, but only after the Chinese
New Year, so as to ensure that local films dominated the more lucrative holiday
market. Kelly Chen, Coco Lee (Taiwan version) and Xu Qing (Mainland version)
voiced Mulan in the Cantonese and Mandarin dubs of the film respectively, while
Jackie Chan voiced Shang in all three dubs.
Chinese culture in Mulan
The Legend of Hua Mulan
The
Chinese legend of Hua Mulan centers on a young woman who disguises herself as a
man to take the place of her elderly father in the army. The story can be
traced back to The Ballad of Mulan and Disney's Mulan casts the title
character in much the same way as the original legend – a tomboy daughter of a
respected veteran, somewhat troubled by not being the "sophisticated
lady" her society expects her to be. In the oldest version of the story,
Mulan uses her father's name Li and she was never discovered as a
girl, unlike the film.
The
earliest accounts of the legend state that she lived during the Northern Wei
dynasty (386–534). However another version reports that Mulan was requested as
a concubine by Emperor Yang of Sui China (reigned 604–617). The fireworks
featured in the movie indicate that the movie is set during the Sui dynasty.
The film correctly omits foot binding, but includes numerous other anachronisms,
such as the Ming era Forbidden City in Beijing (the Sui capital was near modern
Xi’an). Though Mulan is set in northern China and employs her Mandarin
personal name, Disney gives her the Cantonese pronunciation (Fa) for her
family name.
Language
When
Mulan masquerades as a man, her name is a Chinese pun. She takes the name
"Fa Ping" (花平, Huā Píng), which sounds identical to 花瓶 (huāpíng),
meaning both a literal "flowerpot" and figurative "eye
candy". In Chinese versions, the joke is somewhat muted by the common
practice of including subtitles to make the story easier to follow for speakers
of Chinese's many dialects. The subtitles simply read 平.
Chi Fu's
name (欺负, qīfù) means "to bully".
Music
Mulan features a score by Jerry Goldsmith and
five songs by Matthew Wilder (music) and David Zippel (lyrics), with a sixth
originally planned for Mushu, but dropped following Eddie Murphy's involvement
with the character. The movie's soundtrack is credited for starting the career
of pop singer Christina Aguilera, whose first song to be released in the U.S.
was her rendition of "Reflection", the first single from the Mulan
soundtrack. The song, and Aguilera's vocals, were so well received that it
landed her a recording contract with RCA records. In 1999, she would go on to release
her self-titled debut album, on which Reflection was also included. As
well as her own, the pop version of Reflection has 2 Spanish
translations, because the movie has separate Spanish translations for Spain
(performed by Malu) and Latin America (performed by Lucero). Other
international versions include a Brazilian Portuguese version by Sandy &
Junior ("Imagem"), a Korean version performed by Lena Park and a
Mandarin version by Coco Lee.
Lea
Salonga, the singing voice of Mulan in the movie, is also the singing voice of Princess
Jasmine in Aladdin. Salonga would also do Mulan's normal voice, but since the
directors did not find her deep voice for when Mulan impersonated Ping
convincing, Ming-Na was brought for the role. The music featured during the
haircut scene, often referred as the Mulan Decision score, is different in
the soundtrack album. The soundtrack album uses an orchestrated score while the
movie uses heavy synthesizer music. The synthesizer version is available on the
limited edition CD. Salonga, who enjoys singing movie music in her concerts,
has done a Disney medley which climaxes with an expanded version of
'Reflection' (not the same as those in Aguilera's version). Salonga also
provided the singing voice for Mulan in the movie's sequel, Mulan II.
The song
"I’ll Make a Man Out of You" was performed by Donny Osmond, who
commented that his sons decided that he had finally "made it" in show
business when he was in a Disney film.
Legacy
Live action adaptation
Disney
has agreed to invest in a live action and 3D adaptation of Mulan
starring international star Zhang Ziyi. Chuck Russell was chosen as the
director, and also rumored to be in the production is US-born singer/actor Wang
Lee Hom as General Li Shang. Production is slated to begin filming in China on
October 2010.
References in Disney media
Although
she is royalty neither by birth or marriage (her husband is merely a
high-ranking military officer), Mulan is often regarded as one of the Disney
Princesses. In the film Lilo & Stitch, Nani has a poster of Mulan in her
room. Mulan is also present in the Disney and Square Enix video game
series Kingdom Hearts. In the first Kingdom Hearts and in Kingdom Hearts: Chain
of Memories, Mushu is a summonable character, and in Kingdom hearts II, the
movie is featured as a playable world named "The Land of Dragons",
with the plot being changed to accommodate the game's protagonists (Sora, Donald
and Goofy) and Mulan (both as herself and as "Ping") able to join the
player's party as a skilled sword fighter.[
http://disney.go.com/disneyinsider/history/movies
http://en.wikipedia.org
