Edit: I still constantly get white people in the comments acting like I personally desecrated their ancestors' graves for calling out this movie for having a majority white production staff, and I have to say that I was so angry because Disney SPECIFICALLY bragged about how "authentic and accurate" this movie was gonna be and acted like they were doing Chinese people a huge favor, only to come out with THIS. I'd have the same reaction if they employed a majority of any other non-Chinese people to make this movie while claiming that, but let's not act like Hollywood doesn't inherently favor white creators, lol. asdjf;slak y'all really liked this video, huh I want to make more about Chinese history and culture and stuff but with my current computer it took...20+ hours...to edit and render this video. I put a Ko-Fi link in the description, please consider supporting me if you wanna see this channel become an actual thing!
I'm guessing part of what took a lot of time was the skipping around and having to find the right parts? To be honest, I'd be fine just listening to you talk about some topic without much clipping if that makes it easier for you. You have a lot of interesting points and was very engaging to listen to. I really want to hear you talk about some great Chinese litterature that's still accessible to common audiences. Or maybe your favorite Chinese myths or something :O
I started my anime blog that I've had for 10 years just because I was mad that Barnes and Noble had stopped carrying my favorite anime magazines. Let the hate flow through you...
Oh man, I'm boiling at this very practice each and every time it turns up in a movie. Like wtf, people are just willy-nilly throwing 25 Ferraris worth of armor away in every other movie like it's any old trash. And weapons. And don't get me started on ropes... How I wish they'd stop doing that. It'd be such an improvement to every single one of those movies, for literally no effort what so ever.
Most movies just really don't understand how Expensive and Effective ancient armor were. To them it's just cheap decorative thing that protect less than clothing ;)
When I saw this, I was soo confused, I was thinking “why did she just took off everything that was meant to protect her? And her hair too? The whole purpose of the hair up is to make it easier to fight and see. It’s not because she’s a women bc when women fight, we put our hair up”. That whole thing made no damn sense, only a dude would write that.
@@patrickcote4521 It fell out of use because it stopped being effective against newer weapons--most of the changes in armor design have driven by that, and it only became fashion when it held on past when it was still effective. The thing is that if they really want to pull that kind of scene off? Just establish that we're at one of those points where the current style of armor just slammed into being an expensive & ineffective impediment because there's new weapons that punch through it and/or had a "And THIS is why you don't buy from the bargain bin at the cheapest used armor dealer..." moment. (The latter might be good if you want other people to have effective armor--it's just, well, our stripper bought the cheap sketchy stuff.)
My favorite part about the original was the ending. Mulan joined the army not because she wanted to fight, but because she wanted her father to live. She went home to be with him, and he was just happy to see her. Her love interest followed her home and introduced himself politely to her family. I loved that he did that, because Mulan never said she didn’t want love and marriage, and this way she gets it from someone who sees her as a true intellectual AND physical equal. The point was never to dismantle society, or as this movie seems to think, to become a man. The point was to have the choice of how to live your life, both within and outside of convention.
No offense, but y’all have got to stop throwing a tantrum about the few movies that don’t centre romance. If I can deal with 95% of movies ending with at least one happy couple, y’all can stop acting like you’ve been given water in the desert when you’re given yet another happy couple ending.
Maybe he/she is a horse spirit that’s on his way to cultivate into human form, with the goal of eventually becoming immortal. And if this is a fantasy romance C-drama, the horse spirit will fall in love with Mulan and give up his immortal cultivation in order to live an ordinary happy life with her (in his human form - does that make it less furry?😂). Then they’ll get married and give birth to a human/spirit hybrid child who later encounters severe identity issues. Then one day the gods/immortals will find out this “sinful” marriage between human and spirit, and decide to punish and separate them. And then blablabla omg the story writes itself😂
THEY LITERALY CUT OFF MUSHU BEACAUSE "THE DRAGON IS A TOO MUCH IMPORTANT ANIMAL FOR THE CHINESE CULTURE TO BE REPRESENTED SILLY AND FUNNY" AND THEN...??!
@@luchomscyfy I haven't seen it yet so I didn't pay much attention It's not opposite to anything? I'm just saying I thought they just didn't want to create a model of a dragon that would be somewhat realistic yet similar to the animation, because he probably would be in a lot of scenes. A whole model, as opposed to BG stuff just seems like a lot if they cared about world building..if that made sense....??? -but Chinese martial arts stuff usually has a lot of CGI anyway, so I'd assume that was kinda a normal decision
that sounds like Disney making an excuse to not research whether black people hung out in ancient china (spoiler: they did and, vice-versa, chinese people hung out in africa as well). like, on the one hand, chinese dragons are pretty rooted to chinese geography - they bring rain and cause earthquakes and are rivers, etc - but, like, if they didn't want to just, idk check through 5000 years of chinese recorded history for existing instances of african immigrants &/or visiting dignitaries or whatever, they could have just. hired an actor who was both black and chinese? it would be a HUGE step in on-screen mixed race representation and plenty of people would jump at the chance to be involved, be it as a shape-shifted bird spirit, a dragon, or a dragon statue. but Hollywood apparently only knows that ethnic minorities can find each other attractive but NOT that, maybe, they'd end up having mixed-race kids together who might then go on to be actors and comedians struggling to find work because they're simultaneously not black enough AND not asian enough. the whole "dragons are too ~SACRED~" thing smells like Disney dodging the chinese government's ire at the suggestion that black people exist in chinese history &/or white Hollywood not being able to compute the idea of ethnic minorities teaming up outside shared tokenism in majority-white groupings.
Fox spirit... A serious accusation you got here because this is usually applied when you're calling someone a "slut", in here should be applied when a woman seduces a man and manipulates his mind
Also the witch used a shuriken, a Japanese weapon to try and kill Mulan. A *Japanese* weapon. 🤦♂️ Look I can give it a semi pass if the movie was based remotely around any of those regions and just was like a mixture, but this movie is about a *Chinese* story and it’s even more confusing that the armor is actually accurate to ancient Chinese armor. However, it could’ve worked if just as you said the witch was a fox spirit that instead of being from China was from Japan since those two countries have been enemies for who knows how long and it’s like Tamamo-no-Mae, a fox spirit who’s origins although were Japanese some versions state she was originally from China and was the reason the Shang dynasty fell and fled to Japan under a different name. Hence why she would use Japanese weapons
The biggest female empowerment this movie could achieve was making Xiran so mad about it they made a whole ass channel and a great critique because of how bad the movie is
And at 1.2k is well passed (past?) 420 likes. I love the new (resurrected, 2.0) angry feminist, with a hoarse voice and goth look and that classic deadpan cynical sarcasm that only the patriatchy can stir up in an intelligrnt person *wipes away tear. There is still hope for the future. And LEAD with the plug for your book, you bad ass!! It sounds hella good, I want to read it. Geez, multi-talented, I hope! We'll see.
This channel is the equivalent of the story of Wu Zetian becoming the first empress of China. She got pissed. She showed how pissed she was. She rose to power.
"no songs because people don't actually sing in battle* *Mulan taking off her armor and letting her hair loose in the middle of the freaking battle for AeStHeTiCs*
Forget that historically armies would go into battle and break into songs as self and collective motivator. Modern armies still break into songs when they head to battles.
She’s a superhero. She clearly doesn’t need it. :P They took as much use of wires as possible, and made sure that her actions mostly didn’t adhere to the laws of physics.
@@claudia-7917 it's like everytime a girl fights she has to take some clothes/armor off. It doesn't even have to be sexual (like in LOTR or even Wonderwoman). That's the empowered aEsThEtIcS they keep going for
The thing is literally all children in China who have gone to school are taught the Ballad of Mulan and have memorized it. My mom can still remember the ballad from literal decades ago. So Disney literally could not have afforded to misinterpret or mess up the poem, because basically everyone knows the poem.
ya i was taught the poem when i was in 6th grade and mulan was a normal girl who was sewing something and only became a fighter to save her father because he was too old and she didnt want him to die in war. she also didnt have superpowers oof disney rly went and westernized it😔
applesauce gdi imagine America doing that 😔 uncultured gang. I think I'll read it in my own time because I appreciate parts of chinese history and my ties to it since I'm partly chinese and I am so mad at this suburban wine mom take on an otherwise good movie that I need good writing to wash away the feeling of "oh wow, the stupid actually hurts".
"Mulan passes out for a bit, wakes up, stares at the FBI motto on her sword, and decides to take off her armor" this is the funniest thing I've heard all day damn
yeah I'm gonna say it, making 2 female characters "stronger" than every man in the film by giving them superpowers isn't making a strong woman, it's weak, it says they're not capable of even being equal to men without a large advantage.
I’m a biracial Chinese girl and I strongly disliked this movie, it’s soooo stupid and disrespectful. And it’s not just that almost all of the writers/directors were white, Kung Fu Panda also had those and they did a great job. Why? Because THEY DID RESEARCH
Liu Yifei encourages to kill the dreams and freedom of Hong Kong children and young people. She supports the Hong Kong police who are using tear gas against the protestors.
I love how she says "That's not how women are demonized in chinese culture" at 02:50, like, the demonization of women is so common in basically every culture that one has to specify how they really are demonized in each culture xd
The way people are vilified even changes strongly with time. Like the modern idea of a “witch” like they use in this is such a young concept. Pretty sure this vilification came around 1000CE, when paganism at large was being expunged in Europe and all forms of practice that related to the old religions were made illegal. This included traditional forms of medicine, divination, and so on. The movement to make witches truly be “evil” instead of just outside the law “helpers” or healers took a couple centuries and the publication of an awful book called Malleus Malifacaraum. So not only is the concept of “witch” here wrong for Chinese culture, but it’s 400+ years early by European culture of the same era. The fact that she’s a shapeshifter would’ve still been seen as morally neutral to Europeans at the time, too. They would’ve been instead freaking out that she’s using magic against the establishment, kind of like China would too to be honest. That’s the real crime, political and rival destruction, and yet this alignment was not explored. Like this just doesn’t line up anywhere anytime, honestly.
Yeah it's weird, it's like women are not goddesses, but mere mortals to whom sometimes bad things happen. One thought they were immune to bad things because they don't poop. Cos they do not poop, right...?
My favorite moment from the cartoon version was when they saw the village after singing "A Girl Worth Fighting For" and Mulan sees the doll and places it at the base of her commander's sword. Because in that moment, the little girl and all the little girls in the village became "The girl worth fighting for" All the soldiers understood that they weren't doing this to come back for the ladies or whatever. They were doing this to protect the citizens of China
That scene was also a meta transition for the movie itself. No more songs, no more jovial fish out of water humor. From here on it's all...real, in a story sense. The reality of war slaps them, and the audience in the face and there's no going back.
@@Luinta that transition would have worked better if they didnt go straight back into comedy for the climax of the film. I think had the climax been more realistic and grounded(like the lion king) it would have been more satisfying. Dont get me wrong, I enjoyed the call back to the climbing the pole and the way Mulan disarmed the Hun leader...but the whole using fruits to incapacitate the other huns soilders and the men having to cross dress(where did they get the time to do so?) And The hun leader being killed by fireworks(launched by Mushu not even Mulan) its all very slapstick and not really fitting with the tone that the transition into a cold war epic created. I liked the animated movie but the climax is the weakest part.
also it was still faithful to the essence of the original ballad in a few ways: notably mulan having to work hard to become a capable soldier -- like she was still a bit of a tomboy in the animation, but more in the "kinda messy and all over the place" rather than the "not like other girls bc she likes swords and can do backflips" kinda tomboy, and regardless still participated in the duties expected in her as a woman -- that she did it precisely to protect her father and how she went straight home after the war because she wasn't doing it for notoriety or anything. there were western "flavourings" to the whole thing (establishing mulan as a bit "different" -- but again, mainly in personality and habits rather than abilities -- the over-emphasis of "honour", the musical aspect and animal sidekick, the haircutting, for example) but it had a central heart to the story, carried the core resonance from the ballad, AND knew what it was doing when it came to emotionally impacting the audience. i'm chinese and i remember talking to my mom about it, and she too thought the mulan animated movie was pretty well-done and was accurate to the ballad in all the right parts (don't even get me started on how the ballad is VERY short so i don't blame people for wanting to embellish things....just not like mulan 2020 please.) also at least when mulan cut her hair in the original animation it absolutely slapped. the music, the lightning, the reflection in the sword. THE CHILLS.
The original had so many powerful scenes and messages. Mulan was my favorite Disney Princess when I was a kid because I always tried my hardest in sports and I wanted to be strong and smart like her.
Disney: We're gonna cut "I'll Make A Man Out Of You" from the movie because it's sexist. Me: B-but isn't that kind of the point? The juxtaposition of hearing the gender-biased lyrics while at the same time being shown Mulan doing as well in her training as the men? Disney: Too subtle. Let's just make Mulan superhuman and incredibly skilled from the start. Strong female characters shouldn't have to struggle or grow. They should be put on a pedestal.
A pedestal where, *crucially*, actually human beings cannot get to them. You cannot aspire to be a superhuman magical hero lady; it's not attainable. "We can't give actual women or trans or non-binary people (or any other oppressed group) a decent role model that they can aspire to be. That would give them more sociocultural recognition and actually empower them."
@@ReyndommVideos I feeeel that. I really *really* want to like Captain Marvel, but her only flaw was a damaged memory. They made her so powerful, they couldn’t even put her in most battles because there would be no struggle. And when she was in the battles and struggled, it didn’t feel accurate to the amount of power they gave her.
@@discordiadingle3203 Saddest thing about Captain Marvel to me was how boring it was. I was never interested or engaged in it. It was profoundly wrote and unsurprising and there was basically no tension whatsoever. And then I think about how much money was spent on it and I just feel angry.
Westerners: You ruin the movie >:( Disney: Ho Ho of course you’ll think that you intolerant, we made this movie for the Chinese pe- China: **Bans the movie for how awful it is** Disney: ...
@@echowoods7977 because the american left ignores the evils of other countries if they are POC. It's why no white liberals talk about the black slave trade in Libya, or how most middle eastern countries murder homosexuals legally
That’s so true. I got more entertainment from the cricket then the entire live action film. I got more entertainment from the background soldiers then the entire 2020 movie
I read many Manhuas and chi is not something you are born being able to Channel, but something you have to train to be able to use, such training, combined with martial arts so you can use the chi is called Cultivation, you also need a certain number of Meridian Roots so you can channel the chi and your Dantian, a region near the stomach has to be intact, and to get stronger you need herbs to make cultivation pills (screw up and you make poison pills instead), learn techniques and acquire different artifacts known as treasures, even a genius cultivator would need a sect or a master to refine the techniques, so, Mulan pulling those crazy stunts on her own, without prior training in cultivation is absurd, even by OP MC manhua standards because said OP MCs have decades worth of training under their belts, and they turned Mulan into a Mary Sue, to please China, a country that dislikes Mary Sues
Mulan was originally a normal, average woman but she could do the same things as any man could: wield a sword masterfully, dutifully carry out stressful orders, hard labor, etc. The fact they had to make her have superpowers to even compete with her male, military compatriots degrades the original storyline. It makes it seem like she's still lesser anyway, as a female.
That is actually a really good point, I hadn't thought of it that way, but now I understand. You have to be something *beyond human* to best a man as a woman. That is deeply insulting.
@mic eatah it's really not though? Yes not every woman can beat a man, just like not every man can beat every other man. That's literally why there are weight classes in wrestling and stuff. But a woman is definitely capable of doing the same physical workouts, and training.
@@Arcessitor Aw are you offended that someone didn't like a bad movie because it was about something they knew nothing about :((((( are you a little baby snowflake :((((
Disney hired like a whole council or whatever for Moana to make it culturally accurate, but they can't do that for the Mulan remake. To top it off everyone behind the scenes weren't even Chinese not even Asian.
@@taquitoxiq1444 props to him because moana is a genuinely good movie that shows a lot about a culture to people who probably wouldn't have known about it otherwise
Some people have criticized Moana for having, in their view, a too western plot line. Taika Waititi was the first person to submit a script, which he said was very different from the end result. He has said that he found the end product respectful and not insulting.
God I HATE it when shows and movies act like women have to sacrifice protection in battle to show their womanhood! Why would any sensible person remove armor in battle. I just watched the live action yesterday and was like what the fuck, Mulan isn’t a god she’s a regular woman who needs armor!
@@capncake8837 My name is Hua Mulan. I'm twelve years old. Until a few months ago, I was a boarding student at Yancy Academy, a private school for troubled kids in upstate New York. Am I a troubled kid?
The original movie is: She's exactly like the other girls, but was treated as one of the guys for a short time and her potential to be a warrior and be as strong as the other men around her was reached. She's a girl and she doesn't need to be different to be strong, all she needed was the practice The live action: Well, sorry, girl, but the only way you can be as strong as men and be equals is by having literal super powers
Cartoon: Boys and girls are both capable of fighting for and protecting loved ones, but girls aren't allowed in the army, so *disguises!* (Also, bigger range of emotion.) Live action: Too bad I was born a girl. Woe is me, I have to lie. 🤷 Yup, totally agree. Funny how the animated version has more depth than the live action abomination.
@@anamazing2297 Mulan didn't win through fighting though, did she? She won by being clever and thinking outside the box which is not something the army would teach her to do. I think the message of the original Mulan was that there are often more ways to accomplish a goal and that you shouldn't be afraid to do something unorthodox. It has very little to do with the "girls can fight too!" idea. Because being a solider is exactly what Mulan didn't do. And that makes the remake even more insulting because Mulan won by literally becoming a man. She even started smelling like one! Are you telling me that the only way a woman can succeed is by being a man? I thought Disney was being taken over by radical feminists? It's even funnier because they call it "female empowerment" even though the person they're empowering possesses no female traits whatsoever! They're trying to achieve more respect for women but just end up disrespecting them even more!
"And don't tell me a woman can't be emperor. Wu Zetian did it, she'd be laughing at you from Chinese hell." literally the most iconic line of all time thank you for this masterpiece!!
I hated the movie because they removed Shang’s character and split him into 2 people. A really old general dude with no personality and a really hot dude that has no personality.
I'm so glad that I didn't watch it in the movie. When I first saw the trailer I was sstill looking forward to it. I didn't believe that it would be similiar to the animation but I expected that there would be some character growth and someone like Shang who would support her and makes her do her best. At least I didn't waste my time and money. This review is very entertaining.
I read that they removed Shang because of the "person on a position of power- subordinate" situation might be insensitive, specially since the movie was made round the time Harvey Weinstein was exposed... They could have place Shang's father (who was in the animated movie) as the person in charge and place Shang in the same level as Mulan and it would have worked
@@marinadeburgos8666 yeah but that Harvey Weinstein is a western thing that should have nothing to do with the peace that tries to be a period piece while also being mythological lore
One of the things I liked about the original in regards to the transition between "A Girl Worth Fighting For" to the destroyed village is also the implication that they DID find a girl worth fighting for. A little girl who had been killed alongside her family and village. That scene hit fucking HARD
also, after that scene no other musical numbers happened! So they actively added depth to the latter part of the movie and were able to keep the beginning lighter! It's so good
You know, it's hard for me: Normally, i would seperate the actual Movie 'Mulan' from the Real Life. Look at them seperately. But this... THIS is just an extreme case and i dont know how to do it here. All this is so insane. The Movie is full of Cringe, Fake-Feminism and Plot Holes - yet, the Real Life has way crazier problems and I'm starting to think China is so off-track from the rest of humanity that some Nation should - no kidding - invade China and take over, so the Supression ends... Or something like this! I know this normally isnt right, but... i believe there is a 'Point' where such a thing is justified. Of course this point is by no means easy to reach, but... it's possible to reach, you know? Oh, i don't know.
I personally thing that since we live in an age where anyone on the internet can interact. That actual Chinese people should make an adaptation of the Ballad of Mulan. Just look at all the high quality web series that are out there.
Oh, I would have loved it if that WAS the line, and Mulan answered really deadpan "So, I guess you haven't heard about menstruation, dad..." But I suspect that would have been a very different movie XD
As a Chinese person, the original cartoon is a little stereotypical at times. But the live action is straight up insulting. They literally have no timeline or historical accuracy of China, the costumes are garish and ugly, the plotline confusing and the dialogue awkward. There really isn't anything good to say about it.
as a fellow chinese i agree. the cartoon has some flaws but it's enjoyable otherwise and is able to deliver the message right. but THIS MOVIE??? nope. not at all. cant even follow the original ballad right
There's no historical accurate timeline because it's set in a FICTIONAL fantasy universe. Do you think other Disney princess movies are based in a historically accurate time in Europe? Hell no. There is a historic period they're SET in, but that's really as far as it goes in regards to historical and/or cultural accuracy; so not accurate at all.
It's kinda wild that they marketed this as a "yay, girl power!" movie and yet the two main female characters are only strong warriors because of obvious magic. Wow, glad to know the only way for women to advance in the world is if we were born lucky. *EDIT:* They talk about how the witch had to work her way up to being that powerful, that it took years and she suffered for it (which honestly sounds like a way more interesting story lmao) but she dies in the most pathetically pointless way possible.
They also butcher the message in the original film, that girls could achieve anything if they worked hard for it, and worked together with their friends. Here the message is that you can achieve anything if you're born perfect and invincible, lol.
Right?? The "Chosen One" aspect that they added completely took away from what made Mulan cool in the Disney version. She earned the Shang, Yao, Ling and Chien Po's respect because she worked hard and came through when it mattered. Not because she was just born better. _How_ did the writers and director think people were gonna buy this shit and not roast it?
Or it's not even framed right. Like okay, you could have played this angle: somebody is gifted, but nobody takes her seriously because she's a girl. It's simple, but it would be a start. But nope! I mean after all, we accept super powered characters in lots of fictions .... to be fair, stuff like 80s actioner will get snickers for it too but let's not derail too much.). I can understand why poeple might dislike characters which are too strong or "pure" (it's why some poeple dislike superman for instance), but done right they can be used as sort of icons you look up to: there are always ways to be clever about it and make it work, make it part of the point, of the story, make commentary on it, etc. Point is..... I think the question is more context and execution. Like first tought is, it feels out of place in the gritty tone of the film (because damn if disney ever let their live adaptations "feel" fantastical (like yay lion king but now ugly grey and brown with inexpressive characters! It might be incredible animation and effects, but it was just wasted.)
Even though I hate everything about the 2020 remake I finally decided to watch this one after watching your other two analysis videos. And I remember a really good explanation for why the "girl worth fighting for" transition hit so hard. Because the entire song they are singing about exactly that, but in a naive romantic light. But when they get to the village they find the girl they should have been fighting for all along in the doll that Mulan finds. The innocent civilians and children and little girls. There is no way I explained it as well as the random Tumblr post I saw but like... it hits hard when I think about it!
It does..it's a light silly song about dreaming of a lover to fight for only to stumble on a destroyed village and realize they already have a reason to fight for; the women and children of villages, their families, their country, ect.
Exactly. All their dreams of glory and the burned village reminds them that it's not about what they gain if they win, it's what, or rather who, will be sacrificed if they lose. It's not just wanting to win, they HAVE to win for the sake of those they love.
thats why I love dreamworks followed by Pixar. No political bullcrap in DreamWorks and they keep it traditional for gender romance and family values like how it should be.
@@drakke125Channel um,Abominable 2019? Yes... DreamWorks tried to suck up to Chinese govt with that movie. But at least that movie is watchable and not a total trainwreck. This,Mulan however....bruh... They didnt get a single thing right with this movie,not even the costumes
Disney: has millions of dollars for their budget Also Disney: won't even hire one historian who coulda fixed most, if not all the historical/cultural inaccuracies
One thing I hate about this movie is how they... vilianize Chinese people. If a seven year old performed highly acrobatic acts, people would be impressed and praise her, and even call higher ranked people to witness her talents. She would quickly become popular, and even documented. This has in fact, happened before.
I hate how they excused cutting Shang as not wanting to portray rape culture or a toxic power dynamic, bc Shang and Mulan's relationship was literally 100% consensual and didn't even start until after the war was over. It wasn't a commanding officer abusing his power to force a girl into sexual interaction, it was two friends getting together in their own time bc they both liked each other. Disney probably just thought China wouldn't appreciate the bisexual undertones tbh
There's was never any bisexual undertone. Shang was never interested in Mulan that way when she disguised as a man. He saw her as a comrade in the army and then asked her out when he realized she was a woman. Idk where people got Shang was bi. Yall interpret two dudes having some semblance of friendship = romantic and that's kinda encouraging toxic masculinity. Pls normalize men having friendship thanks. And as a side note, the whole "girl cross dress as dude and end up with male lead falling" for them is EXTREMELY common in asian media (Hana Kimi, Sungkyunkwan Scandal, Maiden Holmes etc). The month Mulan came out there were 2 Chinese dramas airing with woman disguise as man theme. The tired trope isn't play as the male lead is bi, it is more like he would always sense her "womanly pheromone" no matter how she disguise herself kind of thing since most of the time the actresses always look/behave feminine that they would never pass for a man realistic
Jyuri is right, though it would be nice to have some more diverse representation, it's frustrating(as someone who is bi), when people see a friendship and forcefully interpret it as being romantic. Not everything needs to be about romance and, looking back, a romantic vibe wasn't really present in the cartoon, I don't think. That comment about "rape culture" is especially confusing.
@@J_Lynn Ok yeah fair, the whole "Shang is bi" idea isn't accurate. It's more of a meme than anything tbh. As for the "rape culture" thing, that was my entire point: Disney claiming that's why they cut him is complete bs, since there really wasn't a romantic relationship between the two throughout the film.
I think it was actually more believable that Mulan would get romantically involved with a fellow solder and not her commander. She spends all her days with other soldiers but she only sees the commander when he gives her orders. It makes more sense in that regard.
Yeah but it wasn’t really culturally accurate. She got a lot of stuff wrong. I guess that’s what happens when an Asian woman makes a video about European people.
@@halloweenheathen4394 I'm sorry I didn't really understand what you mean by that. Could you eventually explain? Of course just if it isn't too much trouble.
I find it deeply ironic that a movie that was supposedly made for Chinese people is instead hated by BOTH Eastern and Western audiences. Talk about a EPIC FAIL!
Loved your breakdown scene by scene! I worked on this films VFX for about a year and I just wanted to add some even more upsetting context; I worked on the Phoenix character, and it was originally billed as a *physical* animal that started out looking kinda like a pheasant and slowly morphed over the course of the movie into the full blown colorful phoenix (and she was more of a comic relief character to replace Mushu, silent comic relief tho). We had DOZENS of iterations that looked better and months into the work they scrapped the whole idea seemingly because someone told them having comic relief AT ALL would have been in bad taste (???) Which I think is a great indication of the whole tone deaf direction of the film at large. The whole project felt like a half assed cash grab where the directors and on set leads were somehow convincing themselves they were doing something great by "making this adaption closer to the actual Chinese epic" while paying themselves millions instead of bothering to hire people who were culturally connected or even knowledgeable about the source material. In my 10 years of film work, I don't think i've ever worked on a film with such a wishy washy milk toast artistic direction from the client.
Wait, you actually worked on THIS film? I think that idea was good though ... If we didn't get any character development of Mulan, at least we would have gotten the phoenix's 'character' development
@nanwijanarko1969 Yeah it was a huge mess project wise. I was doing lookdev for the phoenix for probably near 8 months, the client just really didn't know what they wanted. which i guess is why they ended up scrapping it and all the scenes of Mulan actually interacting with the character when they needed to cut stuff for time. what showed up on screen was only the final, fully evolved form. I do think it could have been a nice metaphor for growth, even if it was a bit of a standin for actually writing character development lol
Xiran Jay Zhao: "Have you ever seen a movie that pissed you off so badly, that you make a whole RUclips Channel just to roast it?" Me: *stops the video* "Hold up a minute." *Opens her RUclips page* RUclips: "Checks out. Only one video" Me: "Allllllright then. This is gonna be gooooood." *resumes playing the video*
"Her chi is beyond imagining!" Sounds like the screenwriters learned everything they know about chi from Dragon Ball, MULAN'S POWER LEVEL IS OVER 9,000!!!!
I wish they had stolen the character developement in DB too. Goku: I was the weakest child ever born in my planet. so my tribe discarded me. But I will train myself like hell and will become super hero. Moolan2020: I AM NOT OTHER GIRLS!!! IM INVINCIBLE AT BIRTH
@@pewdiepieismypapi921 LOL wow I totally forgot the Saiyans sent baby Goku to a backwater planet called..."Ee-yarth?" because he was so weak (thinking Earth would be easy for him to conquer), whereas 2020 Mulan is Broly. 😂😂
Even as a white girl, I was offended by Mulan being "magical." I love Mulan because she is a normal girl who trained her butt off to places she was denied. It makes her impossible to attain. I prefer attainable heroes. Thank you for the information, because I honestly didn't know how inaccurate this movie was.
Exactly. As someone with blue eyes, I’m getting sick of all these new protagonists in movies being skilled and powerful right from the get go, with no character development. It happened with Rey in Star Wars. Disney just sucks.
Only one good thing has ever come from this movie: It pissed off Zhao enough that we got this RUclips channel. I am so happy to have been here from the start and rewatching this a year and something later makes all her points hit even harder.
But no one will have such strong chi/Qi during birth because Qi has to be cultivated for many years until it reaches a certain level (Based on my experience of reading wuxia) So clearly the developers of this movie only did surface level research. Not sure if I can trust Disney anymore
Fun thing is that chi is basically better translated as humor, if one wants to use western magical concepts to understand it, although humors don't have much of the flow thing.
Most of this is taken directly from the Twitter thread she made while livetweeting lol. Me and others were just like “hey you could make this into a video!”
@@Mary1337 well I've seen numerous people sing and act, and I still suck at that, hahaha I think some ability and talent must be present to talk to a camera naturally like a friend, and to write a script that entertaining
Strategy and tactics nerd here: Marching your slow-moving, heavy infantry into a field battle with no cover against horse archers is a great way to die. The trebuchet/catapult thing was hilariously unnecessary. They could have just sat back and plinked away with bows until casualties or morale caused a rout.
Not to mention, trebuchets are notoriously terrible with aim and movement. They're heavy as all get out, and they were used to attack castles because it's a giant target, so regardless of where it lands, it is young to hit the castle! A trebuchet would never ever hit multiple groups of people consistently. It'd be an absolute miracle to hit even ONE of those groups. So many things in this movie cause me physical pain
Original Mulan: with enough effort you can succeed no matter who you are Animated Disney- young woman overcomes her own physical weakness and uses her intelligence to become an awesome warrior in her own right Mulan 2020: sorry girls but you gotta be a superhero type person to impress anyone! not like other girls, am i right? who needs role models when you can have figures that you cant even aspire to be.
Romance of the Three Kingdoms is a good example of this. The Three Kingdoms Era was a historical period of civil war in China, which lasted 96 years. The book is kinda similar to the Trojan Cycle, in that it depicts a historical conflict, featuring supernatural elements, hundreds of years after the event. Real historical characters are featured in Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but like how Achilles is invulnerable except for his heel and the Greek gods keep interfering in the Trojan War, Yellow Turban leaders have magical powers and Zhang Fei has the strength of 10.000 men.
mulan was not as strong as the men she had to train to get there... she had a brilliant strategic mind and that’s what made her stand out. giving her magical powers is so conflicting with the feminism ideology disney tries so very hard to pursue.
I agree in the original cartoon they show her struggle and have to work hard after being kicked out of the army to achieve her greatest. In this it’s just she is here, she is a bit magic, she is already great. There’s no fighting spirit and no character development. I wish they would leave the classics alone.
2 years and I'm still returning to this iconic debut. The fact that she made an entire RUclips Channel just to hate on a movie! The level of dedication and pettiness I inspire to be!
Not just that, why not hire a Chinese director also? Disney also hired tons of Chinese consultants(based on what I have read online, not sure if its fake news?) and I don't understand how they could have missed all of these.
They could have gotten Middle Eastern guys for Aladdin but nooo. Fuck man, even if they got like a Bollywood guy to direct the movie we might have had Shah Rukh Khan genie!
@Shane L : The minute you tried to make it about Trump, you lost the argument. The inclusiveness was only for those who still recognized a strong Chinese state, and were ethnically Chinese. Trump doesn't care about ethnicity, he just wants a strong America that has some resemblance of sovereignty on the world stage. Real candidates who aren't part of the 2-party WWE, such as Blankenship, additionally want a return to actual rule of law. Which you'll find no mention of ethnicity in most of those early documents. Because those documents are color-blind. They make some reference to class status, but only insofar as to see to its eventual elimination as a critical factor. Nothing in Trump's America First says immigration is a no. However, invasion is not immigration. Everything for nothing for this or that ethnicity is not an acceptable set of terms. To say that's "discriminatory" is facially dishonest.
@@avivastudios2311 I meant more the culture's tendency to prioritize live action as some objectively superior form of storytelling. If there hadn't been a market for "better" versions of these childhood classics, Disney wouldn't have pursued them.
Not to mention journey to the west. It supposed to be a solo trip but ends up with a bunch of nonsense 😂 but at least thanks to journey to the west we have dragon ball
yeah, that is pretty much it... the story of Wong Fei Hung for example, it's all fictional made up by his student but it is base on the real person with a museum dedicated to him back at his birth place Fushan. China have alot of story like this, it's fiction that base on real event.. Romance of Three Kingdom is the most well known fiction that kinda loosely base on historical event...
Disney: We're taking away Mushu because we want Mulan to be more historically and culturally accurate. Also Disney: *adds superpowers, a phoenix, and makes Mulan even less historically and culturally accurate*
Right? I was excited about the historically accurate stuff so I didn't care about the things they removed. But 15 minutes into this movie and now I think the original is way more life-like than this one
@Desdemona And a Witch! We can't forget Disney said talking animals were too fantastical and then turned around and gave us a friggin' Wtich! (facepalm)
It took me a lot of time to think What the fucking Chi is he talking about XDXDXD It is so confused to link the Chi in this movie to the Chi in Chinese culture XD Further more, if you can use Chi that powerful like that witch ancient Chinese will probably worship you as a god no matter what gender u r............
Which wouldn't technically be a bad thing, but pleeeaaase don't market it as culturally correct movie, because it wasn't. It was a fantasy story that kidnapped mulan's name and selective pieces of chinese culture.
Still haven't watched despite my unmitigated love and obsession with Chinese history particularly the Han dynasty. One thing I always loved about Chinese literature is the lack of boring "chosen one" storylines. You might get a portent or say something cool when you're young, Liu Bang's dragon and slaying of the white snake while drunk or Xiang Yang getting frustrated with swordplay because "Swords only let you beat one man I want to to defeat the world." But this always felt like "oh yeah cool things happened when you were young maybe we should have seen it coming" but they NEVER "get good" without busting their ass first. My only regret is that idiots in Hollywood instead of reading this as "this movie was bad" will interpret it as "America doesn't like or want East Asian storylines so we can't spend money on them for like another decade."
Honestly I feel like the more likely response is "wow this didn't do good in asia which was the target of this movie..they must not appreciate our movies! Lets just avoid doing stuff on them so they don't get pissed at us for it"
Original Mulan: Remember, gender doesn’t matter. You can accomplish amazing things, no matter who you are or how you look. Mulan Reboot: Okay so we’ve got this magic shit and a girl chasing a chicken-
MULAN 2020: Let's get rid of I'll Make a Man out of You, it's sexist. Every little girl (and little boys too) inspired by MULAN 1998: *BELTING IT AT THE TOP OF THEIR LUNGS WHILE CLIMBING A TREE, PRETENDING TO SWORD FIGHT, FIGHTING WITH A FAN, OR BEGGING THEIR PARENTS TO SIGN THEM UP FOR MARTIAL ARTS*
I mean . . . the song ends with commander dude saying he _can't_ make a man out of Mulan, and then Mulan realizing she should do things her way and suddenly finding her footing and becoming an effective warrior. So. . . .
The song's entire purpose was to be sexist. It's an absolute banger, but yes, the lyrics are to be taken literally, and it's supposed to be sexist. You can't battle sexism in a world where you're too scared to set it up as an issue in the first place. Being afraid to set up a sexist society in a movie doesn't help fight sexism; it actually does the opposite by refusing to acknowledge the issue. This genuinely makes me mad. And, yeah, there's also just the fact that they removed the objectively catchiest Disney song in history
@Rachelle Redd Forgive me if I read this wrong but- yes the song is ment to be sexist, but it's to show how the times were back then. Not to say that this is how we should think. Once again sorry if I read your comment wrong.
My teacher was planning on using this movie as an example of certain aspects of Chinese culture. He knew that the movie was inaccurate, so I sent him this video, and he just messaged me that he’s changing the test and lecture :)
In the 90's, a Chinese exchange professor at my college discussed Mulan with us. He also thought she was from the north. In his town, it was generally thought that while Mulan wasn't ugly, she had been considered "undesirable" because she was a farm girl. She would have been strong, and they thought larger than many girls because of better nutrition and exercise. An only child, Daddy may have spoiled her as far as social mores of the day. When the conscription notice came, she went, like the stories say, but the gender discovery would not have dishonored her. There had been female soldiers before, some of which were great warriors. It is more likely that she was left because of her injuries. He said that traditionally, Mulan (not her real name?) Went on to be a great general, an ambassador and to sit on the Emperor's council. That once, she even sat on the throne as his representative while he took a trip.
One thing this movie did right: It seems to unite everyone in hating it. Doesn’t matter which side of whatever debate you’re on, this movie pisses everyone off
I just really hope that Hollywood producers don't get scared off from doing more movies about Asian cultures and their people due to the criticisms. Just learn from this experience and do it right next time and you won't have this problem!
Liu Yifei encourages to kill the dreams and freedom of Hong Kong children and young people. She supports the Hong Kong police who are using tear gas against the protestors.
This movie is less celebrating Chinese culture and more like celebrating western chinese takeout restaurants! Disney went more with fortune cookies than chinese mythology and culture
Fortune cookies are something American Chinese stole from the Japanese. Chop suey is what you're really looking for. It's a food dish that's the epitome of westernized Chinese cuisine.
15:42 Wtf is an auspicious moon? There is such a thing as an auspicious day. On auspicious days, there are weddings, haircuts, going on a long journey, trotting out the toddler, doing good deeds in the name of god, and etc.
@@kiyoqr honestly when i learned they removed mushu i lost all want to see the movie. The original, in my opinion, is amazing- sure, it may not be entirely accurate, but its better than this botched shit. FAR better.
When the witch says "not witch, warrior" all I can think of is Doofenshmirtz in the wizard of oz episode of Phineas and Ferb when he says "Not witch, warlock! It's a robe not a dress!"
My favourite message is "if you're super gifted, naturally, you can succeed EVEN as a woman, but if you're an average woman (like Mulan's sister), you get to get married to some dude you've never met, and either way, support the patriarchy!" So empowering, truly. That movie was such a mess.
“What’s the matter little Stacy? Oh you want to play football with the boys but they think you’re too weak because you’re a girl? well too bad you don’t have supernatural abilities!”
@@manjumohanty8794 I feel they wanted to make it into what they perceived Wuxia to be like while keeping the Mulantopic in it.... and failed MIIIIIIIISERABLY.
Remember ladies, the patriarchy doesn't exist. I know and I have the right to say this cause I'm a woman well fifteen year old girl using my mother's phone to type this comment even though I have an account😀😅😐😐. (I wish I wasn't though. Being feminine sucks. I hate this gender. 😤😝😡😠). Just remember that😘
I remember watching a GDC talk from the map designer of Untitled Goose Game about trying to capture the vibe of a small british village. Apparently a lot of the team grew up watching various british kids shows and wanted to emulate that setting but they knew just watching those old kids shows wouldn't be enough. Their research involved showing their map designs to british people and asking for feedback and to point out details that didn't feel quite right for the setting, and looking at various small villages on google street view. It feels like Untitled Goose Game had more research put into it's setting (at least there was more care put into getting things right, all for a funny goose game). The game's setting was so spot on that I was actually a bit surprised to find out it was made by an australian team.
Well disney spent the last five-seven years ruining other franchises, I guess it wouldn't have taken them too long to start screwing their own shit, right?
12:40 “There are no elements in this movie that make you laugh.” False. I watched this film in a theater in Shanghai, China last week and everyone was laughing every time they talked about “Qi”. Oh man, it was hilarious.
I guffawed at every single bad line. When the Rouran soldiers appear on horizon, a soldier at gate mutters, accented, "It can't be!" Pfffftuchuck which son of a damn wrote that line, it's so bad, and it was in the first ten minutes. Everything snowballed into shitty writing in such a bad way 🤣😂
I laughed so much when I saw the emperor was challenged with a duel at the construction site. In a Chinese context it's 10x funnier. Emperors back then were refered as 天子(son of the God/sky) whose life has to be preserved at all cost. They're not some gang members, and fighting at a construction site is also unheard of from all my years of reading Wuxia novels and watching Wuxia and Xianxia shows and movies. It just feels very modern, more specifically, like 90s Hollywood action movies
Probably because what mainstream culture says is a "strong female character" is just a girl acting like a dude. :\ Most girls are feminine. Some are tomboys, sure (myself included), but there are just naturally a lot of differences between men and women. There's nothing wrong with that. We need to stop pretending there is. For instance, like Xiran mentions, the cartoon Mulan uses her wits to solve her problems. She's not naturally as physically strong as a guy, so she compensates by using her brain. Disney took that away in the 2020 movie, and now the character is bland. Come on Disney; you can do (and have done) better than this.
@@erocenturion2809 THANK YOU!! I don't want a movie to tell me I'm valuable because I can do the same things a man can, I want to know I am valuable for just being me, even if I like "girly" things. Girls need to know that "girly" things are valuable not that only boyish girls are. lol and I am also a tomboy but i hated any girly sides of me thinking it was useless.
Exactly. It bothers me so much because all these feminist things they add just make the movies and characters bland and weird. Mulan is such a strong iconic character in the old movie. Why the hell did they have to change her? It makes no sense to me. Instead of making her train hard and just become strong, they had to add all that chi/qui (?) thingy and give her some sort of superpower gift? By doing that they're basically telling us that women need some strong chi/qui force to be as powerful as men. Like... that is not feminism at all. Also, the witch (had they just have her be a spirit) could have been such an awesome, strong character. The way she obeyed that bad guy despite being much more powerful than him and then just died really sucked.
Lindsay Elliss made a great video about this called "Woke Disney". The feminist part isn't exactly the main subject but it's one of the things that points out Disney's try-hard at pandering the modern generation
Two years later, I'm coming back to watch this and I remember how angry I was when I watched the remake - but now, all I'm thinking about is how awesome Xiran Jay Zhao is. I'm just starting to read Iron Widow, and I realised the author was this youtuber I had already watched. This woman has endless talents, and I love everything she makes!!
"Isn't it a kids movie?" is an excuse to justify lazy writing and story-telling. Also, the Princess Bride is a great example of making a children's film with great writing and story.
Disney: "we're remaking this movie because we wanted a redo in representing a culture that has been white washed and abused for years in Hollywood " Also Disney:
@@maia_gaia All of the corporations do it, zoomers are a big market and all did the market research properly. What is even more disgusting is the way how they try to pretend they don't care about maximizing profits. Just remember Pride Month for Coca Cola, Bethesda and other corps posting "woke" ads everywhere but in Middle East and Russia lol. So much for "leading change".
Like I’m 100% white and know that chi isn’t a superpower from a year of karate, yet these people who claim to have done extensive research act like it is?
Oh right, I did laugh because I understood that. If even I, as a westerner that knows next to nothing about anything in the whole continent of Asia learnt all of that from C-dramas, maybe it indicates that the directors did less than that.
Well to be fair Mulan isn't like most women. Not in the sense that other women are incapable, but rather her dedication and will goes above most women AND men.
![Seungmin "그렇게, 천천히, 우리(As we are)" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/kAzmhLHePqU/mqdefault.jpg)
Edit: I still constantly get white people in the comments acting like I personally desecrated their ancestors' graves for calling out this movie for having a majority white production staff, and I have to say that I was so angry because Disney SPECIFICALLY bragged about how "authentic and accurate" this movie was gonna be and acted like they were doing Chinese people a huge favor, only to come out with THIS. I'd have the same reaction if they employed a majority of any other non-Chinese people to make this movie while claiming that, but let's not act like Hollywood doesn't inherently favor white creators, lol.
asdjf;slak y'all really liked this video, huh
I want to make more about Chinese history and culture and stuff but with my current computer it took...20+ hours...to edit and render this video. I put a Ko-Fi link in the description, please consider supporting me if you wanna see this channel become an actual thing!
Yes please :3
I'd love to see reviews of C-dramas too! Especially the terrible ones.... oh man...
I'm guessing part of what took a lot of time was the skipping around and having to find the right parts? To be honest, I'd be fine just listening to you talk about some topic without much clipping if that makes it easier for you. You have a lot of interesting points and was very engaging to listen to.
I really want to hear you talk about some great Chinese litterature that's still accessible to common audiences. Or maybe your favorite Chinese myths or something :O
Even if you only make one video every month or two or less, we're here for it!
I'm excited for your book and for more videos!
"How fast is her horse"? Clearly the horse was true to itself and connected to its chi.
It's chi is beyond imagining.
@@wyntertheicewyvern6226 Truly it will bring honour to us all.
@@Tyurru360 if you had such a horse, its chi, the boundless energy of life itself, would you tell it only a son could wield chi?
HAHA this comment & thread made me laugh, thanks all.
XD
"Have you ever seen a movie that pissed you off so bad that you made a whole RUclips channel just to roast it?"
This is how legends begin.
I started my anime blog that I've had for 10 years just because I was mad that Barnes and Noble had stopped carrying my favorite anime magazines. Let the hate flow through you...
Hahaha. Just like how the channel "Girlfriend Reviews" blew up after making a review on Red Dead Redemption 2.
And I'm here for it! Let the shenanigans begin! :D
I liked and subbed right there.
Everybody has. For me, it was Man of Steel and Star Trek Into Dorkness
"She didn't need to let go of her father's probably very precious and expensive armor." That sentence was far more Chinese than Mulan (2020).
Oh man, I'm boiling at this very practice each and every time it turns up in a movie. Like wtf, people are just willy-nilly throwing 25 Ferraris worth of armor away in every other movie like it's any old trash. And weapons. And don't get me started on ropes...
How I wish they'd stop doing that. It'd be such an improvement to every single one of those movies, for literally no effort what so ever.
Most movies just really don't understand how Expensive and Effective ancient armor were. To them it's just cheap decorative thing that protect less than clothing ;)
I don’t know who wrote that scene, but it feels like something a man would write
When I saw this, I was soo confused, I was thinking “why did she just took off everything that was meant to protect her? And her hair too? The whole purpose of the hair up is to make it easier to fight and see. It’s not because she’s a women bc when women fight, we put our hair up”. That whole thing made no damn sense, only a dude would write that.
@@patrickcote4521 It fell out of use because it stopped being effective against newer weapons--most of the changes in armor design have driven by that, and it only became fashion when it held on past when it was still effective. The thing is that if they really want to pull that kind of scene off? Just establish that we're at one of those points where the current style of armor just slammed into being an expensive & ineffective impediment because there's new weapons that punch through it and/or had a "And THIS is why you don't buy from the bargain bin at the cheapest used armor dealer..." moment. (The latter might be good if you want other people to have effective armor--it's just, well, our stripper bought the cheap sketchy stuff.)
My favorite part about the original was the ending. Mulan joined the army not because she wanted to fight, but because she wanted her father to live. She went home to be with him, and he was just happy to see her. Her love interest followed her home and introduced himself politely to her family. I loved that he did that, because Mulan never said she didn’t want love and marriage, and this way she gets it from someone who sees her as a true intellectual AND physical equal. The point was never to dismantle society, or as this movie seems to think, to become a man. The point was to have the choice of how to live your life, both within and outside of convention.
And then the sequel completely ruined it.
@@Mojo1356 we don't talk about that thing. The Mulan animation only had one film we care to mention & know about.
Don't forget the grandma
Mulan: "Would you like to stay for dinner?"
Grandma: "WOULD YOU LIKE TO STAY FOREVER?!"
@@aeoligarlic4024 “dinner would be great”
No offense, but y’all have got to stop throwing a tantrum about the few movies that don’t centre romance. If I can deal with 95% of movies ending with at least one happy couple, y’all can stop acting like you’ve been given water in the desert when you’re given yet another happy couple ending.
"How fast is Mulan's horse?"
clearly, the horse cultivates his chi
Hahahahaha! I laughed way too hard at that! It caught me so off guard. Well done!
Maybe he/she is a horse spirit that’s on his way to cultivate into human form, with the goal of eventually becoming immortal. And if this is a fantasy romance C-drama, the horse spirit will fall in love with Mulan and give up his immortal cultivation in order to live an ordinary happy life with her (in his human form - does that make it less furry?😂).
Then they’ll get married and give birth to a human/spirit hybrid child who later encounters severe identity issues. Then one day the gods/immortals will find out this “sinful” marriage between human and spirit, and decide to punish and separate them. And then blablabla omg the story writes itself😂
@@queenning28 that would probably be better than the mulan movie
@@francesgreen3519 I second this. Someone make it.
To carry more oxygen and stop his body from producing lactic acid.
The real hero of this story is Mulan's horse. It outran a whole avalanche and carries her everywhere she needs to go.
HAHAHA trueee
HECK YASS!
He's the new Mushu
EXACTLY
Lmao yes
THEY LITERALY CUT OFF MUSHU BEACAUSE "THE DRAGON IS A TOO MUCH IMPORTANT ANIMAL FOR THE CHINESE CULTURE TO BE REPRESENTED SILLY AND FUNNY" AND THEN...??!
I just thought they didn't want unnecessary additional CGI stuff
@@606aichan7O7 opposite to what? Unneccesary CGI like a witch's superpowers?
@@luchomscyfy I haven't seen it yet so I didn't pay much attention
It's not opposite to anything? I'm just saying I thought they just didn't want to create a model of a dragon that would be somewhat realistic yet similar to the animation, because he probably would be in a lot of scenes. A whole model, as opposed to BG stuff just seems like a lot if they cared about world building..if that made sense....???
-but Chinese martial arts stuff usually has a lot of CGI anyway, so I'd assume that was kinda a normal decision
that sounds like Disney making an excuse to not research whether black people hung out in ancient china (spoiler: they did and, vice-versa, chinese people hung out in africa as well).
like, on the one hand, chinese dragons are pretty rooted to chinese geography - they bring rain and cause earthquakes and are rivers, etc - but, like, if they didn't want to just, idk check through 5000 years of chinese recorded history for existing instances of african immigrants &/or visiting dignitaries or whatever, they could have just. hired an actor who was both black and chinese? it would be a HUGE step in on-screen mixed race representation and plenty of people would jump at the chance to be involved, be it as a shape-shifted bird spirit, a dragon, or a dragon statue.
but Hollywood apparently only knows that ethnic minorities can find each other attractive but NOT that, maybe, they'd end up having mixed-race kids together who might then go on to be actors and comedians struggling to find work because they're simultaneously not black enough AND not asian enough.
the whole "dragons are too ~SACRED~" thing smells like Disney dodging the chinese government's ire at the suggestion that black people exist in chinese history &/or white Hollywood not being able to compute the idea of ethnic minorities teaming up outside shared tokenism in majority-white groupings.
who cares about what happens next the whole movie is wrong anyway.
Cries in offended Chinese.
The witch being a bird spirit, and Mulan being accused of being a fox spirit would even give the witch more of a reason to empathize with Mulan!
Fox spirit... A serious accusation you got here because this is usually applied when you're calling someone a "slut", in here should be applied when a woman seduces a man and manipulates his mind
Also the witch used a shuriken, a Japanese weapon to try and kill Mulan. A *Japanese* weapon. 🤦♂️ Look I can give it a semi pass if the movie was based remotely around any of those regions and just was like a mixture, but this movie is about a *Chinese* story and it’s even more confusing that the armor is actually accurate to ancient Chinese armor. However, it could’ve worked if just as you said the witch was a fox spirit that instead of being from China was from Japan since those two countries have been enemies for who knows how long and it’s like Tamamo-no-Mae, a fox spirit who’s origins although were Japanese some versions state she was originally from China and was the reason the Shang dynasty fell and fled to Japan under a different name. Hence why she would use Japanese weapons
@@dslai2938Wait, DEADASS??? I missed that detail then.
@@dslai2938 yep and fox spirit historically is used for demonizing woman so it fits, most famous was su daji
i legitimately would've loved a retelling of Mulan that incorporates magic. just not this..
Disney: "We got rid of Mushu since it wasn't realistic enough."
Also Disney: *Adds witch character and magic*
PossiblyViv I WAS LIKE WHERES MUSHU?! WHERES MUSHU?! WHERES THE FLAVAH?!
I got so mad when they said they got rid of Mushu. He's my favorite charter ever
Adds mulan with superpowers that lets her kill people with giants spears afters she kick them like a masters sensi
Rip Mushu 🙏🏽☹️
Nooo not Mushu!
This movie is like pouring an entire bottle of soy sauce on a plate of spaghetti - that doesn't make it Chinese, just makes it salty. Very salty.
this is somehow a perfect analogy 😂
uzumaki_rakku this comment is too accurate
this analogy had no business being so good!
Is it weird I've seen a person put soy sauce on spaghetti?
@@mythoughtsexactly2145 Fusion spaghettis exist, but done well lol. This movie is simply dumping soy sauce on spaghetti=ruinin it.
The biggest female empowerment this movie could achieve was making Xiran so mad about it they made a whole ass channel and a great critique because of how bad the movie is
I wanted to like, but it’s at a perfect 420 😌
Shlgljgss LMAOOOO
And at 1.2k is well passed (past?) 420 likes.
I love the new (resurrected, 2.0) angry feminist, with a hoarse voice and goth look and that classic deadpan cynical sarcasm that only the patriatchy can stir up in an intelligrnt person *wipes away tear. There is still hope for the future.
And LEAD with the plug for your book, you bad ass!! It sounds hella good, I want to read it. Geez, multi-talented, I hope! We'll see.
@@coppersense999 wtf is this comment lmfao
@Xavria.z xzm
ruclips.net/video/79uYxFRvS_4/видео.html
This channel is the equivalent of the story of Wu Zetian becoming the first empress of China. She got pissed. She showed how pissed she was. She rose to power.
She’s also related to Wu Zetian
She also wrote a book about Wu Zetian
She's the first female emperor! Not the first empress :)
@@bbnagyu7704 Oh, I'm sorry
Not to be a grammar cop but its “rose to power”
"no songs because people don't actually sing in battle*
*Mulan taking off her armor and letting her hair loose in the middle of the freaking battle for AeStHeTiCs*
Forget that historically armies would go into battle and break into songs as self and collective motivator. Modern armies still break into songs when they head to battles.
She’s a superhero. She clearly doesn’t need it. :P
They took as much use of wires as possible, and made sure that her actions mostly didn’t adhere to the laws of physics.
That clearly showed the audience that she wouldn't be harmed, so she didn't need to worry 😂😂😂
Tamaki742 it’s fine she still had plot armor
@@claudia-7917 it's like everytime a girl fights she has to take some clothes/armor off. It doesn't even have to be sexual (like in LOTR or even Wonderwoman).
That's the empowered aEsThEtIcS they keep going for
"And don't tell me a woman can't be Emperor. Wu Zetian did it. She'll be laughing at you from Chinese hell." Why did this crack me up so much
The greatest pirate that ever lived was a woman. Chinese as well, for a matter of fact.
Cheng I Sao?
Fellow Extra Credit History viewers?
@@valentinmitterbauer4196 yep, i feel like more people should know about that
lol that cracked me up too, but i think she forgot to mention that wu zetian was also one of the better emperors of the tang dynasty in china.
The thing is literally all children in China who have gone to school are taught the Ballad of Mulan and have memorized it. My mom can still remember the ballad from literal decades ago. So Disney literally could not have afforded to misinterpret or mess up the poem, because basically everyone knows the poem.
Not if they didn't hire any Chinese people ;)
welcome to what whitewashing a production team does to an attempted 'culturally accurate' movie
It is even read in Germany in elementary school when we talk about China.
ya i was taught the poem when i was in 6th grade and mulan was a normal girl who was sewing something and only became a fighter to save her father because he was too old and she didnt want him to die in war. she also didnt have superpowers oof disney rly went and westernized it😔
applesauce gdi imagine America doing that 😔 uncultured gang. I think I'll read it in my own time because I appreciate parts of chinese history and my ties to it since I'm partly chinese and I am so mad at this suburban wine mom take on an otherwise good movie that I need good writing to wash away the feeling of "oh wow, the stupid actually hurts".
"Mulan passes out for a bit, wakes up, stares at the FBI motto on her sword, and decides to take off her armor" this is the funniest thing I've heard all day damn
😂😂😂
yeah I'm gonna say it, making 2 female characters "stronger" than every man in the film by giving them superpowers isn't making a strong woman, it's weak, it says they're not capable of even being equal to men without a large advantage.
Obviously
Obviously
Obviously
Obviously
Obviously
I’m a biracial Chinese girl and I strongly disliked this movie, it’s soooo stupid and disrespectful. And it’s not just that almost all of the writers/directors were white, Kung Fu Panda also had those and they did a great job. Why? Because THEY DID RESEARCH
Everyone disliked this movie, lol.
Kung fu panda its amazing youre right
Wow, does that mean kung fu panda is more accurate (though still a fantasy and not a historical fiction) than Mulan is?
as expected from kung fu panda 😌❤️
@@cutecloverrunevalyn2573 Yes
I like how “the witch” can turn into a bunch of birds but decides to turn into just one bird so that she dies instead of idk losing a finger.
Or maybe conjuring a shield would have been a good idea
*cough cough* peter pettigrew *cough cough*
Liu Yifei encourages to kill the dreams and freedom of Hong Kong children and young people. She supports the Hong Kong police who are using tear gas against the protestors.
or like she said just killing the dude instead of sacrificing herself lol
that scene literally made no sense in any way
At this point, It seems like she WANTED to die😂
I love how she says "That's not how women are demonized in chinese culture" at 02:50, like, the demonization of women is so common in basically every culture that one has to specify how they really are demonized in each culture xd
People are demonized, how you get demonized varies according to your race, sex, beliefs, etc and depends on who is demonizing you.
The way people are vilified even changes strongly with time. Like the modern idea of a “witch” like they use in this is such a young concept. Pretty sure this vilification came around 1000CE, when paganism at large was being expunged in Europe and all forms of practice that related to the old religions were made illegal. This included traditional forms of medicine, divination, and so on. The movement to make witches truly be “evil” instead of just outside the law “helpers” or healers took a couple centuries and the publication of an awful book called Malleus Malifacaraum.
So not only is the concept of “witch” here wrong for Chinese culture, but it’s 400+ years early by European culture of the same era. The fact that she’s a shapeshifter would’ve still been seen as morally neutral to Europeans at the time, too. They would’ve been instead freaking out that she’s using magic against the establishment, kind of like China would too to be honest. That’s the real crime, political and rival destruction, and yet this alignment was not explored. Like this just doesn’t line up anywhere anytime, honestly.
Yeah it's weird, it's like women are not goddesses, but mere mortals to whom sometimes bad things happen. One thought they were immune to bad things because they don't poop. Cos they do not poop, right...?
You’d be surprised how many cultures thankfully didn’t demonize women, like at least the great majority of Native American cultures
Yes, everyone can be demonized, every culture does it in its own way. What a shocker.
there are two genders: daughter and warrior
No it is before and after the vampire visit!
That makes Mulan genderfluid, which is about as close to representation we're going to get from Disney, so enjoy it
@Depressed Gay Wizard *crying* hOw CoUlD tHeY
@Depressed Gay Wizard right 💔
Lasers and Feelings.
My favorite moment from the cartoon version was when they saw the village after singing "A Girl Worth Fighting For" and Mulan sees the doll and places it at the base of her commander's sword. Because in that moment, the little girl and all the little girls in the village became "The girl worth fighting for"
All the soldiers understood that they weren't doing this to come back for the ladies or whatever. They were doing this to protect the citizens of China
That scene has a whole new meaning for me! Thank you
That scene was also a meta transition for the movie itself. No more songs, no more jovial fish out of water humor. From here on it's all...real, in a story sense. The reality of war slaps them, and the audience in the face and there's no going back.
I’m not... I’m not crying! 😭
Wow, I had never realized that
@@Luinta that transition would have worked better if they didnt go straight back into comedy for the climax of the film. I think had the climax been more realistic and grounded(like the lion king) it would have been more satisfying. Dont get me wrong, I enjoyed the call back to the climbing the pole and the way Mulan disarmed the Hun leader...but the whole using fruits to incapacitate the other huns soilders and the men having to cross dress(where did they get the time to do so?) And The hun leader being killed by fireworks(launched by Mushu not even Mulan) its all very slapstick and not really fitting with the tone that the transition into a cold war epic created. I liked the animated movie but the climax is the weakest part.
The original cartoon might have been inaccurate, but at least it was well-made and the makers cared about it.
I agree
It wasn’t perfect but it had a lot of heart poured into it
also it was still faithful to the essence of the original ballad in a few ways: notably mulan having to work hard to become a capable soldier -- like she was still a bit of a tomboy in the animation, but more in the "kinda messy and all over the place" rather than the "not like other girls bc she likes swords and can do backflips" kinda tomboy, and regardless still participated in the duties expected in her as a woman -- that she did it precisely to protect her father and how she went straight home after the war because she wasn't doing it for notoriety or anything. there were western "flavourings" to the whole thing (establishing mulan as a bit "different" -- but again, mainly in personality and habits rather than abilities -- the over-emphasis of "honour", the musical aspect and animal sidekick, the haircutting, for example) but it had a central heart to the story, carried the core resonance from the ballad, AND knew what it was doing when it came to emotionally impacting the audience. i'm chinese and i remember talking to my mom about it, and she too thought the mulan animated movie was pretty well-done and was accurate to the ballad in all the right parts (don't even get me started on how the ballad is VERY short so i don't blame people for wanting to embellish things....just not like mulan 2020 please.)
also at least when mulan cut her hair in the original animation it absolutely slapped. the music, the lightning, the reflection in the sword. THE CHILLS.
Like pretty much any other Disney animated film ever made before the 2000’s, it was inaccurate but full of watchable fun.
The original had so many powerful scenes and messages. Mulan was my favorite Disney Princess when I was a kid because I always tried my hardest in sports and I wanted to be strong and smart like her.
I will NEVER stop rewatching Xiran absolutely MERCILESSLY destroying this excuse of a movie.
Excuse of a movie? Mulan 2020 was barely an excuse of a loud fart.
@@BrennaBridRogers😂
I feel so bad for Xiran because you can see their…qi (see what I did there?) ebbing away as the movie goes on.
Disney: We're gonna cut "I'll Make A Man Out Of You" from the movie because it's sexist.
Me: B-but isn't that kind of the point? The juxtaposition of hearing the gender-biased lyrics while at the same time being shown Mulan doing as well in her training as the men?
Disney: Too subtle. Let's just make Mulan superhuman and incredibly skilled from the start. Strong female characters shouldn't have to struggle or grow. They should be put on a pedestal.
Couldn't have said it better 👏 🙌
I’ll make a man out of you was FIRE! Damn you Disney! Just give us a shirtless man who sings! Can’t I just have this one?!
A pedestal where, *crucially*, actually human beings cannot get to them. You cannot aspire to be a superhuman magical hero lady; it's not attainable.
"We can't give actual women or trans or non-binary people (or any other oppressed group) a decent role model that they can aspire to be. That would give them more sociocultural recognition and actually empower them."
@@ReyndommVideos I feeeel that. I really *really* want to like Captain Marvel, but her only flaw was a damaged memory. They made her so powerful, they couldn’t even put her in most battles because there would be no struggle. And when she was in the battles and struggled, it didn’t feel accurate to the amount of power they gave her.
@@discordiadingle3203 Saddest thing about Captain Marvel to me was how boring it was. I was never interested or engaged in it. It was profoundly wrote and unsurprising and there was basically no tension whatsoever. And then I think about how much money was spent on it and I just feel angry.
Westerners: You ruin the movie >:(
Disney: Ho Ho of course you’ll think that you intolerant, we made this movie for the Chinese pe-
China: **Bans the movie for how awful it is**
Disney: ...
Disney: well of course, China would ban this,we didn't make it for them. We made it for the gays, feminists, and cultural left!
@@sephandremanticore5438 bruh they worked with concentration camps why do you think this was for the left
@@echowoods7977 because of the feminist message.
Alcer Demon China NEVER bans the movie.
@@echowoods7977 because the american left ignores the evils of other countries if they are POC. It's why no white liberals talk about the black slave trade in Libya, or how most middle eastern countries murder homosexuals legally
Even Mulan's horse in the original movie has more personality in the first 10 minutes than live action Mulan in 2 hours
That’s so true. I got more entertainment from the cricket then the entire live action film. I got more entertainment from the background soldiers then the entire 2020 movie
You mean cow
Damn every horse in that movie
Cow* ugh people these days can't even identify an animal 🙄
She's Chinese Rey Skywalker, what can you expect
Just a reminder: Disney spent THREE YEARS studying "the physics of curly hair" for brave.
Yeah, that explains a lot...
disney didn’t, the artists and animators did
@@SeaguIISoup they did it on company time working for... Disney.
@@catperson6683 PriVer Animation?
isn't brave pixar?
I’m not Asian, but my mother does acupuncture and she went into a 20 minute rant when this movie pulled the chi card.
🤭🤭🤭😆
AS SHE SHOULD. PERIODT.
Ur mom is a great person
I read many Manhuas and chi is not something you are born being able to Channel, but something you have to train to be able to use, such training, combined with martial arts so you can use the chi is called Cultivation, you also need a certain number of Meridian Roots so you can channel the chi and your Dantian, a region near the stomach has to be intact, and to get stronger you need herbs to make cultivation pills (screw up and you make poison pills instead), learn techniques and acquire different artifacts known as treasures, even a genius cultivator would need a sect or a master to refine the techniques, so, Mulan pulling those crazy stunts on her own, without prior training in cultivation is absurd, even by OP MC manhua standards because said OP MCs have decades worth of training under their belts, and they turned Mulan into a Mary Sue, to please China, a country that dislikes Mary Sues
@@oddeye2412 you mean period?
Mulan was originally a normal, average woman but she could do the same things as any man could: wield a sword masterfully, dutifully carry out stressful orders, hard labor, etc.
The fact they had to make her have superpowers to even compete with her male, military compatriots degrades the original storyline. It makes it seem like she's still lesser anyway, as a female.
Just like that one rabbit saying, they totally missed the point.
Also putting MAGICK in it IN MY PERCEPTION is like copying Elsa from Frozen, I DON'T THINK THEY WANT IT TO BE ACCURATE BUT RATHER A KIDDIE MOVIE
I mean, it's not like she's the only one that can fight like this.
That is actually a really good point, I hadn't thought of it that way, but now I understand. You have to be something *beyond human* to best a man as a woman. That is deeply insulting.
@mic eatah it's really not though? Yes not every woman can beat a man, just like not every man can beat every other man. That's literally why there are weight classes in wrestling and stuff. But a woman is definitely capable of doing the same physical workouts, and training.
Omg. Did she literally make this channel JUST to roast Mulan, and her only video got over a million views. What a power move
She got over 60,000 subscribers from one video
She actually made it to roast white people, while being fully westernized and out of Chinese culture herself. But sure.
@@Arcessitor Well she might know to speak in chinese but then who would watch it
@@Arcessitor why are you so mad
@@Arcessitor Aw are you offended that someone didn't like a bad movie because it was about something they knew nothing about :((((( are you a little baby snowflake :((((
"And don't tell me a woman can't be emperor. Wu Zetian did it. She'd be laughing at you from Chinese hell."
This brought me many serotonins thank you
i laughed harder than i have in a while!
The chinese hell line is so funny because even the concept of hell is different between the chinese and european lmso
@@yuhyi0122yeah 18 levels
Disney hired like a whole council or whatever for Moana to make it culturally accurate, but they can't do that for the Mulan remake. To top it off everyone behind the scenes weren't even Chinese not even Asian.
i think that might be because the Rock went so hard for making it accurate and respectful.
But they work closely with the communist party of China and they aprroved everything
@@taquitoxiq1444 props to him because moana is a genuinely good movie that shows a lot about a culture to people who probably wouldn't have known about it otherwise
Some people have criticized Moana for having, in their view, a too western plot line. Taika Waititi was the first person to submit a script, which he said was very different from the end result. He has said that he found the end product respectful and not insulting.
@@stareyedwitch fair criticism, but it's still miles better than Mulan 2020.
God I HATE it when shows and movies act like women have to sacrifice protection in battle to show their womanhood! Why would any sensible person remove armor in battle. I just watched the live action yesterday and was like what the fuck, Mulan isn’t a god she’s a regular woman who needs armor!
I mean, she WAS a normal woman. Not anymore. Disney decided they’d give her magical powers and now she’s a demigod.
@@capncake8837 My name is Hua Mulan. I'm twelve years old. Until a few months ago, I was a boarding student at Yancy Academy, a private school for troubled kids in upstate New York. Am I a troubled kid?
@@cece6661 LMAOOOO
@Killua Zoldyck Man I sure do need to re-read pj because I forgot majority of what happened there
@Killua Zoldyck Oh, is it? I’d forgotten his school’s name and that it was for troubled kids.
The original movie is: She's exactly like the other girls, but was treated as one of the guys for a short time and her potential to be a warrior and be as strong as the other men around her was reached. She's a girl and she doesn't need to be different to be strong, all she needed was the practice
The live action: Well, sorry, girl, but the only way you can be as strong as men and be equals is by having literal super powers
Which is what I call a "Mary Sue" for the live action.
fr tho-
Cartoon: Boys and girls are both capable of fighting for and protecting loved ones, but girls aren't allowed in the army, so *disguises!* (Also, bigger range of emotion.)
Live action: Too bad I was born a girl. Woe is me, I have to lie. 🤷
Yup, totally agree. Funny how the animated version has more depth than the live action abomination.
The cartoon: I'm an ordinary girl who uses my own wits to solve problems and save my country
The live action: "i'M noT lIkE OTher GiRLs!"
@@anamazing2297 Mulan didn't win through fighting though, did she? She won by being clever and thinking outside the box which is not something the army would teach her to do. I think the message of the original Mulan was that there are often more ways to accomplish a goal and that you shouldn't be afraid to do something unorthodox. It has very little to do with the "girls can fight too!" idea. Because being a solider is exactly what Mulan didn't do.
And that makes the remake even more insulting because Mulan won by literally becoming a man. She even started smelling like one! Are you telling me that the only way a woman can succeed is by being a man? I thought Disney was being taken over by radical feminists?
It's even funnier because they call it "female empowerment" even though the person they're empowering possesses no female traits whatsoever! They're trying to achieve more respect for women but just end up disrespecting them even more!
"And don't tell me a woman can't be emperor. Wu Zetian did it, she'd be laughing at you from Chinese hell."
literally the most iconic line of all time thank you for this masterpiece!!
😂😂😂..
She was pretty old as Emperor too.
I hated the movie because they removed Shang’s character and split him into 2 people. A really old general dude with no personality and a really hot dude that has no personality.
@Lucky Lila Yeah, despite how much liberty the OG animation took with the Chinese cultural symbols, it at least had symbolism.
Bisexual legend Shang! NOOOOOooooo......
I'm so glad that I didn't watch it in the movie. When I first saw the trailer I was sstill looking forward to it.
I didn't believe that it would be similiar to the animation but I expected that there would be some character growth and someone like Shang who would support her and makes her do her best. At least I didn't waste my time and money. This review is very entertaining.
I read that they removed Shang because of the "person on a position of power- subordinate" situation might be insensitive, specially since the movie was made round the time Harvey Weinstein was exposed... They could have place Shang's father (who was in the animated movie) as the person in charge and place Shang in the same level as Mulan and it would have worked
@@marinadeburgos8666 yeah but that Harvey Weinstein is a western thing that should have nothing to do with the peace that tries to be a period piece while also being mythological lore
One of the things I liked about the original in regards to the transition between "A Girl Worth Fighting For" to the destroyed village is also the implication that they DID find a girl worth fighting for. A little girl who had been killed alongside her family and village. That scene hit fucking HARD
The whole thing is a masterpiece. Disney just made another movie to keep the rights to Mulan
also, after that scene no other musical numbers happened! So they actively added depth to the latter part of the movie and were able to keep the beginning lighter! It's so good
@@thatsdisco oh wow, I didn’t notice that. Thanks now I love it even more 🥰🤗
I’ve never thought of it that way that makes it even sadder
The fact she created a whole channel just to critique/complain about this movie is awesome lol
You know, it's hard for me: Normally, i would seperate the actual Movie 'Mulan' from the Real Life. Look at them seperately.
But this... THIS is just an extreme case and i dont know how to do it here.
All this is so insane.
The Movie is full of Cringe, Fake-Feminism and Plot Holes - yet, the Real Life has way crazier problems and I'm starting to think China is so off-track from the rest of humanity that some Nation should - no kidding - invade China and take over, so the Supression ends... Or something like this!
I know this normally isnt right, but... i believe there is a 'Point' where such a thing is justified. Of course this point is by no means easy to reach, but... it's possible to reach, you know?
Oh, i don't know.
I personally thing that since we live in an age where anyone on the internet can interact. That actual Chinese people should make an adaptation of the Ballad of Mulan. Just look at all the high quality web series that are out there.
@@eclair6910 There are tons of China-made Ballad of Mulan and they are way better than the Disney adaptation.
and she got like 30k subscriber just with this video! 🤣
@@slevinchannel7589 ok, dial back the imperialism bro.
"Blood is for warriors, not daughters" would actually be kind of a great line to have a misogynistic character say
Oh, I would have loved it if that WAS the line, and Mulan answered really deadpan "So, I guess you haven't heard about menstruation, dad..."
But I suspect that would have been a very different movie XD
I would love add in the underrated line, "Warriors don't dance." along with that. Lol
I see it like "fight so that your daughter doesn't fight for you"
It could also be a line from a parent though
@Quinn-he3vn Maybe a parent who doesn’t like blood in their kids!
As a Chinese person, the original cartoon is a little stereotypical at times. But the live action is straight up insulting. They literally have no timeline or historical accuracy of China, the costumes are garish and ugly, the plotline confusing and the dialogue awkward. There really isn't anything good to say about it.
I think that the cartoon has the advantage that it's pretty old.
as a fellow chinese i agree. the cartoon has some flaws but it's enjoyable otherwise and is able to deliver the message right. but THIS MOVIE??? nope. not at all. cant even follow the original ballad right
Also the warped chinese makeup just feels like chinese backface and should be just as condemnable.
The first Mulan was still good despite it's slight issues.
There's no historical accurate timeline because it's set in a FICTIONAL fantasy universe. Do you think other Disney princess movies are based in a historically accurate time in Europe? Hell no. There is a historic period they're SET in, but that's really as far as it goes in regards to historical and/or cultural accuracy; so not accurate at all.
I remember when people used to say cartoons aren't cinema, now cartoons are the only thing that have tangible emotion and beauty.
Switch to real Asian dramas. They still get it right. Hollywood is so lifeless right now.
Hollywood forgot animation is just a format. Japan's full-on embraced it and China's just remembered.
i hope people in the west start seeing animation as a serious medium rather than just "cartoons for kids"
@@DragonLandlord I agree. Animation isn' a genre, it's a medium/format, just like the type of film a movie is shot on, or whatever.
And try to be accurate where the animators and storytellers research before working on it, which is why they take years to complete.
It's kinda wild that they marketed this as a "yay, girl power!" movie and yet the two main female characters are only strong warriors because of obvious magic. Wow, glad to know the only way for women to advance in the world is if we were born lucky.
*EDIT:* They talk about how the witch had to work her way up to being that powerful, that it took years and she suffered for it (which honestly sounds like a way more interesting story lmao) but she dies in the most pathetically pointless way possible.
That's what I was saying though! Jeez....Why they gotta do Mulan and in general, half the world population, like that...
They also butcher the message in the original film, that girls could achieve anything if they worked hard for it, and worked together with their friends. Here the message is that you can achieve anything if you're born perfect and invincible, lol.
Right?? The "Chosen One" aspect that they added completely took away from what made Mulan cool in the Disney version. She earned the Shang, Yao, Ling and Chien Po's respect because she worked hard and came through when it mattered. Not because she was just born better. _How_ did the writers and director think people were gonna buy this shit and not roast it?
that's cuz every Disney villain is destined to die even if they are redeemed
Or it's not even framed right.
Like okay, you could have played this angle: somebody is gifted, but nobody takes her seriously because she's a girl. It's simple, but it would be a start. But nope! I mean after all, we accept super powered characters in lots of fictions .... to be fair, stuff like 80s actioner will get snickers for it too but let's not derail too much.). I can understand why poeple might dislike characters which are too strong or "pure" (it's why some poeple dislike superman for instance), but done right they can be used as sort of icons you look up to: there are always ways to be clever about it and make it work, make it part of the point, of the story, make commentary on it, etc. Point is..... I think the question is more context and execution. Like first tought is, it feels out of place in the gritty tone of the film (because damn if disney ever let their live adaptations "feel" fantastical (like yay lion king but now ugly grey and brown with inexpressive characters! It might be incredible animation and effects, but it was just wasted.)
Even though I hate everything about the 2020 remake I finally decided to watch this one after watching your other two analysis videos. And I remember a really good explanation for why the "girl worth fighting for" transition hit so hard. Because the entire song they are singing about exactly that, but in a naive romantic light. But when they get to the village they find the girl they should have been fighting for all along in the doll that Mulan finds. The innocent civilians and children and little girls. There is no way I explained it as well as the random Tumblr post I saw but like... it hits hard when I think about it!
It does..it's a light silly song about dreaming of a lover to fight for only to stumble on a destroyed village and realize they already have a reason to fight for; the women and children of villages, their families, their country, ect.
Exactly. All their dreams of glory and the burned village reminds them that it's not about what they gain if they win, it's what, or rather who, will be sacrificed if they lose. It's not just wanting to win, they HAVE to win for the sake of those they love.
"Mercenaries fight for victory inspired for what they can win, heroes fight inspired to avoid defeat for what they may lose."
Disney: "I command you to love this movie."
Everyone: "The mountain does not bow to the wind."
Great use of reference!
This 👌
"No matter how the wind howls, the mountain cannot bow to it."
Sorry to be pedantic, it's just such a cool line I needed to put it out there.
@@Nintendon85 beat me to it by one hour lol
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Kung Fu Panda was more respectful to Chinese culture.
I think kung fu panda is THE movie of how to do chinese culture in a movie.
@@alexanderbemu6190 honestly, knowing nothing abt Chinese culture, im so glad kung fu panda did it right
If this is true (from a Chinese perspective), I'd be happy to say I love those movies and they are severely underrated.
thats why I love dreamworks followed by Pixar. No political bullcrap in DreamWorks and they keep it traditional for gender romance and family values like how it should be.
@@drakke125Channel um,Abominable 2019? Yes... DreamWorks tried to suck up to Chinese govt with that movie. But at least that movie is watchable and not a total trainwreck. This,Mulan however....bruh... They didnt get a single thing right with this movie,not even the costumes
Disney: has millions of dollars for their budget
Also Disney: won't even hire one historian who coulda fixed most, if not all the historical/cultural inaccuracies
Propaganda doesn't care for "historical/cultural accuracy".
Did it have to be historically accurate?
@@peronkop Yeah because they intended to make this historically accurate to start and they failed incredibly
@@peronkop considering how much work went into the original and modern times when it comes to culture.yes.
@@sambradley9091 its hard to believe that was the goal when they included magic as a corner stone of their story.
One thing I hate about this movie is how they... vilianize Chinese people. If a seven year old performed highly acrobatic acts, people would be impressed and praise her, and even call higher ranked people to witness her talents. She would quickly become popular, and even documented. This has in fact, happened before.
I hate how they excused cutting Shang as not wanting to portray rape culture or a toxic power dynamic, bc Shang and Mulan's relationship was literally 100% consensual and didn't even start until after the war was over. It wasn't a commanding officer abusing his power to force a girl into sexual interaction, it was two friends getting together in their own time bc they both liked each other. Disney probably just thought China wouldn't appreciate the bisexual undertones tbh
Yes!
There's was never any bisexual undertone. Shang was never interested in Mulan that way when she disguised as a man. He saw her as a comrade in the army and then asked her out when he realized she was a woman. Idk where people got Shang was bi. Yall interpret two dudes having some semblance of friendship = romantic and that's kinda encouraging toxic masculinity. Pls normalize men having friendship thanks.
And as a side note, the whole "girl cross dress as dude and end up with male lead falling" for them is EXTREMELY common in asian media (Hana Kimi, Sungkyunkwan Scandal, Maiden Holmes etc). The month Mulan came out there were 2 Chinese dramas airing with woman disguise as man theme. The tired trope isn't play as the male lead is bi, it is more like he would always sense her "womanly pheromone" no matter how she disguise herself kind of thing since most of the time the actresses always look/behave feminine that they would never pass for a man realistic
Jyuri is right, though it would be nice to have some more diverse representation, it's frustrating(as someone who is bi), when people see a friendship and forcefully interpret it as being romantic. Not everything needs to be about romance and, looking back, a romantic vibe wasn't really present in the cartoon, I don't think. That comment about "rape culture" is especially confusing.
@@J_Lynn Ok yeah fair, the whole "Shang is bi" idea isn't accurate. It's more of a meme than anything tbh. As for the "rape culture" thing, that was my entire point: Disney claiming that's why they cut him is complete bs, since there really wasn't a romantic relationship between the two throughout the film.
I think it was actually more believable that Mulan would get romantically involved with a fellow solder and not her commander. She spends all her days with other soldiers but she only sees the commander when he gives her orders. It makes more sense in that regard.
This woman was so damn pissed she straight made an entire channel _just_ to express how pissed she was. She really did that.
The _respect._
That's the level of petty I aspire to be
Yeah but it wasn’t really culturally accurate. She got a lot of stuff wrong. I guess that’s what happens when an Asian woman makes a video about European people.
@@halloweenheathen4394 the have turns tabled????
@@halloweenheathen4394 I'm sorry I didn't really understand what you mean by that. Could you eventually explain? Of course just if it isn't too much trouble.
@@seth5347 It's supposed to be a sarcastic joke, because the movie is not even trying to comprehend Chinese culture.
I find it deeply ironic that a movie that was supposedly made for Chinese people is instead hated by BOTH Eastern and Western audiences. Talk about a EPIC FAIL!
you know they'll totally get the wrong lesson out of this and assume women MCs and asian representation just doesn't sell
not the first time. The Great Wall which got the same rating as Mulan in China, 4.9 XDXDXD
at this point... i just feel bad for the actors
@@tesso.6193 this is exactly what will happen!
@@jasonyim2027 not really, some of the actors aren't nice people in real life
Loved your breakdown scene by scene! I worked on this films VFX for about a year and I just wanted to add some even more upsetting context; I worked on the Phoenix character, and it was originally billed as a *physical* animal that started out looking kinda like a pheasant and slowly morphed over the course of the movie into the full blown colorful phoenix (and she was more of a comic relief character to replace Mushu, silent comic relief tho). We had DOZENS of iterations that looked better and months into the work they scrapped the whole idea seemingly because someone told them having comic relief AT ALL would have been in bad taste (???)
Which I think is a great indication of the whole tone deaf direction of the film at large. The whole project felt like a half assed cash grab where the directors and on set leads were somehow convincing themselves they were doing something great by "making this adaption closer to the actual Chinese epic" while paying themselves millions instead of bothering to hire people who were culturally connected or even knowledgeable about the source material. In my 10 years of film work, I don't think i've ever worked on a film with such a wishy washy milk toast artistic direction from the client.
Wait, you actually worked on THIS film? I think that idea was good though ... If we didn't get any character development of Mulan, at least we would have gotten the phoenix's 'character' development
@nanwijanarko1969 Yeah it was a huge mess project wise. I was doing lookdev for the phoenix for probably near 8 months, the client just really didn't know what they wanted. which i guess is why they ended up scrapping it and all the scenes of Mulan actually interacting with the character when they needed to cut stuff for time. what showed up on screen was only the final, fully evolved form. I do think it could have been a nice metaphor for growth, even if it was a bit of a standin for actually writing character development lol
Xiran Jay Zhao: "Have you ever seen a movie that pissed you off so badly, that you make a whole RUclips Channel just to roast it?"
Me: *stops the video* "Hold up a minute." *Opens her RUclips page*
RUclips: "Checks out. Only one video"
Me: "Allllllright then. This is gonna be gooooood."
*resumes playing the video*
I gave the video a like immediately after I heard that line
Omg me too. I checked the channel. Now I'm subscribed.
Did the exact same thing lmao
same lol
that was the best shade ever.
"Her chi is beyond imagining!"
Sounds like the screenwriters learned everything they know about chi from Dragon Ball, MULAN'S POWER LEVEL IS OVER 9,000!!!!
This wasn't the DBZ live action film we deserved but it was the DBZ live action film we needed.
I wish they had stolen the character developement in DB too.
Goku: I was the weakest child ever born in my planet. so my tribe discarded me. But I will train myself like hell and will become super hero.
Moolan2020: I AM NOT OTHER GIRLS!!! IM INVINCIBLE AT BIRTH
@@pewdiepieismypapi921 LOL wow I totally forgot the Saiyans sent baby Goku to a backwater planet called..."Ee-yarth?" because he was so weak (thinking Earth would be easy for him to conquer), whereas 2020 Mulan is Broly. 😂😂
This comment wins. 😅
Darth Vader: “the Chi is strong in our family.”
Even as a white girl, I was offended by Mulan being "magical." I love Mulan because she is a normal girl who trained her butt off to places she was denied. It makes her impossible to attain. I prefer attainable heroes.
Thank you for the information, because I honestly didn't know how inaccurate this movie was.
Agreed!
2009 is better
exactly!
Exactly. As someone with blue eyes, I’m getting sick of all these new protagonists in movies being skilled and powerful right from the get go, with no character development. It happened with Rey in Star Wars. Disney just sucks.
@@rabidL3M0NS EXACTLY!
Only one good thing has ever come from this movie:
It pissed off Zhao enough that we got this RUclips channel.
I am so happy to have been here from the start and rewatching this a year and something later makes all her points hit even harder.
"She's a woman! She can't have chi!"
"Are you saying my daughter should be dead?"
an extremely creative death threat
Look, if we're going to say chi is like blood, or he'll even life force, the fact that a woman can create life makes its own case
But no one will have such strong chi/Qi during birth because Qi has to be cultivated for many years until it reaches a certain level (Based on my experience of reading wuxia) So clearly the developers of this movie only did surface level research. Not sure if I can trust Disney anymore
Fun thing is that chi is basically better translated as humor, if one wants to use western magical concepts to understand it, although humors don't have much of the flow thing.
I mean, if it means this movie doesn't have to happen...
Her sword just feels like the equivalent of “Live, Laugh, Love”
Lmaooooo 🤣🤣🤣
correct
LMAO
does this mean that mulan is a karen
raybrandt and shops at Hobby Lobby
Damn, she's not joking. This is her one and only video.
With that kind of professionalism, hard to believe, right?
@@zhannad750 Honestly, since we (non-RUclipsrs) watch RUclips - it would feel natural to "learn" from them.
Most of this is taken directly from the Twitter thread she made while livetweeting lol. Me and others were just like “hey you could make this into a video!”
Ya!! hahaha...
@@Mary1337 well I've seen numerous people sing and act, and I still suck at that, hahaha
I think some ability and talent must be present to talk to a camera naturally like a friend, and to write a script that entertaining
Strategy and tactics nerd here:
Marching your slow-moving, heavy infantry into a field battle with no cover against horse archers is a great way to die.
The trebuchet/catapult thing was hilariously unnecessary. They could have just sat back and plinked away with bows until casualties or morale caused a rout.
Damn lol
Not to mention, trebuchets are notoriously terrible with aim and movement. They're heavy as all get out, and they were used to attack castles because it's a giant target, so regardless of where it lands, it is young to hit the castle!
A trebuchet would never ever hit multiple groups of people consistently. It'd be an absolute miracle to hit even ONE of those groups. So many things in this movie cause me physical pain
Original Mulan: with enough effort you can succeed no matter who you are
Animated Disney- young woman overcomes her own physical weakness and uses her intelligence to become an awesome warrior in her own right
Mulan 2020: sorry girls but you gotta be a superhero type person to impress anyone! not like other girls, am i right? who needs role models when you can have figures that you cant even aspire to be.
quirky
This movie is all about giving Mulan *I'm not like the other girls* vibe
@@Melissa-bm9to that's literally all Disney movies lmaoo
@@heavenlynana04 tiana
“I’m not like other girls.. I’m a frog”
@@panigbrowardcollege LMAOO
"Half of great Chinese literature is just fantasy fan fiction of historical events". I laughed out loud at that.
You know I just wrote a small paper on what mythology is and its purposes, I used a great quote from a book...
I wish I used this though.
This just reminds me of all the bible fanfiction from Europe that i live for
Basically anything in writing is a fanfiction of a fanfiction of fanfictions.
Romance of the Three Kingdoms is a good example of this. The Three Kingdoms Era was a historical period of civil war in China, which lasted 96 years. The book is kinda similar to the Trojan Cycle, in that it depicts a historical conflict, featuring supernatural elements, hundreds of years after the event. Real historical characters are featured in Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but like how Achilles is invulnerable except for his heel and the Greek gods keep interfering in the Trojan War, Yellow Turban leaders have magical powers and Zhang Fei has the strength of 10.000 men.
As a Chinese American whose dad is a history nerd, can confirm
mulan was not as strong as the men she had to train to get there... she had a brilliant strategic mind and that’s what made her stand out. giving her magical powers is so conflicting with the feminism ideology disney tries so very hard to pursue.
Yeah it would be way better if they had shown the struggles she had to go through and where she ended up by working hard and not giving up.
Disney is too woke right now to believe in hard work or even feminism.
@@sarahdebardeleben1536 thats just how they feminism
I agree in the original cartoon they show her struggle and have to work hard after being kicked out of the army to achieve her greatest. In this it’s just she is here, she is a bit magic, she is already great. There’s no fighting spirit and no character development. I wish they would leave the classics alone.
Sarah Debardeleben They are so woke that they are asleep 😴
2 years and I'm still returning to this iconic debut. The fact that she made an entire RUclips Channel just to hate on a movie! The level of dedication and pettiness I inspire to be!
im like 6 months late but xiran uses they/them iirc!! not mad ya ofc
“they made her Asian Elsa”
if that’s the case, the people who were behind creating this incredibly disappointing movie should’ve “let it go”
LMFAO
BOOOOOOOOOO... okay ngl that was good
Now that, is comedy gold! 😂
More like Asian Rey. Reysian if you will.
Ba dum tisss
"She'd be laughing at you from chinese hell." i'm making you an altar
that line had me ROLLING lmaooo
I love the fact that is one of the many ways the movie craps all over political correctness while trying to be pc.
Is that a Charles Bronson quote?
Just make it a 'historically accurate' one. You know, like Disney!
10:43 best parts lmao
"Just hire a Chinese screenwriter, who knows what they're talking about." Sums up the entire video, and the entire Disney controversy. Spot-on!
Not just that, why not hire a Chinese director also? Disney also hired tons of Chinese consultants(based on what I have read online, not sure if its fake news?) and I don't understand how they could have missed all of these.
They could have gotten Middle Eastern guys for Aladdin but nooo. Fuck man, even if they got like a Bollywood guy to direct the movie we might have had Shah Rukh Khan genie!
@@ashikjaman1940 I would love to see shah rukh khan as a genie
@@fc7307 They considered Ang Lee.
@Shane L : The minute you tried to make it about Trump, you lost the argument. The inclusiveness was only for those who still recognized a strong Chinese state, and were ethnically Chinese. Trump doesn't care about ethnicity, he just wants a strong America that has some resemblance of sovereignty on the world stage.
Real candidates who aren't part of the 2-party WWE, such as Blankenship, additionally want a return to actual rule of law. Which you'll find no mention of ethnicity in most of those early documents. Because those documents are color-blind. They make some reference to class status, but only insofar as to see to its eventual elimination as a critical factor.
Nothing in Trump's America First says immigration is a no. However, invasion is not immigration. Everything for nothing for this or that ethnicity is not an acceptable set of terms.
To say that's "discriminatory" is facially dishonest.
If the US saw animation as a real and legitimate art form, Disney would never have bothered with any of these remakes.
They did see it as a real artform. They are making these movies to make extra money. That's all. And the sad thing is, it's working.
@@avivastudios2311 I meant more the culture's tendency to prioritize live action as some objectively superior form of storytelling. If there hadn't been a market for "better" versions of these childhood classics, Disney wouldn't have pursued them.
American animation tends to look ugly and be shitty, to be fair
Honestly out of the few I've had to sit through Jungle Book (2016) is one I enjoyed despite some of it's flaws
@@jharris3110 a lot of people say that was the best Disney remake but I was just bored by that one.
"Half of Chinese literature is just fantasy fanfiction of historical events." LMAO
Cursa Pear she has so many amazing lines!
She's not wrong. Romance of the Three Kingdom mixed both Historical and Fictional event.
This applies to most literature to be honest (e.g. in Europe: Illyad/Odyssee, Sagas, Arthuriana, etc.)
Not to mention journey to the west. It supposed to be a solo trip but ends up with a bunch of nonsense 😂 but at least thanks to journey to the west we have dragon ball
yeah, that is pretty much it... the story of Wong Fei Hung for example, it's all fictional made up by his student but it is base on the real person with a museum dedicated to him back at his birth place Fushan.
China have alot of story like this, it's fiction that base on real event.. Romance of Three Kingdom is the most well known fiction that kinda loosely base on historical event...
Disney: We're taking away Mushu because we want Mulan to be more historically and culturally accurate.
Also Disney: *adds superpowers, a phoenix, and makes Mulan even less historically and culturally accurate*
this movie needed many things, but it especially needed Eddie Murphy
Right? I was excited about the historically accurate stuff so I didn't care about the things they removed. But 15 minutes into this movie and now I think the original is way more life-like than this one
@Desdemona And a Witch! We can't forget Disney said talking animals were too fantastical and then turned around and gave us a friggin' Wtich! (facepalm)
It took me a lot of time to think What the fucking Chi is he talking about XDXDXD It is so confused to link the Chi in this movie to the Chi in Chinese culture XD Further more, if you can use Chi that powerful like that witch ancient Chinese will probably worship you as a god no matter what gender u r............
Yeah, wouldn't a phoenix be indicative of the Hua clan being of royal blood rather than a nobody farmer family?
They turned Mulan into a generic Western "Chosen One" story.
Most of these “chosen one” stories are Asian
Which wouldn't technically be a bad thing, but pleeeaaase don't market it as culturally correct movie, because it wasn't. It was a fantasy story that kidnapped mulan's name and selective pieces of chinese culture.
@@shadowmoon1657 Wait, didn't she said that half of the Eastern Asian stories are "work hard to earn it" stories?
Neo ~
@@adam.n-steve yeah but mulan 2020 is about being a chosen one and not hard work to earn the trust and loyalty
Still haven't watched despite my unmitigated love and obsession with Chinese history particularly the Han dynasty.
One thing I always loved about Chinese literature is the lack of boring "chosen one" storylines. You might get a portent or say something cool when you're young, Liu Bang's dragon and slaying of the white snake while drunk or Xiang Yang getting frustrated with swordplay because "Swords only let you beat one man I want to to defeat the world."
But this always felt like "oh yeah cool things happened when you were young maybe we should have seen it coming" but they NEVER "get good" without busting their ass first.
My only regret is that idiots in Hollywood instead of reading this as "this movie was bad" will interpret it as "America doesn't like or want East Asian storylines so we can't spend money on them for like another decade."
Honestly I feel like the more likely response is "wow this didn't do good in asia which was the target of this movie..they must not appreciate our movies! Lets just avoid doing stuff on them so they don't get pissed at us for it"
Han Dynasty huh? Cool! I’m a Ming Dynasty guy myself
Original Mulan: Remember, gender doesn’t matter. You can accomplish amazing things, no matter who you are or how you look.
Mulan Reboot: Okay so we’ve got this magic shit and a girl chasing a chicken-
Sex not gender One of those is reality and the other is in your head only
Reboot is a train wreck.
@@charlottewalnut3118 I'm just anxiously waiting on your behalf for someone to respond to the argument you potentially started.
@@charlottewalnut3118 Neither matter that much for how fit someone is to serve.
Mulan Reboot: Okay so women can only be as good as men if their born lucky with magic powers
MULAN 2020: Let's get rid of I'll Make a Man out of You, it's sexist.
Every little girl (and little boys too) inspired by MULAN 1998: *BELTING IT AT THE TOP OF THEIR LUNGS WHILE CLIMBING A TREE, PRETENDING TO SWORD FIGHT, FIGHTING WITH A FAN, OR BEGGING THEIR PARENTS TO SIGN THEM UP FOR MARTIAL ARTS*
I mean . . . the song ends with commander dude saying he _can't_ make a man out of Mulan, and then Mulan realizing she should do things her way and suddenly finding her footing and becoming an effective warrior. So. . . .
@@eyesofthecervino3366 right??? Like calling that song sexist is honestly being willfully ignorant of the purpose it serves in the story.
The song's entire purpose was to be sexist. It's an absolute banger, but yes, the lyrics are to be taken literally, and it's supposed to be sexist. You can't battle sexism in a world where you're too scared to set it up as an issue in the first place. Being afraid to set up a sexist society in a movie doesn't help fight sexism; it actually does the opposite by refusing to acknowledge the issue. This genuinely makes me mad.
And, yeah, there's also just the fact that they removed the objectively catchiest Disney song in history
@Rachelle Redd
Forgive me if I read this wrong but- yes the song is ment to be sexist, but it's to show how the times were back then. Not to say that this is how we should think.
Once again sorry if I read your comment wrong.
@@thorndoll_52 that's what I'm saying. My reply was basically a repeat of what you just said. I'm sorry, I could've made it more clear
My teacher was planning on using this movie as an example of certain aspects of Chinese culture. He knew that the movie was inaccurate, so I sent him this video, and he just messaged me that he’s changing the test and lecture :)
He could still use the first Mulan movie. It had enough to work with. And a lot of a better watch.
This is rude. And she’s made a video on that too.
Or he could use Mulan: Rise of a Warrior, which was made by an actual Chinese director. It's really close the the Ballad.
Or he could use kung fu panda. Like seriously
Good on both of you for informing yourselves
In the 90's, a Chinese exchange professor at my college discussed Mulan with us. He also thought she was from the north. In his town, it was generally thought that while Mulan wasn't ugly, she had been considered "undesirable" because she was a farm girl. She would have been strong, and they thought larger than many girls because of better nutrition and exercise. An only child, Daddy may have spoiled her as far as social mores of the day.
When the conscription notice came, she went, like the stories say, but the gender discovery would not have dishonored her. There had been female soldiers before, some of which were great warriors. It is more likely that she was left because of her injuries.
He said that traditionally, Mulan (not her real name?) Went on to be a great general, an ambassador and to sit on the Emperor's council. That once, she even sat on the throne as his representative while he took a trip.
ooh this sounds interesting, is there a source so i can read up on this more?
One thing this movie did right: It seems to unite everyone in hating it. Doesn’t matter which side of whatever debate you’re on, this movie pisses everyone off
I just really hope that Hollywood producers don't get scared off from doing more movies about Asian cultures and their people due to the criticisms. Just learn from this experience and do it right next time and you won't have this problem!
@@Deoxys911 Nah, all they're going to notice is that it's being criticized and ignore *why* it's happening
Maybe because the writer can't even put a three act structure together. I don't know what has happened, Disney can pay great writers so wtf?!
@@Deoxys911 It's more convenient for hollywood to pretend people hated it due to racism and sexism.
So... it’s the new Last Airbender?
"at one point, Mulan loses her FBI sword"
I lost it, that's just hilarious
FBI sword. got it
The truth is out there
Mulan also lost it
@@lestathvillasantimarin4524 OHMYGOD HAHAHAHHAHHHHH😂😂😂😃
Liu Yifei encourages to kill the dreams and freedom of Hong Kong children and young people. She supports the Hong Kong police who are using tear gas against the protestors.
This movie is less celebrating Chinese culture and more like celebrating western chinese takeout restaurants! Disney went more with fortune cookies than chinese mythology and culture
Fortune cookies are something American Chinese stole from the Japanese.
Chop suey is what you're really looking for. It's a food dish that's the epitome of westernized Chinese cuisine.
It's an incredible Insult to the Source Material.
Aesthelie I like how this movie doesn’t even appeal to the Chinese or western markets
Bwhahahahahaha it’s Panda Express
You guys forgot mulan was a brave transgender woman
15:42 Wtf is an auspicious moon? There is such a thing as an auspicious day. On auspicious days, there are weddings, haircuts, going on a long journey, trotting out the toddler, doing good deeds in the name of god, and etc.
Disney: We removed mushu, li shang, and the music to make it more accurate!
Also Disney:
"We removed them cause cgi is gonna cost money and we love money that we dont care what you say afterwards"
R3LL “so we are going to hire another expensive actor, make a whole new fight scene, give mulan freakin powers, and we will do this for no reason
they literally said they added the phoenix to make it more accurate, but the red dragon is a literal chinese god,,
w a f f l e exactly bruh
@@kiyoqr honestly when i learned they removed mushu i lost all want to see the movie. The original, in my opinion, is amazing- sure, it may not be entirely accurate, but its better than this botched shit. FAR better.
When the witch says "not witch, warrior" all I can think of is Doofenshmirtz in the wizard of oz episode of Phineas and Ferb when he says "Not witch, warlock! It's a robe not a dress!"
😂😂😂😂😂😂
Yeeeesss...
Isn't that also a qoute from The House With a Clock in it's Walls or am I just mixing the two up?
Kronk! Why did I think you could do this? This one simple thing!
My favourite message is "if you're super gifted, naturally, you can succeed EVEN as a woman, but if you're an average woman (like Mulan's sister), you get to get married to some dude you've never met, and either way, support the patriarchy!" So empowering, truly. That movie was such a mess.
“What’s the matter little Stacy? Oh you want to play football with the boys but they think you’re too weak because you’re a girl? well too bad you don’t have supernatural abilities!”
@@pofromteletubbies1243 THIS! No one needs to have a "supernatural" power, and what the fuck is that even?
@@pofromteletubbies1243 mulan 2020 in a nutshell
@@manjumohanty8794 I feel they wanted to make it into what they perceived Wuxia to be like while keeping the Mulantopic in it.... and failed MIIIIIIIISERABLY.
Remember ladies, the patriarchy doesn't exist. I know and I have the right to say this cause I'm a woman well fifteen year old girl using my mother's phone to type this comment even though I have an account😀😅😐😐. (I wish I wasn't though. Being feminine sucks. I hate this gender. 😤😝😡😠). Just remember that😘
I remember watching a GDC talk from the map designer of Untitled Goose Game about trying to capture the vibe of a small british village. Apparently a lot of the team grew up watching various british kids shows and wanted to emulate that setting but they knew just watching those old kids shows wouldn't be enough. Their research involved showing their map designs to british people and asking for feedback and to point out details that didn't feel quite right for the setting, and looking at various small villages on google street view. It feels like Untitled Goose Game had more research put into it's setting (at least there was more care put into getting things right, all for a funny goose game). The game's setting was so spot on that I was actually a bit surprised to find out it was made by an australian team.
So basically this film failed as a western hero’s journey, and a Chinese epic. It takes skill to screw up this completely.
Well disney spent the last five-seven years ruining other franchises, I guess it wouldn't have taken them too long to start screwing their own shit, right?
It takes skill but still somehow lacks talent.
It’s the spork of movies: below average at two different things
No it just takes Disney
@@Methus3lah don't insult sporks like that.
12:40 “There are no elements in this movie that make you laugh.” False. I watched this film in a theater in Shanghai, China last week and everyone was laughing every time they talked about “Qi”. Oh man, it was hilarious.
I think that's usually what happens when Western people make fiction about ancient China.
I guffawed at every single bad line. When the Rouran soldiers appear on horizon, a soldier at gate mutters, accented, "It can't be!" Pfffftuchuck which son of a damn wrote that line, it's so bad, and it was in the first ten minutes. Everything snowballed into shitty writing in such a bad way 🤣😂
and also the fact that the directors and screenwriters are all white
Good to see you here Ramsey!
I'm glad that you and the folks there had a good laugh on this joke of a film
I laughed so much when I saw the emperor was challenged with a duel at the construction site. In a Chinese context it's 10x funnier. Emperors back then were refered as 天子(son of the God/sky) whose life has to be preserved at all cost. They're not some gang members, and fighting at a construction site is also unheard of from all my years of reading Wuxia novels and watching Wuxia and Xianxia shows and movies. It just feels very modern, more specifically, like 90s Hollywood action movies
All these reboots Disney keeps doing to make their films "more Feminist" just seem to make them more sexist instead
Probably because what mainstream culture says is a "strong female character" is just a girl acting like a dude. :\ Most girls are feminine. Some are tomboys, sure (myself included), but there are just naturally a lot of differences between men and women. There's nothing wrong with that. We need to stop pretending there is.
For instance, like Xiran mentions, the cartoon Mulan uses her wits to solve her problems. She's not naturally as physically strong as a guy, so she compensates by using her brain. Disney took that away in the 2020 movie, and now the character is bland. Come on Disney; you can do (and have done) better than this.
@@erocenturion2809 THANK YOU!! I don't want a movie to tell me I'm valuable because I can do the same things a man can, I want to know I am valuable for just being me, even if I like "girly" things. Girls need to know that "girly" things are valuable not that only boyish girls are. lol and I am also a tomboy but i hated any girly sides of me thinking it was useless.
Exactly. It bothers me so much because all these feminist things they add just make the movies and characters bland and weird. Mulan is such a strong iconic character in the old movie. Why the hell did they have to change her? It makes no sense to me. Instead of making her train hard and just become strong, they had to add all that chi/qui (?) thingy and give her some sort of superpower gift? By doing that they're basically telling us that women need some strong chi/qui force to be as powerful as men. Like... that is not feminism at all.
Also, the witch (had they just have her be a spirit) could have been such an awesome, strong character. The way she obeyed that bad guy despite being much more powerful than him and then just died really sucked.
Yesss like women being strong only because they’re born with it, no flaws, no character development
Lindsay Elliss made a great video about this called "Woke Disney". The feminist part isn't exactly the main subject but it's one of the things that points out Disney's try-hard at pandering the modern generation
I fucking died when I realized that the cop apologist had an FBI sword because of course they gave the cop apologist an FBI sword.
"Qi is not for daughters, it’s for wireless chargers"
Wi-Qi
@@lukaf5 Qi Tea Latte
@@lukaf5 i wish i could give an award to this comment
Nice. Useful energy.
Did they just genderized chi! *gasp*
“They made her Asian Elsa”
That basically sums up Mulan entirely
Olive _ Dragon its Asian Elsa but without any of the humor or iconic music/moments that excused the terrible story 💀😂😂
You know what Mulan lacked amd Elsa has? ELSA HAS PERSONALITY.
tbh, Chinese Ma'Rey "Not Skywalker" Palpatine Sue would be much more accurate
@@Fisinocean nah, Elsa only personality is her song. Anything else about her is bland. In my opinion, Anna is the more flesh out character
@@zuzuzuko3947 well then again, its a musical and most of elsa scene is a song while 'mulan' just fails man
Disney: We’re taking out all your favourite characters and songs to make it more “realistic”
Also Disney: Haha magic chi goes brr
Sapphire Wolf 💀😭
This made me burst out laughing 😅🤣
Lmfao 😂😂😂
LMAO, ikr
BAHAHAHAHAHA
Two years later, I'm coming back to watch this and I remember how angry I was when I watched the remake - but now, all I'm thinking about is how awesome Xiran Jay Zhao is. I'm just starting to read Iron Widow, and I realised the author was this youtuber I had already watched. This woman has endless talents, and I love everything she makes!!
"Isn't it a kids movie?" is an excuse to justify lazy writing and story-telling. Also, the Princess Bride is a great example of making a children's film with great writing and story.
Ahem Illumination
Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse
The Princess Bride is NOT a children’s film lol
@@sonicphonixmusic2865 It was for me growing up :D
Everything by ghibli also
Disney: "we're remaking this movie because we wanted a redo in representing a culture that has been white washed and abused for years in Hollywood "
Also Disney:
Just goes to show that Disney doesn't actually care about diversity. They only care about the marketing potential of pretending to care.
"I think not being racist is the new racism." - Jeff Winger
It’s about getting you to pay for the movie not to like it
@@maia_gaia All of the corporations do it, zoomers are a big market and all did the market research properly. What is even more disgusting is the way how they try to pretend they don't care about maximizing profits. Just remember Pride Month for Coca Cola, Bethesda and other corps posting "woke" ads everywhere but in Middle East and Russia lol. So much for "leading change".
@@maia_gaia yes
"that is some white person tattoo nonsense"
this movie in a nutshell
Like I’m 100% white and know that chi isn’t a superpower from a year of karate, yet these people who claim to have done extensive research act like it is?
one time I saw a white person with a tatoo 大傻逼 and I nearly fell over in the middle of the street in nyc
@@mary-bethholland2871 it means big stupid uhhhhh bleeeeeeeeeeeeeppppp it can be interpreted in many different ways depending on your region
@@poison_raine5219 LMFAO YOU’RE KIDDING 😭 that is hilarious
@@bluet7777 sadly i am not. I feel bad for that person if he ever visits china
Mulan 1998: no matter who you are, if you work really hard, anything is possible.
Mulan 2020: anything is possible if you have super powers
"She'd be laughing at you from Chinese hell."
That line was seriously on point. 👍
is that next to super mega hell with castiel?
@@viceroymarx406 cries in supernatural pulled the "bury the gays" trope
My favorite was "FBI sword"
I snorted aloud when she said it 🤣
I actually want to look her up, I wonder what her reign was like if she’s in Chinese hell
"Half of great Chinese literature is just fanfiction of historical events"
*nods in Romance of the Three Kingdoms*
😂😂
Romance of the Three Kingdoms is just Zhuge Liang Gary Stu fanfiction pass it on
Oh right, I did laugh because I understood that. If even I, as a westerner that knows next to nothing about anything in the whole continent of Asia learnt all of that from C-dramas, maybe it indicates that the directors did less than that.
@@XiranJayZhao She ain't lying!
@@XiranJayZhao As a Saltine American Zhuge Liang fanboy, LMFAO. I would love your thoughts on 2008's Red Cliff.
Original Mulan: No matter who you are or what gender you are, with enough effort you can succeed
Mulan 2020: Mulan isn't like other woman😜
I'm nOt LiKe OtHeR GiRlS!1!1!
Well to be fair Mulan isn't like most women. Not in the sense that other women are incapable, but rather her dedication and will goes above most women AND men.
original mulan movie was also written by a white male but was good
Emily Love white male alert
She's quirky and unique 😜