Disney has been on a tear lately when it comes to wokifying their content, both new and old. One of the more recent controversies involves the live-action adaptation of Mulan, where they called out for removing the eponymous heroine’s love interest Li Shang. Their reason for doing so? Because of the #MeToo era.
BBC did a short article about the incident, taken from an interview that Collider had with producer Jason Reed, who claimed that the removal of Li Shang was due to “power dynamics”, saying…
“I think particularly in the time of the #MeToo movement, having a commanding officer that is also the sexual love interest was very uncomfortable and we didn’t think it was appropriate.
“We split Li Shang into two characters [for the remake]. One became Commander Tung, who serves as her surrogate father and mentor in the course of the movie. The other is Honghui who is [Mulan’s] equal in the squad.”
As explained in the article, originally Li Shang was voiced by Jackie Chan in the original animated flick for the Chinese-dub, while BD Wong and Donny Osmond shared the character for his speaking role and singing role.
Removing the character due to #MeToo is absolutely absurd, but some believe that it may have been done because Li Shang fell in love with Mulan even while she was a soldier pretending to be a man, which would mean that in the live-action version it would have given the impression oft him being a commanding officer having feelings for another man.
Given that most countries where Disney attempts to promote movies these days don’t like the gay agenda making its way across the media, they likely decided to find a way to scrub any gay or bisexual overtones to avoid being banned in Russia or having to recut the film or censor scenes, which is what typically happens to their films featuring gay propaganda, like Onward and Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker.
What’s even funnier is that even though Disney made this change to the live-action Mulan for the sake of #MeToo, they still won’t be able to make bank on the film because it can’t open in China where a large portion of their box office was expected to come from due to coronavirus.
The Television & Movies Twitter account estimates that the film will track toward a box office bomb.
BOX OFFICE: Mulan Atomic FLOP #Mulan China release cancelled, Tracking at 20mil opening on budget of 300+ mil. Needs to make 650mil to break even. Lead actress wishing dead on #HKProtesters made matters worse. Disney might dump it on streaming
Biggest flop in Hollywood history pic.twitter.com/N3CtcuEbpv
— Television & Movies 🎥🎞️🎬📽️ (@tvs_movies) March 1, 2020
Analysts are on the opposite end of the spectrum, estimating an $85 million opening weekend, according to Variety.
However, keep in mind that analysts also estimated a strong opening weekend for Birds of Prey, which was later renamed to Harley Quinn. However, that movie got royally ravaged in every market orifice by Sonic The Hedgehog… at the box office.
If trends continue to work against the live-action Mulan’s favor, especially as the coronavirus continues to spread and shut down public gatherings, then the analysts could be way off the mark… again.
(Thanks for the news tip msd)
Loading comments…