BIG MOVIE
Mulan040 | W W W.SCI FI N OW.CO.U K
the way they clearly, and should, feel proud of Mulan.”
Caro was on board all through a year-long worldwide
search of nearly 1,000 candidates for the lead role, with
the criteria being that the actor of Chinese descent had
to have a certain star quality, the ability to speak fluent
English, credible martial arts skills for a physically
intense shoot, and a look that could plausibly veer into
androgyny, so that Mulan’s hiding
within the army ranks would be
remotely believable. So, not a lot of
asks then. Additionally, the person
they eventually cast is also a
trained singer, though Caro tells us
that her Mulan is categorically not
a musical, but that “music is used
in interesting ways”.
In November 2017, Chinese-
American actor Liu Yifei was cast
as Mulan. The rest of the main
cast is largely made up of Chinese
industry superstars – Donnie Yen,
Jet Li, Gong Li – and familiar
Chinese-American faces – Jason
Scott Lee as villain Bori Khan, Tzi
Ma as Mulan’s father. Principal
photography finally began in
summer 2018, across China and
New Zealand.
“One of the really nice things
about Disney,” Caro says, “in my
personal experience, is that they’re
very director-friendly and focused.
They shared the vision for this
film and just gave me the tools to
execute that. When I sign up for
something, I’m all in. The entirety
of my body, mind, soul is in a
movie and there is no way I would
be separated from the vision of one.
And certainly, there was never any
moment in the entire three years
that I didn’t feel that Disney was
hugely supportive of that vision.”
The earliest known transcription
of ‘The Ballad Of Mulan’ was in
the 6th Century, with the earliest
extant text of the poem being
located in an anthology dating back
to either the 11th or 12th Century.
In written form and spoken tale,
the ballad’s story has been told
in so many different ways. Hua
Mulan has also appeared in novels,
stage plays, television series
and, as we know, films. When it
comes to cinema, at least five film
versions made in Asia preceded
Disney’s first stab at the material.
Concerning story influences from
the earlier incarnations, Caro says: “I didn’t go back to
all of them. I was, of course, very aware of how many
times Mulan has been made and in all different various
forms in China, even all the way to opera. But it had
never been made on this scale, or in this language,
under the Disney banner. And so that presented a
really amazing opportunity.”
Being both faithful to and different from the
animated film means a few character changes. Caro
suggests her heroine is shown as an accomplished
horse rider before she heads to war. And while far from
a trained fighter, she’ll have some degree of combat
prowess under her belt already, in unique ways. “What
she is very good at as a child is that she’s very calm,
physically,” Caro tells us. “We
see her as a young girl practicing
martial arts in secret. Her chi is
immensely powerful and innate
in her even as a little girl. And so,
there’s a very sweet mini action
sequence at the beginning of the
movie where we see, in a very
unlikely way, just how physically
strong and agile she is.”
Other character changes from
the animated version include the
outright absence of many hallmarks
of the Disney musical. The villains
are different, few character names
carry over, and there’s reportedly
no Eddie Murphy-voiced dragon
named Mushu helping Mulan on
her journey. But while the talking
animal sidekicks are gone and
the story’s more grounded, Caro
suggests the fantastical hasn’t been
removed entirely. For one thing,
Gong Li’s antagonist is a witch with
shapeshifting abilities. And while
Mushu may be absent, preview
footage teases that another creature
may be filling in as a guardian
spirit of sorts.
“The thing for me about telling
the Mulan story in live-action is
that it gets to be real,” Caro says.
“Actually real. And that’s thrilling.
So, with that commitment to
realism on an epic scale, we were
in real landscapes. It was about
balancing some of the more magic
elements and the grounded realism
that makes this movie somewhat
unusual but special, I think, to
keep all of those things in balance.”
For the large-scale sets, Caro
was reunited with Grant Major, a
frequent Peter Jackson collaborator
who was the production designer
on Whale Rider and won an Oscar
for his work on The Lord Of The
Rings: The Return Of The King. “I
love Grant,” Caro enthuses. “I love
his eye, his style and his taste. But
I think the thing that I love about
Grant above everything else is that
the scale of his vision is equal to mine. So, with Grant
and I, our two heads together, this was always going to
be... epic’s a very easy word to use, but it genuinely is!
“It’s unusual in a movie of this genre and scale to
have so much that’s in-camera, that’s so much shot on
location. We have a throne room scene that in another
movie may have been just the throne and greenscreen,Woman at war
An action sequence we’re
shown – which appears to be
the first encounter between
Bori Khan’s forces and the
soldiers with whom Mulan has
assimilated herself – impresses
but also surprises for a Disney
family-aimed blockbuster:
while it’s not gory, we see
arrows make contact with
soldiers’ bodies, and those
soldiers subsequently falling
to the ground, without the film
cutting away from that. The
battle looks like something out
of The Lord Of The Rings but
with a pinch of the style of
very different action films.
“That’s the commitment
of the studio to an authentic
retelling of this classic tale,”
Caro says of the lack of
sugar-coating in the battle
sequences. “And that it is
essentially the story of a girl
on an epic journey to war and
back. And so, at some point,
you’ve got to deliver what
war looks like. Obviously, it’s
not Game Of Thrones – that
would be really, really wrong
for the brand. But the way
that I devised those sequences
where we do go to war is
that it’s intentionally set in a
sort of geothermal valley, so
that steam becomes a way
of revealing and obscuring
violence. So, your imagination
can come to it without
anything being in any way
graphic or disturbing.
“The other thing that made
it an easier trick to pull off
is that the style of fighting is
martial arts-based. So, it’s
very beautiful and athletic in
its nature, as opposed to just
guys with axes hacking at
each other.”