China Entertainment: Been working as a director since 03

Chapter 691 Live-Action Mulan
As they chatted, in addition to "Dreams of Splendor", Liu Yifei mentioned another thing to Li Yu.

A long time ago, Deshini announced plans to shoot a live-action version of "Mulan".

As soon as this news came out, it attracted widespread attention from media around the world.

The official statement from Deshini is that they want to attract global audiences by showcasing different cultural stories.

The story of Hua Mulan is a classic in Chinese traditional culture, with rich cultural connotations and historical heritage, which is in line with their purpose of showing different cultural stories to global audiences.

It's all bullshit actually.

They wanted to make a movie with Chinese elements, certainly not because they themselves love Chinese culture and history.

On the contrary, they are very arrogant in their bones and have deep prejudices against China's history and culture.

They saw that China's film market was developing rapidly and had become a market with great potential.

Deshini is the parent company of Manwei.

They have seen how much box office revenue the superhero movies produced by their subsidiary in recent years have earned in the Chinese market.

"Aquaman", a collaboration between Li Yu and Hua Na, is also a successful example. It achieved great results in China and was also a big hit overseas.

Aquaman became the highest-grossing film in Warner Bros. film history.

Huana's senior management and shareholders counted money until their hands cramped.

The huge potential of the Chinese film market has been repeatedly verified. If a Hollywood blockbuster can achieve explosive results in the Chinese film market, the box office will not be much worse than that in North America.

In this context, it is very normal for Deshini to want to shoot a movie about Chinese cultural stories to explore the Chinese film market.

No one can go against money.

The reason why we chose the IP of "Mulan" is very simple.

Because in 1998, before Li Yu was admitted to Beijing Film Academy, Deshini launched the animated version of "Mulan", which was a huge success. It not only performed well at the box office, but also won praise from audiences and critics.

In fact, the animated version has already partially revealed the various stereotypes that foreigners have about China.

For example, Mulan in the animated version is drawn very ugly and her image is very stereotyped, which is the image of Chinese people imagined by foreigners.

The image of Hua Mulan's father is also problematic. He is obviously a Chinese, but he has a samurai hairstyle like a Sakura Chinese.

To put it bluntly, it's still pride and prejudice.

The stories about China they present are not the real China at all, but just the China in their imagination.

But objectively speaking, Deshini is really strong. Even though the animated version of Mulan has many points that make Chinese people uncomfortable, it is still an excellent cartoon.

The animated version has Mushu the dragon and the little cricket making a hilarious and entertaining scene.

The story line of Hua Mulan's growth is vivid and interesting.

The visual effects and music are also excellent, a level that is difficult to surpass by Chinese cartoons in 98.

As for the live-action version of Mulan mentioned by Liu Yifei, Li Yu wanted to say, forget it, it's just a bad movie without any controversy.

No, the word "bad movie" alone is not enough to describe this movie.

It should be an epic international bad movie.

From beginning to end, every aspect of the movie exudes a strong sense of failure.

This is clearly a movie about Chinese stories and Chinese protagonists, but among the six main actors, Dishini actually invited four foreign actors to star, namely Gong Huang from Po County who played the witch Xianniang, Li Lianjie from Po County who played the emperor, Liu Yifei from the United States who played Mulan, and Zheng Peipei from the United States who played the matchmaker.

Among the six main actors, only Zhen Zidan and Chow Yun-fat are Chinese. This is truly an international blockbuster co-produced by China and foreign countries.

There are so many flaws in the live-action version of the movie that it is hard to count them all. Hua Mulan is a fictional character, but fictional historical figures also have historical backgrounds.

For example, this fictional historical figure was clearly from the Tang Dynasty, but in the movie version he wore clothes from the Qing Dynasty. If you don’t know, you might think it’s a zombie movie, which is very disruptive.

The live-action movie version of Mulan has this problem, as Mulan was clearly from the Northern Dynasty during the Southern and Northern Dynasties.

As a result, at the beginning of the movie, it turns out that little Mulan is living in a Tulou in Fujian Province, which was gradually formed during the Song and Yuan dynasties.

This is very confusing. The Huns invaded the Northern Wei Dynasty in the Northern Dynasties. What does it have to do with the Hua family living in the earthen building in the Southern Dynasties?

The Southern Dynasty and the Northern Dynasty were mortal enemies, and they couldn't wait to destroy each other.

But this is a movie made by foreigners after all, so it is understandable that they don't understand the situation of ancient China during Mulan's time.

But after delivering the lightning strike that opened the screen, they then delivered all kinds of outrageous operations.

Little Hua Mulan was very agile and could walk on the roof of a Tulou as if it were flat ground at such a young age.

Then her neighbors thought she was different from ordinary people and thought she was a witch.

The great battle fought by the Xiongnu Khan on the front line was only a feint; the real plan was to lead an elite team to attack the palace and kill the emperor.

This is very confusing. The witch played by Gong Huang has the superpower to transform into an eagle. Wouldn't it be better for her to fly directly into the palace and use her superpowers to kill the emperor?

And suddenly there was something wrong.

After talking with the witch, Hua Mulan realized that she was wanted, so she took off her armor, draped her long hair and rushed into the enemy camp, performing the Three Kingdoms Warriors, harvesting enemies like mowing the grass.

……

In the face of countless complaints and flaws, the weird makeup is just a minor problem.

By the way, when filming on the set, the main actors’ native language was obviously Mandarin, but they used English when speaking their lines, and the extras who played the soldiers spoke Mandarin.

So it is quite normal that after the movie was released, the audience discovered that the leading actors’ lip movements did not match the Mandarin dubbing.

It can be said without hesitation that the director and production team have no understanding of China's history and culture.

They filmed the Chinese stories that they imagined.

It’s not unfair that a movie shot like this flopped.

"From what you said, you want to audition for "Mulan" and fight for this role?" Li Yu was not surprised.

That's Deshini, a serious Hollywood blockbuster with a reported investment of 300 million Euros.

Not everyone is like Li Yu, who has foreseen the future and knows that this movie will flop.

On the contrary, after Deshini announced the news of filming the live-action version of "Mulan", Chinese audiences were very much looking forward to it.

The 98 animated version of Deshini was pretty good, and I think the live-action version should be great too.

Chinese actresses are also gearing up to compete for this role.

In the previous life, Deshini’s casting team claimed to have traveled to five continents and interviewed thousands of candidates, and finally chose Liu Yifei to play Mulan.

It can be seen that the competitive pressure is very great.

However, Liu Yifei's advantages are very obvious.

She is of Chinese descent, young, has a certain foundation in martial arts, knows English, and has a great influence in China. These are the advantages that ultimately allowed her to stand out.

(End of this chapter)