There’s no way that Mulan turns out to be anything other than a massive success after landing exclusively on Disney Plus last Friday, with the latest live-action remake already one of the most hotly-anticipated blockbusters of the year before it was delayed by six months as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic and pulled from theaters entirely so that it could be sent straight to streaming.
Reviews have been strong across the board, and on both Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, it ranks among the most acclaimed of the Mouse House’s reinterpretations of their animated back catalogue, with scores of 76% and 67 respectively. However, the $200 million epic generated controversy in the past after star Liu Yifei publicly defended the Hong Kong police, and the calls to boycott the movie have reignited once again now that the blockbuster has finally been released.
Now, there’s even more backlash facing Mulan after Disney thanked eight government bodies in the Xinjiang region of China during the end credits, where the production shot huge amounts of footage. The province has been finding itself in the news recently after being accused of human rights violations against the Turkish-speaking Uighur people, and some folks aren’t best pleased that a monolithic corporate entity is publicly praising an area of the country linked to cultural genocide.
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The calls for people to boycott Mulan are only growing stronger, but the unfortunate fact is that large sections of the target audience are going to be completely oblivious to both where the movie was filmed and the events that are said to have taken place there. After all, younger viewers aren’t exactly going to chastise their parents for backing the Chinese government by purchasing Mulan for them on Disney Plus, while there will also be a lot of fans of the 1998 animation that haven’t been diligently following the news.