Mulan trailer 2 - Dec 5

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about yet another movie trailer – this time, it is the upcoming ‘Mulan’ remake. And? What can be said about it? Looks like it is going to be ‘woke’.

…You know what; let us talk about what this term means in relation to movies, starting with the upcoming ‘Mulan’ remake. In the original ‘Mulan I’ movie, there were two specific characters that were particular: the matchmaker and Chi-Fu, aka the clerk that was there with Li Shang’s secondary army. The Matchmaker was a fat mountain of a woman; Chi-Fu – a skinny weasel of a man; both were minor antagonists, and both were physically unattractive, in a comic way. From what the remake’s second trailer shows us, ‘Mulan-2020’ will have none of this.

Is it a good thing? On one level – yes. Already, Disney/Marvel is catching flack both for the upcoming Red Guardian in the ‘Black Widow-2020’ film: not unlike Thor in ‘Endgame’, he is something of a fat funny drunk, not unlike John Falstaff from Shakespeare’s ‘Henry IV’ plays, but enough of modern people found neither Thor in ‘Endgame’ nor this version of the Red Guardian particularly funny, and they made it known to Disney. True, Disney is still going forth with this version of the Red Guardian in the ‘Black Widow-2020’ movie, as they did with the fat Thor in the ‘Avengers: Endgame’ film, but-

-But here real life sneaks in, and brings forth – the Peloton. However correctly it is spelled, earlier this week, (Dec 4, 2019), it brought forth its’ own shit-storm regarding WG and WL. To wit, sometime in November 2019 it released a short ad, which goes like this: A husband gifts a wife a Peloton for holidays, she begins to workout on it, and it changes her life somehow – because she loses weight or whatever. The end.

Let us call upon Captain Obvious, and he states that, firstly, the wife in question – ‘Grace from Boston’ – was never that fat to begin with. Yes, compared to the Kardashians she may be plain, but not everyone is a Kardashian yet, thank you very much. She may have weighted, say, 52 kg at the beginning of the ad, at the end – around 50, but then again, she was supposed to have worked-out on the Peloton for an entire year. (What is a Peloton? A souped-up exercise bike, essentially, with its’ own Internet or whatever. Where were we?) This is kind of lackluster, but to be honest, the entire ad is vapid and empty – it tries to present itself as sincere, authentic and deep, but in reality it’s lackluster, its’ actors don’t look like people that need exercise for weight loss to begin with, they don’t look like average Americans (or Canadians) who watch such ads very much, and so those average Americans (and Canadians?) tore down Peloton’s real-life stock by… 9 or 10%. Considering that an average Peloton is a luxury item, that is not such a small deal. However – what this got to do with Disney?

To begin with, a Peloton is a luxury item, just like a movie – you do not need either of them in real life, you can spend money on them if you want, but this money can always be spent somehow else, on something more necessary, and since a Peloton costs somewhere between $2000 and $2500, you better get most of your money’s worth from it…and be ready to spend more money on it, both for electric bills, (because it runs on electricity rather than on solar or wind power, from what I can understand), and for maintenance; even an ordinary exercise bike or treadmill need this sort of thing every once in a while, and if you don’t maintain them, they die, with or without electricity. 

Considering that a Peloton proportionally is more complex than an average treadmill… yeah, maintaining it is probably more expansive than an average treadmill too. What next?

Next, Captain Obvious points out that no movie – Blu-Ray, DVD, ticket, whatever – ever cost a four-digit figure. True, and you don’t have to maintain it as you do a Peloton, an exercise bike, a DVD-player or any other device, but again – it’s luxury, you can get along in your life without it, and so movie companies like Disney and Sony spent a lot of time trying to get you to spent money on their movies all the same, just as Peloton does for ads that advertise their products – and what do you assume all of those trailers are-?

Since we are back with Peloton, what was its’ problem? Why are people so angry at it, hating it, mocking it? Because Peloton’s approach with it backfired – its’ actors are unrealistic, (Grace from Boston is shown wearing pink-colored high-heels in winter, which is just is not right, because while Boston is a more southern city than Toronto is, its’ winters still get very snowy – not the best weather for high heels). They are already trim and fit, they do not relate to an average viewer of the ad, who probably is not as trim and fit – and this brings us to Marvel and Disney.

Listen: before Thor in ‘Endgame’ and now – the Red Guardian in ‘Black Widow’, there was Maui in ‘Moana’, (2016). This is notable because, firstly, ‘Moana’ is a less asexual version of ‘Frozen II’ (2019): both movies talk about ecology, both movies have female leads, (though Moana is more like Anna than like Elsa), neither movie has a definite villain: though ‘Moana’ does have a certain, cough, ‘Shiny’ crustacean, but if you compare him to someone like Jafar or Ursula, let alone the original Maleficient he isn’t that bad, and both deal with ecology: in ‘Moana’, the world is experiencing a magical analog of global warming, while Elsa’s is more of a would-be ice age – but that’s only the dressing, the underlining message is the same. Yes, Maui is acting much more morally ambiguous than Kristoff does, but that does not matter, Moana may actually be smarter than Elsa and her sister, and in the end, she does save the day… largely by herself, whereas Elsa and Anna actually need each other and to lesser extent – other people to do that.

Is ‘Moana’ a more derived and complex movie than ‘Frozen 2’? Hard to say, but it certainly is than ‘Frozen 1’. Where were we?

Ah yes, Maui. He does not look like a typical Disney male lead, now does he? And from what I can remember, when ‘Moana’ was released in 2016, Disney did catch criticism about Maui’s looks – and then people began to defend Disney’s choice, and this brought controversy, something that Disney is trying to avoid.

Disney/Marvel went on ahead with the fat Thor in ‘Endgame’? Yes, but Thor was only one character out of many in that movie, and Disney/Marvel’s approach to controversy was to do its’ best to kill it, especially after the Tony/Steve rivalry began to get out of hand and the Marvel fandom was already semi-split and divided as to whether or not Hydra was Nazi or only evil? In SW, Disney did its’ best to plough over the fans’ complains, so ‘Solo’ made only millions of dollars in cash, not billions, because enough people had enough of Disney/SW, so now Disney is spending a lot of money to make a lot comics, animated series, series like ‘The Mandalorian’ and etc., to turn the public opinion back in their favor. This brings us back to ‘Mulan 2020’.

Firstly, ‘Mulan 2020’ already had had controversy, when earlier in 2019 the movie’s female lead, Liu Yifei, made an anti-Hong Kong statement; whether she was right or wrong is another question, but many people became genuinely angry at her statement. The result? Neither she nor anyone else of ‘Mulan 2020’ cast and crew made this sort of statement ever again for the rest of 2019, Disney wants to make money, damn it, not to cause controversy!

…We might have already discussed it in regards to ‘Frozen 2’ – around the time it was released, Ms. Jennifer Lee, who was in charge of it, made a statement that roughly amounted to ‘Elsa knows her sexuality best, she’ll tell us who she likes when she decides to’, and this statement reveals, that as far as women go, Ms. Lee has really big-ass balls, because it takes genuinely big-ass balls to make this sort of statement. Listen: Elsa is a fictional character, made by CGI. A live actress voices her, but only because Hollywood has not figured out how to make machines speak as well as real people – for now. Elsa is going to have a relationship with whomever the script tells her to – male, female, human, non-human, etc. Nothing more, nothing less, but-

-But the truth is, whether Elsa will be revealed as gay or as straight, plenty of fans will be upset and angry about it…maybe angry enough to abandon the ‘Frozen’ franchise – something that might’ve occurred to Disney’s SW franchise around the time of the ‘Solo’ film (2018). Not surprisingly then, Disney is trying its’ best to avoid a repetition of this situation from that time and until the present, let alone the future: MCU’s Red Guardian may be stirring controversy, but you don’t hear this about any of ‘Mulan-2020’s characters, now do you? They all appear to be physically attractive at the very least – just as the spouses of the misfortunate Peloton ad are. This also makes them about as relatable as the spouses of the Peloton ad are, and with the removal of such canon characters as Mushu the dragon and Cri-Kee the cricket, Disney may discover that their strategy has misfired instead.

…What strategy, you may ask? Simple: the ‘Black Widow’ trailer has generated plenty of discussion. The second ‘Mulan’ trailer – none at all; in fact, its’ timing may have been deliberate – Disney is burying it under the heap of SW-related news. Disney does not like controversy, especially when its’ ‘heartland’ – the Disney princess franchise – is involved. This brings us back to ‘Frozen 2’. In it, Disney has genuinely made something new – the new ‘Frozen’ film has nothing in common with the first movie save for the main characters – but when it comes to the underlying message, its’ depiction of the new Arendale-world as an ecologically-friend utopia, it falls flat. Even IGN, which these days hates to make negative reviews, admitted that Disney didn’t quite go the distance with ‘Frozen 2’; whatever it plans to do with ‘Mulan-2020’ may experience the same problem, and this brings us back to ‘wokeness’. It may be becoming a term with multiple meanings, but apparently in relation to movies and similar media? It is beginning to mean ‘inoffensive’, ‘vapid’, and ‘bland as possible’, as the characters of the Peloton ad show. They have no personalities, no characteristics that make them unique – and in Western societies, everyone is unique. Just ask Greta Thunberg, would you? ‘Mulan-2020’ doesn’t appear to be as bad as this ad, but neither it is as ‘bland’ as Disney might assume that it would be: for example, the new Shan-Yu still does have a falcon – only it’s no longer a mere bird, but his witch girlfriend, who’s the brains behind this invasion. Pause.

The ‘Mulan’ trailer 2 mentioned a phoenix that guards the imperial throne. This is worthy of a digression: the movie is talking of a Chinese phoenix, which, incidentally, is nothing like the Western phoenix. The latter is a Solar symbol, its’ depiction vary, but usually it is vaguely eagle-like, (because in Christian symbolism, the eagle is connected to the sun, a religious relic left from the pagan times). The Chinese phoenix looks much like an elaborate, more derived version of a rooster, or one of its’ wilder cousins, a pheasant of some sort. (The males of Asiatic species can look even more unusual than the peafowl males do). Why, sometimes it is even used in place of the rooster in the Chinese zodiac – but the point is while in the past there were male Chinese phoenixes called feng, and female, called huang, these days the Chinese phoenix called simply fenghuang and it is baseline female – an opposite to the Chinese dragon, which is baseline male.

Pause. Mushu the dragon exchanges a look with Captain Obvious and leaves to pump some weights: he needs to get into shape with a potentially hot phoenix girlfriend.

It must be pointed out that the Chinese phoenix is just as mythical, imaginary and make-believe as the Western phoenix is; it may be based on a wild pheasant or a domestic rooster, but that is it. Very quickly it became its’ own entity, and it is one that has no literal connotations with reality. There is no fire behind this smoke, no cryptid behind this myth. End of story.

…But the question of whether or not Mulan will learn/figure out as to how to turn into the phoenix to challenge the evil barbarian-witch for the supremacy of the skies has just began. Disney is trying to avoid controversy…but this way lies blandness and lack of interest from the potential viewers; as ‘Frozen 2’ showed, if you don’t go the full distance, you don’t catch the full attention. Yes, by making a concise, intentional statement you, well, officially commit yourself to some cause or another; you will be judged by its’ standards, good or bad. Pause.

…The problem with such state of affairs that it will cost you something or other, no matter how clever or powerful you may consider yourself to be. Fair enough, but remember the parable of the bat: beasts went to war with the birds, the bat tried to sit on the fence, siding with the winner, but eventually both sides caught onto her game and exiled her from both parties, condemning the bat to a life of ignominy and darkness. Disney, of course, is nothing like that, it has its’ own cause and commitment – money. Ergo, any attempts to do something truly radical and progressive will always fall flat, as they did with ‘Frozen 2’, with Marvel’s ‘Black Panther’ (2018), no matter how Disney and its’ associates claim otherwise. Genuine, authentic commitment to anything other than money always costs money. Disney is not ready to lose money for anything, as the events surrounding ‘Solo’ showed. And thus, Disney and its’ movies (in all of its’ incarnations) will never be as radical and new and authentic as Disney always claims and/or tries to make them. The end.

…This is it for now – see you all soon.