MULAN

Hello everyone :)
I am here again and this time I want to talk about a story we have seen in class during these weeks, "Mulan". I am sure that most of you have seen the Disney film about this story but I want to show you more interesting thing about this amazing story.

First of all, just in case you have not seen the movie, I am going to tell a sumary of this story. Mulan is the daughter of a Chinese family. One day, her father is called to fight in the war against the Huns who are trying to kill the emperor and conquer China, but her father is too old to fight and she try to avoid it, but she can´t. Then Mulan decides to cut her hair, take her father´s weapon and armor and go to the war as a boy to safe her father. She is not alone, the ancestors of the family send a dragon to help her, but accidentaly, Mushu, another little dragon destroy the big dragon and he goes with her.

In the army she starts having some problems because she is weaker than the rest of people, but with force she improves her skills and she becomes in an authentic soldier.

Later, while they were in am expedition, they met the Huns and they have to figth against them but the Huns are too much higher in number so Mulan decide to throw a rocket to the montain and the snow fall over the Huns. Li, the captain has been hurt and Mulan also but they get to survive but Mulan is very injured so they need help.

While she is in bed, Li discovers that she is a girl and not a boy as she said. Li, very hungry said that he doesn´t want to see her again.

Mulan, stays in the mountains very sad and suddenly she discovers that the Huns have survived and she decides to go to the festival where they partners are to warn them. When she arrives there, Li doesn´t believe her but suddenly, the falcon of the leader of the Huns appears and take Li´s sword and catch the emperor.

Finally, Mulan with the help of Li and her partners fight against the Huns in the palace and they achieve to bit them thanks to the great ideas of Mulan. After that Mulan decides to go back home.

Now that you know the story of Mulan, I want to say that this story is based on a real Chinese legend called Hua Mulan. As the girl of the movie, the girl of the legend also goes to the army instead of his father because he is too old to fight aswell but the end of the story is a little bit different. Both of them achieve to win the Huns but, in the movie, as I said before, they discovered she was a girl during the action and, on the other hand, in the legend, they don´t do it. When Mulan bit the Huns, the emperor offers her (he thought she was a boy) an important charge in the army but she doesn´t acept and goes back home as the girl of the movie. In the legend, their partners go to visit her and he discovered her secret in that moment.



And what about the critics of the film? Most of them was really good, people thoguht that this film was great, the animations were fascinating and the argue was really good. The feminist sector said that this film eliminated the sexist topics but they also said that they didn´t really like the end of the movie because, after showing the power of the woman they return into a fantasy world because Mulan goes back home.

In china, the movie was not really good acepted, they didn´t like a lot how they represent the culture, they thought that Mulan was very individualistic, and they said that Mushu was not a Chinese dragon. However children in China liked a lot this film.

Disney didn´t like so much the idea that a dragon goes with Mulan because they are too big, but she decided to create Mushu because they discovered that Chinese dragons could hace different sizes. As a curiosity, in the Spanish version, this character was dubed by José Mota.




At the end of the class, Raquel ask us to answer two questions and I would like to share with you my answers. The first one was:

What would have happened if Mulan was a boy? I think that if Mulas is a boy there were no problems but the story wouldn't has the same meaning. Instead of his father, the emperor Would have called him to fight and it would be another action film like others.

The second one was:

What do you think about the end? In my opinion the end is very good, Mulan get her goals, safe her father and then she goes back home with him. In adittion, I think that she could stay with the army defending the country because she has shown that she is able to do it and perhaps the society would have change and women could go to the army with men.


To end up with this post, I want to say that, personally, Mulan is one of my favorite disney movies because it changes completely the role of the Disney princess and the argue is very interesting and I enjoy a lot watching this movie.
I hope you like this post ;)

Alberto.