Mulan: A star-studded cast for reboot; one controversial role remains unfilled

Gong Li and Jet Li are joining the 'Mulan' cast.

MULAN, the live-action remake, is off to a fitful start. On one hand, the casting of Chinese superstars generates tons of excitement, not only in the U.S. but in China as well. On the other hand, the fate of a popular character has fans up in arms.

Three huge Chinese stars are being secured for Disney's Mulan, joining Liu Yi Fei, an enormously popular star in her own right, who plays the lead role. Production is scheduled to start  in New Zealand in August followed by work in China.

Martial arts-legend Jet Li (The Expendables) and internationally acclaimed actress Gong Li (Memoirs of a Geisha) are set to play the Chinese Emperor and the movie's main villain respectively, in director Niki Caro's (Whale Rider) live-action version of Disney's 1998 animated adventure.

Last week, Donnie Yen (Rogue One, Ip-man franchise) was confirmed as a cast member to play the role of Commander Tung, a mentor and teacher to Mulan. His role was not in the original animated version of the movie.  

New Zealand-based Chinese/Vietnamese actress Xana Tang was also cast as Mulan's sister.

For Western audiences: The addition of Gong Li and Jet Li (not related) with Yen and Liu Yifei is comparable to Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep joining Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Jennifer Lawrence. You've got your older stars and you got your up-and-coming and wildly popular young actress -- you can get a sense of what Disney is doing. Each of the Chinese superstars could headline a movie on their own but to have them in the same film is a major, major coup for Disney and almost assures blockbuster status when the film opens in China, whose movie-going audiences rival - if it hasn't already surpassed - the U.S. as the No. 1 movie market.

Liu Yi Fei will play Mulan and Donnie Yen will play her mentor, Commander Tung.

Yen, who made quite an impression in his Hollywood debut in Rogue One as a blind martial artist who had command of The Force, is enormously popular in Hong Kong/China and the rest of Asia for his fighting and acting skills.

Jet Li is already well-known with Western movie fans, especially those who folow the martial arts genre. He's made a few Hollywood movies but the litany of mediocre roles has limited his box-office impact, but he's still big in Asia.

An esteemed actress in China, Gong Li has been credited with popularizing Chinese cinema in the English-speaking world, especially after winning the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal as a hapless prostitute in Farewell My Concubine (1993), and the National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the American film Memoirs of a Geisha (2005). 

Gong’s Mulan role is a character which did not exist in the original animated film, and is said to replace the original’s ruthless Shan Yu, the king of the Huns.

There is one major role that has yet to be cast and it looks like it will never be filled: Li Shang. While the character serves as Mulan's commander-turned-love-interest in the animated original, it seems like he might not be making an appearance in the reboot. 

A tender moment between Mulan, posing as a boy, and Li Shang from Disney's first version of "Mulan."

After Yen was cast as a new character named Commander Tung as Mulan's mentor last week, a casting call for the film was uncovered revealing that Mulan's love interest will now be a solider named Chen Honghui.

According to the listing, Chen will serve as Mulan's "chief rival" who has a "mean, bullying streak to him." However, after he realizes that Mulan is actually a woman, those "intense feelings of rivalry" eventually turn into love. Meanwhile, the website Backstage.com shares that Honghui's part will be a lead role in which casting directors are looking for someone in their 20s who is "strapping, cocky and handsome" and can speak "fluent English and Mandarin Chinese."

It looks very much like Li Shang is being replaced with a more traditional love interest. Whether or not Disney's animators deliberately intended Li Shang to be confused about his sexual identity doesn't matter -- that's the way people have been interpreting the character and that's the perception held by the legion of upset fans who made Li Shang their bisexual icon.

It didn't take long for fans to voice their strong opinions about the recast, as fans have long considered Li Shang to be a "bisexual icon" for falling in love with Mulan when he thought she was a man. Alas, it seems like this isn't the only change the live-action film will make.

Still unknown - at least to us outsiders - is whether the new movie will be a musical like its cartoon 1998 predecessor. Would the popularity of the Disney original still rub off on the new version if they exclude such classics, including “I’ll Make a Man Out of You,” “Reflection,” and “A Girl Worth Fighting For?”

After initially saying that the upcoming Mulan wouldn’t be a musical, director Niki Caro later told the Los AngelesTimes that the film could include the tracks of the 1998 film’s legendary soundtrack. The casting of Chinese actress/pop singer Liu Yi Fei for the lead, it was thought that Caro was definitely leading towards a musical. However, with production to start in August, that announcement has yet to be made.

Because of the lengthy time it took to cast the lead role, literally auditioning a thousand actresses, the release date was put off from this year to March, 2020.

That's still a long way off and anything can still happen. Barring any major changes - and they would have to be catastrophic - Mulan will be the second all-Asian cast movie made and released by a Hollywood studio in recent years. Crazy Rich Asians, based on the novel of the same name and helmed by director Jon M. Chu which is now in post-production, will premiere in August of this year.

GIPHY.GIF

RIP Li Shang

________________________________________________________________________________