WILL DISNEY'S NEW MULAN MOVIE BE BAD FOR ASIANS? | Fung Bros

Okay, must be able to speak fluent English. Okay, Mandarin. He's strapping. Could work out. Cocky, sure. Handsome and determined to be the best soldier in history. Man, I'm not getting this role, man. So as many of you have probably heard, there's this new Disney Mulan live action motion picture that is coming out and it hasn't even started filming yet. And it is already causing controversy. So for the people who really love the original animated Mulan film, you'd think people would be excited, right? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Not everyone. Let's talk about it. All right. So back in 2017, Disney first released the news that they were going to be coming out with this live action Mulan film. And immediately there was rumors that they were going to whitewash the entire cast and Mulan was going to be played by none other than Scarlet the Sexy Johansson. Now, I really don't know why anybody honestly believed this because it would completely undermine the 1500 year old Chinese ballad. Therefore pissing off billions and billions of people and therefore giving up hundreds of millions of dollars of profit. But after all, they did do it with Goku. Damn, you're a Canadian this whole time? But then the rumors of whitewashing quickly get squashed when they finally cast Crystal Liu, Chinese superstar as Mulan. Clap, clap, bravo. But then Disney released news that they would be cutting out the only cool masculine Asian male character from the original animated film that everybody loved, Captain Li Shang. He would not be in the live action film. So you know Matt Damon? What if we got him? He marries Mulan and then saves China. Cock blocking us once again. Thanks, Hollywood. Not cool, Disney. And by the way, this is not how you get casted in a Disney movie. So after hearing about this, the internet went to work and there was an online backlash. Shout out to backlash. Disney decided to try to make up for it by announcing that they would be adding a new cool Asian male character that would be written in to replace Captain Li Shang Enter Hong Hui, a fellow soldier who plays rival to Mulan the entire movie until the end where he finds out she's a she and then he starts to have feelings for her. Let's stand up. All right, so what does this all mean? What are the big picture takeaways from all this? And well, here's a few points I came up with. Point number one, they are using Chinese stars in this movie being Donnie Yen, Gong Li, and Crystal Liu. Now, some Asian American actors, they have the right to be a little bit pissed off about this. Which also makes sense. But then again, the Chinese movie market will probably make up for more than 50% of this movie's profits. So appealing to them also makes sense. Point number two is that this production has already made changes to its process due to social media backlash. To be honest, I think it's pretty interesting that a movie can announce it's coming out in like a year and a half or two years and then get society's feedback and then make adjustments as it sees fit. It's almost like Twitter has a seat in the writing room. Hey, so you know Li Shang from the first movie that everybody liked? Let's just cut him out. Don't do that, we'll all hate you. All right, write somebody else back in that's with a different name. Yeah. And something else that I realized is that in 2018, people actually want to see a cool masculine Asian guy character, especially if the movie has to do with Asia. Wielding a samurai sword, kicking a bunch of people's asses, just overall being a cool, chill, smart badass. People still desire Bruce Lee character and it's been about 40 years. And it's not just about having an Asian male character that can replace a white person. It's actually about an Asian badass person doing something Asian. Why else would people watch so much anime? It's really the only place that consistently shows a badass Asian guy all the time, except it's cartoons. Some people even talk about the conspiracy of the mainstream keeping Asian masculinity down on purpose. So you could boil this all down to representation of Asian male masculinity in the mainstream. You could even make a whole YouTube channel about it. This is like a huge conversation between how we want to be perceived, how other people currently perceive us, and what we're doing in our real day-to-day lives to change that perception. So I'll leave you with some larger picture questions. One, do people really want to see a masculine Asian male character in a non-Asian and Asian context? Number two, does it really help to have people complain on the internet? Sometimes it seems like it does. Three, are our voices the loudest on the internet? And number four, do we only complain about representation in Hollywood and entertainment and not other fields? All right, everybody, thank you so much for watching that video. And yeah, we did get contacted by someone at Disney to send in an audition tape. I gave it a shot. I don't think I'm gonna get it. Number one, I don't embody a Chinese GI Joe. Number two, I'm not good at acting. Number three, I made this video. They're probably not gonna love that. But anyways, there's probably a lot better options for that character than me. If you do want to start a Twitter campaign, I'm not gonna stop you. Just kidding, don't do that. But yeah, shout out to them for hitting us up. And I hope the movie turns out really well. Until next time, everybody, I'm out. Peace.