Will Mulan be White In the Live Action Movie? (ReUpload)

Hey guys welcome back it's Felicia and Alan. How are you doing? Nice to have you here again. Good to be back. So today we're going to be talking about Mulan. I'm sure all of you guys know the story of Mulan popularized by Disney. The only movie that us Chinese people have. Oh true. So if you guys don't know the story of Mulan, first of all I don't know where you've been this whole time. But just to sum up, Mulan was remade by Disney into the cartoon it was first transcribed in the 6th century in the Northern Wei Dynasty. And it was actually from a play, Shu Wei's play. And it was called the Heroine Mulan Joins the Army blah blah blah or something like that. Very literal. Yeah very literal. Like joins our army instead of her dad or something like that. Yeah. So you didn't know what you're getting into. Exactly. And there are a lot of differences that obviously Disney dramatized. The pleasurable indestructible Eddie Murphy as a talking dragon. Yeah. Was that in the original one or did they have a talking dragon? No but you know her little dog friend? Little brother. She's like little brother. Little brother. She actually had a little brother in the play that they made into a dog. Oh my god. I didn't know that because I was actually saying Disney did a pretty good job because they mainly casted Asian actors for the roles. Like we're talking about mainly Japanese Chinese actors and Lea Salonga. In the in the cartoon right? In the cartoon yeah. And Lea Salonga I think she did the singing. Yeah Lea Salonga sang you know in Aladdin she also sang for. Like basically we looked at the cast and every Asian actor that was around was in this. Yeah. There just was there weren't a lot I guess. Yeah. Yeah so The Voice of Mulan was by Ming-Na Wen. Yeah. Who's in a lot of American TV shows. She's in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. And I remember her in ER. Oh okay yeah cool. Well so the news that's got everyone a little angry I guess is that they basically said that they're partnering with the Chinese company and the cast will be mainly Chinese so the keyword there is mainly Chinese. So there's been a petition on a website called Care2 and it's basically saying please don't whitewash Mulan Disney. And it's got 100,000 subscribers. Please subscribe to us. It's got 100,000 signatures so far so it's a lot. All right so it's picking up. Yeah but like the question is do you actually think Disney and Sony are gonna cast a white actress to play Mulan? I just don't think that anyone in their right mind would cast anyone but a Chinese as Mulan. Like it just you can't get away with anything but that I feel like because it's so ingrained you know the story of Mulan. Exactly it's just like a classic and again with how recent films that haven't even come out yet have been getting backlash. It's just like I don't see any other outcome. Yeah. I think again this is just a word thing and the internet's gone a little too crazy over it a little bit because I think when they're saying mostly Chinese they mean maybe there's gonna be Eddie Murphy in a dragon suit. Wouldn't that be so awesome? He makes his comeback like that. That'd be awesome. So whitewashing is basically you're having you know Asian roles or not even Asian but just minority roles being taken by white actors and actresses. You know some examples would be like Avatar. That was that was a pretty bad example where the main character basically all the good guys were turned into white actors and the bad guys were like made into Indians. The last airbender by the way. The last airbender. Not Avatar. I'm sorry yeah. Avatar the last airbender. I always get those confused. But yeah like movies like that there was that Aloha movie with Emma Stone. She played a half Hawaiian, half Asian. And I don't know why they did that because there are a lot of half Asian girls that are gorgeous. Very gorgeous. Like it could have been anyone but actually like you know the whole whitewashing. I think there's a lot of people currently trying to step up and really like extend our Asian-American reach like Master of None, Aziz. Like they just won an award at the Emmy. And Ali Wong. Like these comedians they're not just telling our story to us. They're telling our story to like everyone. You see the crowds and it's wide appeal. So like the age-old argument it's well Asian minority actors are not bankable. But Aziz Ansari he's gaining a lot of traction. I mean like who knows maybe it's now become the time. And it's like still staying true to our actual story. So the other thing we have is the white savior complex. Now this is something I learned in like film school. Like I always thought this was kind of eh because like I understand that you know when you when you're doing a production you gotta you gotta look at your demographics. Yes. And in America it's white people. That's just what it is. I think like 70% The end of the day in movies, in all media, in entertainment, they come in swoop you off your feet and save the day. That's ultimately what the white savior complex is. Yeah so we're talking about like Tom Cruise in Last Samurai. There's The Last of the Mohicans. That's another movie. Avatar. You know I mean but they're saving blue aliens. I don't know. It's kind of like a white savior. It's still the same kind. Yeah but basically it's a white guy coming in to save the day and like to be honest I don't have too much of a problem with that because I kind of grew up with these movies and I enjoyed the stories for what they were. And actually for the longest time I just never really thought about it. But the thing is and I'm seeing this more and more now Asian men and women are being casted in movies as normal everyday roles. Like you take Wolf of Wall Street. I don't know if you saw that movie. I love it. One of Leonardo DiCaprio's best friends is like this degenerate Asian guy who's a whole lot of fun but it's like he's not there because he's good at math. He's there because he's an Asian guy who's in the story and I think that's a big step. I wonder if that was actually true to the actual story. It might have been but I think I think maybe 20-30 years ago that role might not have went to an actor like that. So I think I think we are moving in a positive direction. In the United States right now the Asian Americans they make up I think 5.6 close to 6% of the population. Yeah it's huge. It's the fastest growing minority. We've surpassed Hispanics so like we're a growing minority and we have some of the highest household incomes and purchasing power. Because I mean if you think about the people that are actually coming you know they're from they're like businessmen in China or businessmen from like Asian regions and they're coming here to you know do business or whatever. So the medium income is definitely higher. There's as many Asian Americans as Italian Americans and we know that Italian Americans you know you got the Godfather series. I mean there's a lot of cool like interesting media out there about Italians you know and like I think it's time now that we've grown into a larger group that we're able to you know have our own shows and it is happening. I mean yeah like fresh off the boat and you have a whole TV series. I mean there are some controversies about it a little bit but I mean it's a whole Asian family. It is exactly. It's kind of nice I think. It gives Asian actors work and I think that's what's important. Like I'll tell you I saw a Broadway play like last year it's called Allegiance and they literally got every Asian stage actor like they had Japanese, Filipino, Chinese like everyone just filling in the roles and the thing was not a lot of people came and saw the show you know and it was kind of sad because like. So I mean that's the risk I think that a lot of directors keep in mind. Right. That because you know if you're going to invest so much money into making a film. Exactly. There's like a balancing point between staying true but also making money because at the end of the day it's all about money. It's all about money. George Takei actually he funded that personally. Okay. I mean no one was going to pick up a show about Japanese people unfortunately. Yeah. But more and more like again we're going on this trend like you look at box office numbers. America's still number one in box office numbers but number two is China. Number four is Japan. Japan right and then India and South Korea follows that. So we're seeing a shift basically towards Asia as far as who's watching films and if you're going to be making these huge investments in films you better put some Chinese or Asian faces in there. Yeah. Because you got to show what the audience wants and that's it's all about at the end of the day. Yeah so kind of like leading off that there is a lot of politics involved especially when you're trying to enter the Chinese market like the American films. There's like a quota right? There's a quota. And they better be pro-China. Yeah they better be pro-China. I mean there's so many scripts of well-known movies that have been altered and changed. In Red Dawn originally the story was Chinese soldiers invading America. Obviously not cool in China so they changed. They have to be China friendly yeah. They changed Chinese soldiers to North Koreans in post. It looked horrible. Wasn't it in Iron Man 3? It was in Shanghai. Tony Stark has to get like his heart fixed. Yeah and they go to these doctors. Yeah I mean like again they're working with it. It's a little unnatural right now because it's like tacked on afterwards. It's not like oh this is how it goes they're supposed to go to China. Now it's more like just go to China so we can get like millions of dollars. Yeah. But I think what we're going to see is like when Asian writers, when Asian intellectual property goes out you know this be these big Hollywood studios and a lot of these big Chinese studios which are taking over a lot of these Hollywood studios are going to be open to you know hiring Asian screenplays. Yeah because a lot of Chinese companies actually own like AMC and things like that. Yeah yeah exactly. So it's all there. I mean of course there's political ramifications about that. Yes. You can watch China Uncensored if you want to hear about that. But we're not going into that. All right so just kind of wrap it up. I really hope that Sony does Mulan justice. Yes Sony. Because I don't know. It's the only Chinese Disney thing we have. You have one big opportunity. Yeah I mean like Mulan's already been remade. Rise of the Warrior. I think it was like 2000. The Chinese version. Yes. But that's like more based off of the actual original content. Right. It was more gritty. It definitely wasn't following the storyline. There's no like talking dragons played by Eddie Murphy. So yeah there has been a remake. You guys should watch that. It's got Jackie Chan's son in it. Yeah. In case this one is horrible. And he does play semi-minor role but it is pretty good. So yeah. What do you guys think? What do you think will happen with this whole Mulan thing? I hope they. Yeah. Who do you think should play Mulan? Who do you think should play Mulan actually? Should it be her? Could it be me? Grow out. Anyway leave your comments and your thoughts below. We'll comment. I mean we'll reply back. Yeah and don't forget to like and subscribe. We're going to read all the comments. Yeah. About who you think should be Mulan. Yes. We shall be waiting. Goodbye for now. What does live action even mean? It means people. It's not going to be like. It's going to be a dude in a dragon suit. It's going to be Eddie Murphy in a dragon suit. Dude that would be amazing. That would be his epic comeback. It would be like Chinese New Year in those. Hey man. Dragon. Mulan.