Mulan Coming to Disney+

[Brother Oni]

I’m not sure if it’s actually Xianxia, but Bigfish and Begonia is a Chinese high-fantasy film that’s thoughtful, beautiful and tragic. I don’t know enough of the source material to have a sense of how freely they’re adapting it, but it seems to draw on a wide range of Chinese mythology. I wish we could get more movies like this one.

Ah yeah, there's a bit of a misunderstanding. Xianxia is a sub-genre of wuxia, featuring super-powered martial artists, spirits and immortals, not just any 'high fantasy' story.

Wuxia means 'martial hero', so is primarily focused on martial artists. To use an RPG example, wuxia would be a standard World of Darkness game, running from Hunter the Reckoning up to Werewolf the Apocalypse in power level; xianxia would be Exalted.

As for a 'wide range' of Chinese mythology, Chinese mythology is very wide already and many stories incorporate elements from everything. Taking Journey to the West, you have an animist stone monkey, taught magic and kungfu from a Taoist master, who fights Chinese folklore gods, before being punished by having a mountain dropped on him by the Buddha; this is all in the first 7 or so chapters and there's 99 in total.
A Chinese Ghost Story has an animist tree demon/spirit pimping out enslaved female ghosts to lure in human travellers so she can feed off them.

Even in supernatural non-wuxia films (e.g. Close Encounters of the Spooky Kind, A Chinese Ghost Story), you have a mismash of influences; ghosts tend to be of the hungry kind seen in Buddhist mythology and they're often exorcised by Taoist monks (since Buddhist monks would be associated with a temple and the only martial Buddhist monks are either Japanese sohei or from Shaolin Temple).

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Brother Oni
Ah yeah, there's a bit of a misunderstanding. Xianxia is a sub-genre of wuxia, featuring super-powered martial artists, spirits and immortals, not just any 'high fantasy' story.

Okay, fair enough. I think a previous poster made the high-fantasy comparison, but I certainly don’t know much about Chinese mythology. Or wide-ranging mythological influences, as the case may be.

Can you recommend a good book as an introduction?

Originally Posted by Brother Oni
To use an RPG example, wuxia would be a standard World of Darkness game, running from Hunter the Reckoning up to Werewolf the Apocalypse in power level; xianxia would be Exalted.

I’ve never played any of these, so don't have much of a feel for these comparisons. But I think I have the basic sense of it.

[Peelee]

AMC's financials are public and don't match up with this belief. Yes, the food and beverage margins are phenomenal (F&B revenues in 2019 = 1.7B from 0.3B F&B costs, i.e. 1.4B gross profit from concessions) but admissions minus licensing arrangements is still a bigger piece of their pie (2019 Admissions revenue = 3.3B minus 2019 film exhibition costs 1.7B =1.6B gross margin.) Smaller percentage, but larger in terms of dollars. The 10-K further defines "film exhibition costs" as "final settlement pursuant to our film licenses...based on aggregate terms established prior to the opening of the picture." This pattern repeats for 2018, and I would imagine it's similar for other players in the industry like Regal or Cinemark.

In other words, while they get a much bigger percentage of GP from food and drinks, in terms of dollars, admissions - licensing fees to the distributors is still the bigger chunk of their overall take. And even if the two were in a dead heat, it would still be false to call the latter "negligible."

Studios completely finance all films, which costs in the tens to hundreds of millions of dollars each. Studios also pay all advertising costs, which are further tens to hundreds of millions of dollars each. Theaters show them, which has large upfront costs on the infrastructure, and then electricity and maintenance (both fairly cheap). These theaters are then supposedly making half of the box, and with all the money on production and advertising being entirely funded by the studio, which alone results in a massive advantage for the theaters to then take half of the gross (which the theaters themselves receive and remit to the studios their end, so no Hollywood accounting going on here). And, as you kindly provided AMC's public financials, this shows that.... they made a loss for that period. Where do you suggest all their money went?

Further, let's use some common sense. Let's say that yes, AMC is getting half the box take. They are purely a delivery system. The studio is both production and distribution. Why would they agree to let the delivery system take a full half of their income? Would it not be cheaper for the studios to run their own theaters, entirely cutting out the middle man? It's not as if the studios don't know exactly how to run a theater, after all - it's literally showcasing their own product, which they already do in-house. Take that income report, which very nicely shows film exhibition costs at 1.6 billion. Are you saying that the studios would choose not to make an additional 1.6 billion dollars, which would flip the overall statement over from an operating loss of 180 million into a profit of 1.4 billion? After all, the rest of the numbers would be the same except the film exhibition costs, assuming you are correct, so the math would work out. And that's if they had a 600 theater chain among the roughly 4,000 theaters in the country. Disney could certainly swing that. Universal, too. As could Paramount, Warner Brothers, you could move from the 4000 nation-wide theaters owned by nearly a hundred companies with a few heavy hitters (AMC is, IIRC, the biggest chain with over 600 theaters, Regal has maybe 500, Carmike is either third or fourth and doesn't even break 300, and all the rest are significantly smaller) to 4,000 nation-wide theaters owned by a half-dozen companies who now make commensurately more money by working in their very same field, given that they no longer have to part with half of their sole revenue streams. And yet this doesn't happen. Somehow, the studio, which spends 100% of the money for the film to be produced, distributed, and marketed, is able to be wildly profitable on 50% of the revenue, while the theaters, which only spend money on rent, equipment, electricity, and maintenance (we're ignoring all of the foodstuffs for this argument), somehow can't even come out in the black.

Meanwhile, this is very easily explainable if you consider that (as I have said before, I am grossly oversimplifying how it actually works out because both the facts that the details are too complex for any meaningful discussion not between professionals and also I was never privy to that level of legal and financial details) they do not, in fact, take 50% of the box and that much of the money they remit to Hollywood almost certainly falls under both "film exhibition costs" and "operating expenses." Especially since operating expenses for the average AMC near you are not two and a half million dollars per year - especially not after you discount food and beverage costs, rent, and general and administrative costs - AKA "most of what it takes to operate".

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Why would they agree to let the delivery system take a full half of their income? Would it not be cheaper for the studios to run their own theaters, entirely cutting out the middle man? It's not as if the studios don't know exactly how to run a theater, after all - it's literally showcasing their own product, which they already do in-house.

Hold on - I thought it was illegal for the movie studios to own theaters, due to anti-trust laws? (Or okay, was illegal until a little more than month ago, but now is probably not a good time to go buying them up?)

[Peelee]

Hold on - I thought it was illegal for the movie studios to own theaters, due to anti-trust laws? (Or okay, was illegal until a little more than month ago, but now is probably not a good time to go buying them up?)

That's a very fair point, I was actually not aware of that at all. Of course, the financial aspects still don't make sense if you assume a 50% cut, so the main point I relief on still holds up.

[Dire_Flumph]

That's a very fair point, I was actually not aware of that at all. Of course, the financial aspects still don't make sense if you assume a 50% cut, so the main point I relief on still holds up.

Last I worked in a movie theater was in the mid-90's, but back then, studios took just over 80% of the ticket price. It was supposed to go down to 50% over the course of several weeks, but this was just about when movie turnover was really starting to crank up, so we often didn't have movies long enough for that to matter.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Last I worked in a movie theater was in the mid-90's, but back then, studios took just over 80% of the ticket price. It was supposed to go down to 50% over the course of several weeks, but this was just about when movie turnover was really starting to crank up, so we often didn't have movies long enough for that to matter.

I'm curious now.

Browsing Google it looks like about 50-50 or 60-40 is the average, but it depends on the specific agreement. And the studio gets a lot less if the film's overseas. This looks like a good breakdown to my inexperienced eyes but it's a few years old. And Dire_Flumph it looks like your 90's experience is still accurate; a number of sites have mentioned the ratio changing over time.

[Psyren]

That's a very fair point, I was actually not aware of that at all. Of course, the financial aspects still don't make sense if you assume a 50% cut, so the main point I relief on still holds up.

Peelee - I already said that a 50% cut is likely a rarity if it happens at all. But whatever the actual cut theater chains get from admission is, it's not negligible. That's what I was arguing against, and what the numbers I quoted support. Can we at least agree on that much? If we absolutely cannot, that's fine, I'm more than happy to leave it there and move on to something (anything) else.

[Peelee]

Peelee - I already said that a 50% cut is likely a rarity if it happens at all. But whatever the actual cut theater chains get from admission is, it's not negligible. That's what I was arguing against, and what the numbers I quoted support. Can we at least agree on that much? If we absolutely cannot, that's fine, I'm more than happy to leave it there and move on to something (anything) else.

Nah, I'll totally agree on that - you're absolutely right, I was wrong, I grossly over-exaggerated when I said that, and then I focused on the wrong thing later on. My bad.

[Psyren]

All good! And I suspect the economics of this new model will only be apparent when we see what is done with it when there are viable alternatives again. Which won't be for a while I think, at least here

[Brother Oni]

Okay, fair enough. I think a previous poster made the high-fantasy comparison, but I certainly don’t know much about Chinese mythology. Or wide-ranging mythological influences, as the case may be.

Can you recommend a good book as an introduction?

Unfortunately the general Chinese mythology book I have (Myths and Legends of China, E.T.C Werner), is a bit of a dry read (compiled by an academic), rather than an more interesting storybook. Everything else I picked up just by cultural exposure, so it's hard to recommend a book for it - almost everybody in the UK knows the story of King Arthur, but I'd be hard pressed to name a single person who's actually read a translation of Le Morte d'Arthur.

I don't think I'm allowed to list books of Taoist and Buddhist traditions on this board.

There's a number of translations of Journey to the West, of varying degrees of faithfulness and readability. For a shorter read which captures the essence of the book, Arthur Waley's translation is quite good (link), although watch out for the old Wade Giles translations.

I’ve never played any of these, so don't have much of a feel for these comparisons. But I think I have the basic sense of it.

I'm a bit fuzzy on D&D 3.5, but an E6 campaign for Hunter, up to maybe E10-E15 for Werewolf. Exalted is pretty much regarded as Epic level.

[Bartmanhomer]

Mulan alignment is Lawful Good.

[Brother Oni]

Mulan alignment is Lawful Good.

Really? Stealing her father's armour so she can go murder people unnecessarily in an active war zone sounds like Chaotic Evil to me.

Do I need to add the /s?

[Bartmanhomer]

Really? Stealing her father's armour so she can go murder people unnecessarily in an active war zone sounds like Chaotic Evil to me.

Do I need to add the /s?

I don't remember seeing that in the animated version of the film.

[Keltest]

I don't remember seeing that in the animated version of the film.

Im pretty sure they were being sarcastic. Although i do agree Mulan is chaotic. She placed her own personal sense of what is proper and necessary ahead of society and tradition's opinions.

[Bartmanhomer]

Im pretty sure they were being sarcastic. Although i do agree Mulan is chaotic. She placed her own personal sense of what is proper and necessary ahead of society and tradition's opinions.

If they were being sarcastic then they should have to use the blue text just for heads-up. I understand many people dislike the blue text but it would be a lot easier if they do. And as for Mulan being Chaotic then I changed her alignment to Chaotic Good.

[Keltest]

If they were being sarcastic then they should have to use the blue text just for heads-up. I understand many people dislike the blue text but it would be a lot easier if they do. And as for Mulan being Chaotic then I changed her alignment to Chaotic Good.

As a rule of thumb, if somebody you know to be a fairly sane and level headed person says something that seems obviously wrong, theyre joking, being sarcastic or both.

[Bartmanhomer]

As a rule of thumb, if somebody you know to be a fairly sane and level headed person says something that seems obviously wrong, theyre joking, being sarcastic or both.

Yeah I should remember that next time. Also let get back into the topic. Why in the name of Lolth did they have to remove Mushu the dragon in the live-action version of the movie?! He a great supporting character in the movie. I don't get it!

[Psyren]

Yeah I should remember that next time. Also let get back into the topic. Why in the name of Lolth did they have to remove Mushu the dragon in the live-action version of the movie?! He a great supporting character in the movie. I don't get it!

I believe Chinese audiences didn't like him.

I don't mind removing Mushu (he drove entirely too much of the plot the first time around) but in terms of fun/humor they added very little to replace him.

[Tyndmyr]

How is the hero keeping up with the antagonists a problem?

And this is hardly the first work where the supporting cast doesn't have the powers of the main hero; there are countless examples.

The hero having the same powers as the antagonist lowers the stakes some. A great many of the best tales have a hero facing off against a villain that is apparently quite superior. Hobbits against Sauron, a kid wizard against the greatest evil wizard of a generation, a farm boy against an evil empire.

Sure, they often struggle, get kicked in the teeth, a few times, and learn along the way, but for the entire trip, they face significant challenges. Even if they are special in some fashion, they are still generally far outmatched. If you're spinning a heroic tale of action, this is how it's done. Toss too much power at the protaganist too easily, and you get Captain Marvel instead. Even a tale with an extremely competent protaganist, such as John Wick, starts by kicking the crap out of him.

Now, I have not seen this film, and am unlikely to, but I did watch a few reviews, which were generally unkind to it. First, it's a remake, which loses a couple points of originality out of the gate. The mouse hasn't been taking huge risks in what stories they pick. Literally everyone seems to agree on this point, and considers it a fairly unexciting strategy from Disney.

Secondly, it doesn't seem like it greatly respects either the earlier film or original source material, but instead basically cribs the parts it wants, uses the name, and slaps a bunch of other stuff in there that seems to be...not great. Magic as a whole is fine, but why magic in this story? It's not primarily a story about magic. You don't need magic to tell the tale. This doesn't outright make a tale bad, but it does make you wonder why they are telling *this* tale.

Thirdly...the aforementioned lack of stakes. It apparently feels as if, in most cases, very little is at stake, and Mulan often isn't in a tight spot. You've got the "have to join, because ailing dad" moment, but then you have training where those who are unfit are...just sent home. This kind of makes her sacrifice for her dad feel, yknow, meaningless. She didn't actually save him from anything. Much of her opposition is similarly undercut. Nobody actually seems to actually want to impose consequences on her for being a woman in the army. If thats the case, then doesn't that take away from the accomplishment? What is she risking that anyone else is not?

4th, the doing vs being thing does tie into some fairly obvious sexist tropes in literature and film. Short and dirty, one old pretty sexist way to depict characters are by men doing things, and women being things. The man *does* the heroic thing, the woman *is* pretty. No point belaboring the obvious problems with this, but when you're going for a narrative with a heroic woman, putting the emphasis on qualities they already have, and not things they need to earn is not great. Couple that with a narrative where the ideal is simply "accept who you are", and you're running into dangerously passive ground for a story that really shouldn't be. I'm not saying that the film is aiming for this, but if the reviews are to be believed, it certainly seems to end up leaning this way.

Overall, it seems like it's...mediocre, probably. Not horrible, but neither something I have a burning desire to see. Add that in with the sketchiness from the credits, the ludicrously over the top pricing structure*, and yeah, it's not even a consideration.

*On the positive side, this movie DID remind me to cancel Disney+, which had been sitting unused since Mandalorian ended.

Price wise, I enjoy movies. I see a *lot* of movies, sometimes repeatedly. However, $30 on top of a subscription feels dumb. An average theater ticket is perhaps $10, and the theater keeps perhaps half of this(ludicrously complicated in practice, I know, but still), so I am perhaps paying $5 to the studio to see a film in most cases. I am generally viewing this off better hardware than I have at home. Yes, I might buy snacks, but that isn't between the studio and I, that's solely a transacction concerning the local theater, and is little different than any other food purchase.

I'll grant that the rental would allow multiple people to see it, but normally it's just my girlfriend and I at the movies, or perhaps a single friend instead if it's a film she doesn't care for. The vast majority of movie experiences are not a massive party, but a fairly small group. If priced around an average of two viewers, that'd give us a fair rental price of around $10, which seems like a reasonable price. $30, added into the subscription nonsense, making it truly a rental, is something I would pass on even for a film I quite wanted to see.

[Traab]

Are the ones sent home sent home in dishonor though? I imagine getting washed out of the military as useless wouldnt reflect well upon you or your house so there would likely be a great deal of shame involved. So yeah he would have survived, but would the family name have been ruined? Now not only is mulan a lame bride due to the shenanigans at the start, but she is from a family that was dishonored by the emperor for failing in its duty or whatever.

[Bartmanhomer]

I believe Chinese audiences didn't like him.

I don't mind removing Mushu (he drove entirely too much of the plot the first time around) but in terms of fun/humor they added very little to replace him.

Really?! Wow! I love Mushu.

[Tyndmyr]

Are the ones sent home sent home in dishonor though? I imagine getting washed out of the military as useless wouldnt reflect well upon you or your house so there would likely be a great deal of shame involved. So yeah he would have survived, but would the family name have been ruined? Now not only is mulan a lame bride due to the shenanigans at the start, but she is from a family that was dishonored by the emperor for failing in its duty or whatever.

Possibly. But to the best of my knowledge, it's never shown or discussed. If a consequence may exist, but is never shown to exist within the movie, it doesn't make for very compelling stakes.

Now, I'm judging only from the trailers and the critical reception, but it feels very much like they didn't want to have any Chinese villains, probably in pursuit of that Chinese box office money that Disney's been so ineptly after. So, they angle for a fairly decent portrayal of the military characters...but that makes her central story of fitting into the military much less challenging. Being a woman in the military in this era is largely a problem solely because this is something that wasn't accepted. If you start adding easy ways out, or making people seem to be ultimately quite accepting of women fighting, then...there goes that theme. \

And for Mulan, that's quite literally the central theme of the story.

[Vinyadan]

Are the ones sent home sent home in dishonor though? I imagine getting washed out of the military as useless wouldnt reflect well upon you or your house so there would likely be a great deal of shame involved. So yeah he would have survived, but would the family name have been ruined? Now not only is mulan a lame bride due to the shenanigans at the start, but she is from a family that was dishonored by the emperor for failing in its duty or whatever.

Possibly. But to the best of my knowledge, it's never shown or discussed. If a consequence may exist, but is never shown to exist within the movie, it doesn't make for very compelling stakes.

Now, I'm judging only from the trailers and the critical reception, but it feels very much like they didn't want to have any Chinese villains, probably in pursuit of that Chinese box office money that Disney's been so ineptly after. So, they angle for a fairly decent portrayal of the military characters...but that makes her central story of fitting into the military much less challenging. Being a woman in the military in this era is largely a problem solely because this is something that wasn't accepted. If you start adding easy ways out, or making people seem to be ultimately quite accepting of women fighting, then...there goes that theme. \

And for Mulan, that's quite literally the central theme of the story.

I agree. I haven't seen the movie, but, if I wanted to court the public of any nation with a movie that is meant to please them, I probably wouldn't show institutionalised cruelty that casts away in dishonour those who are weak for no fault of their own. It would feel like an external critique, even if it makes for a better story for everyone else, and would probably be acceptable in a local production.

To be honest, I am not clear on why Disney wanted to use Mulan to get China. Telling a Chinese story to a Chinese audience while respecting Western standards sounds like deliberately entering a minefield. Many other Western movies made a lot of money there, probably exactly because they didn't have to bend over backwards and could just do their thing.

[snowblizz]

To be honest, I am not clear on why Disney wanted to use Mulan to get China. Telling a Chinese story to a Chinese audience while respecting Western standards sounds like deliberately entering a minefield. Many other Western movies made a lot of money there, probably exactly because they didn't have to bend over backwards and could just do their thing.

Let's be clear, any western movie showed in China has already bent backwards and are not doing their own thing. Have look around on the topic how China censors Hollywood. I'd link some fairly benign vids off youtube but I guess they are still not permissible.

Have you ever considered how many blockbusters now mention or feature China. Start looking for it. Independence Day 2, the Martian, the Transformers movies, Skyscraper. It's not by accident. And just the soft surface pandering (not all which has to be bad or noticeable). The really pernicious stuff is that we never hear of, scripts changing, movies never made, old movies no longer available etc.


The irony ofc is that apparently Mulan 2020 isn't doing that spectacularly well in China either.

[Eldan]

I mean, most of what I've seen on Chinese media and from Chinese commenters about Mulan is people making fun of the sets and costumes being inappropriate. And a few about how the values are backwards. Or how the "real" Mulan story is badly represented and that various Chinese adaptations of the story are better.

I don't think Disney ever had a chance to win over China with this movie.

[Tyndmyr]

To be honest, I am not clear on why Disney wanted to use Mulan to get China. Telling a Chinese story to a Chinese audience while respecting Western standards sounds like deliberately entering a minefield. Many other Western movies made a lot of money there, probably exactly because they didn't have to bend over backwards and could just do their thing.

The irony ofc is that apparently Mulan 2020 isn't doing that spectacularly well in China either.

That does seem to be something of a pickle. Hollywood frequently does bad at selling things to people with knowledge in that domain. Most tech folks I know cringe pretty hard at most hollywood depictions of hacking. Thinking about this, selling this story back to China would seem to be a really odd choice. It makes any flaws far more noticable, because you've elected to tell them a story they have the context to pick errors out of pretty efficiently.

I don't mind stuff like arbitrary settings so much...to me, it's not really any more obnoxious than every disaster movie flattening the Statue of Liberty, the Golden Gate Bridge or the US Capitol building. So, setting, say, The Meg off the China coastline doesn't feel any more or less bad. Is it essential to the plot? Not really. It's just trying to reel in a specific audience in any case in a fairly typical way.

[Peelee]

That does seem to be something of a pickle. Hollywood frequently does bad at selling things to people with knowledge in that domain. Most tech folks I know cringe pretty hard at most hollywood depictions of hacking.

As always, SMBC has the answer.

Spoiler: Social hacking

Show

Spoiler: Technological hacking

Show

[Psyren]

I thought Ocean's Eight (the female one) did a decent job with portraying Hollywood Hacking more realistically.

The scene has no dialogue, so for those who want a quick synopsis - The hacker character (9-Ball, played by Rihanna) needs to get access to the museum's security program prior to the heist. She does this by simply looking up their security contractors on their website, targeting an executive who's likely to have such access, then heading to his social media page to learn some of his interests. Based on this, she quickly throws together an e-mail containing a hostile link based on those interests (i.e. a spear phishing attack). The guy no doubt thinks that the e-mail originated from one of several doggie forums or mailing lists he has subscribed to and doesn't question it - clicking the link and thus giving her access to both his computer and webcam. One RDP later and his machine is compromised, giving her pretty much everything she needs.

Now, what she DOES with that access - incrimentally creating a blind spot in the entire museum's camera coverage from a single machine over a series of days prior to the heist - is a bit more hollywood than realistic. But the basics of the backdoor she uses (public recon into social media into spear phishing) is fairly common, albeit also being fairly easy to prevent for any security company worth their salt.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Psyren
Now, what she DOES with that access - incrimentally creating a blind spot in the entire museum's camera coverage from a single machine over a series of days prior to the heist - is a bit more hollywood than realistic.

Did she create the blind spot, or just find it through careful analysis? I had the impression it was the latter.

Originally Posted by Psyren
But the basics of the backdoor she uses (public recon into social media into spear phishing) is fairly common, albeit also being fairly easy to prevent for any security company worth their salt.

But DOGGIES!!!

I did like that sequence, because it rang especially true in terms of finding the human vulnerability in the system. Shot through the heart, and it’s dogs to blame.