Though the director shared that Mushu was removed to allow Mulan to better enhance her relationships with her fellow soldiers, his absence may have also been more about not offending viewers, who found Mushu to be insensitive in the 1998 animated feature.
"Using it as a silly sidekick didn't play very well with the traditional Chinese audience." But perhaps the most significant reason why the new Mulan film features a phoenix instead is due to the symbolism of the mythical bird for Chinese women in particular — or at least according to Caro's vision.
Believed to have been written out of the film due to being "deemed culturally inaccurate and racist", some academics and culture critics defended Disney's decision to remove Mushu, describing it as their attempt "to represent Chinese culture and history in a more authentic manner".
Why was Mushu demoted from being a guardian in Mulan?
Mushu was once a guardian spirit of Mulan's family, but he has been demoted to the unappreciated position of an incense burner and gong-ringer for the deceased Fa ancestors ever since he failed to protect a family member, a soldier named Fa Deng, resulting in the soldier's demise by decapitation.
In forging the document to get the army to the front, they end up confronting the Hun army -- thanks to Mushu accidentally setting off one of the cannons and alerting the Huns to their position. After a brief but intense battle, Mulan gets the idea to cause an avalanche, which wipes out most of the Hun army.
If any of you watched Mulan 2, for exapmle buying it on DVD, Mushu turns evil after losing his pedastol, so he tries to tear apart Mulan and Shang, which worked.
However, things change once the ancestors tell him that if Mulan marries Shang, his family's guardians will take over for him, thus demoting Mushu back to gong duty. Desperate to keep his job, he continuously tries to break the two apart to keep his position.
Also, the fact that Mushu is a dragon may be a nod to the fact that, while Mulan is a mighty force on her own, she requires a little bit of guidance to be whole and achieve her goals. Ultimately, this would mean that Mushu couldn't awaken the Great Stone Dragon because it was awake all along.
He was a war hero of a previous, unnamed conflict, as well as was known to the extent that Shang mentioned his name with awe when it appeared on Fa family's conscription notice, even referring to him as "THE Fa Zhou." At the time of the film, he is at an advanced age, as well as limps using a crutch due to a leg injury ...
Although Mushu and the phoenix are both guardians of the ancestors, and both are stone statues brought to life for Mulan's protection, the phoenix is never a true replacement for Mushu. Mulan and the phoenix never really interact, compared with Mushu's constant involvement in the animated film.
The boycott centers on two Chinese issues: The treatment of Uyghur Muslims in China's Xinjiang region -- where some of the film was shot -- and China's crackdown of freedoms in Hong Kong.
A clause in Eddie Murphy's contract for doing Shrek 2 (2004) forbade him from reprising the role of Mushu in this film, therefore having his other voice actor Mark Moseley (a man best known for filling in for Murphy's characters like Mushu and Donkey in their TV and Video Game appearances) fill in for this film.
China blocked the release of Disney's animated “Mulan” for eight months in the late 1990s after the company backed Martin Scorsese's “Kundun,” a film seen as sympathetic to the Dalai Lama. The animated “Mulan” bombed in China as a result.
University of Southern California professor Stanley Rosen, who specializes in Chinese politics and culture, told The Hollywood Reporter that "Mushu was very popular in the U.S., but the Chinese hated it." "This kind of miniature dragon trivialized their culture," he added.
It turns out that the traditional Chinese audience did not particularly think that was the best interpretation of the dragon in their culture. That the dragon is a sign of respect and of strength and power and sort of using it as a silly sidekick did not play well with a traditional Chinese audience."
Mulan's surname was rendered as the Yue Chinese (aka Cantonese) "Fa", though this was to pay respect to the poem being originally written in that language.
The name of Mulan's dog, Little Brother, is actually a nod to one of the versions of the original ballad, in which Mulan did actually have a brother. That character was cut for the animated movie, but the dog was added a nice reference.
As well as the parents of the 4 main VKs (including Mal's mother Maleficent who makes no appearance in Descendants 3 (2019) as a human or a lizard), Lonnie (daughter of Mulan and Shang) is the only character in the trilogy who does not appear in this film due to scheduling conflicts with her actress Dianne Doan, which ...
Throughout the movie, Mushu refers to Khan as a "cow," yet only once, after the Hun archers attack the cart carrying cannons with fire arrows and destroy it, Mushu calls Khan a horse. The name "Khan" translates to "prince" but can also mean "king" or "leader" in many Tuco-Mongol languages.
Mushu is the former dragon guardian – more of a lizard than a dragon – of the Fa family. Mushu was demoted of his post of guardian after he failed to protect one of Mulan's family members.
The roles of men and women should not be seen as limiting or as limitations. The story of Mulan proves that. Mulan behaves as a man to join battle and her male battle mates dress as women to serve as decoys. Mulan teaches us that gender roles are simply well-too-accepted stereotypes (that can be broken).
Unfortunately for fans of this princess, Mulan II did terribly. Critics regarded the film as a huge disrespect to the original Mulan. This discouraged Disney from pursuing her story any further, so Mulan III was shelved and Ana Ming never made it anywhere.
Mulan II. In this film, Mushu acts as the protagonist/main but semi antagonist, as the real antagonist is actually Lord Quin. He is seen with the ancestors in the beginning.
