Trailer
Plot summary
The Huns cross the Great Wall into China, and the Emperor orders a man from every household into the Imperial Army. Fa Mulan, the only child of her family, is brought before a matchmaker to show she is fit to be a wife, and the meeting ends badly. Her father, Fa Zhou, a veteran with an old wound, is conscripted and refuses to be dissuaded, though he cannot walk properly. Mulan cuts her hair, takes his sword and armor, and leaves as a man to enlist in his place. Her grandmother prays to the ancestors, who wake in the family temple; the Great Ancestor sends Mushu, a small disgraced dragon, to aid her, with Cri-Kee, a cricket. She reports to a training camp under Captain Li Shang and passes as a man called Fa Ping.
Cast
Show all 20 cast
- Matthew Wilderas Ling (singing voice)
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Mulan (1998)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Stephen Schwartz was commissioned to write Mulan's songs but left after former Disney studio chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg asked him to compose for DreamWorks' The Prince of Egypt. Peter Schneider threatened to strike Schwartz's name from publicity for Pocahontas and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Michael Eisner phoned him, but he refused and quit.
- For the dragon Mushu, Disney aimed for top Hollywood talent in the vein of Robin Williams' Genie in Aladdin. The filmmakers first approached Joe Pesci and Richard Dreyfuss for the voice, until Michael Eisner considered Eddie Murphy.
- Tia Carrere was an early candidate to voice Mulan, and Lea Salonga, already the singing voice of Princess Jasmine in Aladdin, was cast to do both Mulan's speaking and singing. The directors were not convinced by her deeper voice for Mulan impersonating Ping, so Ming-Na Wen spoke the role and Salonga only sang.
- Joe Grant created the cricket Cri-Kee, but animator Barry Temple said the directors did not want him in the movie and neither did the story department: the only people who truly wanted him there were Michael Eisner, Grant, and Temple himself, who had been assigned the character.
- To stage the Huns' attack, the production wrote crowd simulation software called Attila that moved 2,000 unique soldiers autonomously. A variant called Dynasty built a crowd of 3,000 in the Forbidden City for the final battle, rendered with Pixar's RenderMan.
- The soundtrack is credited with starting Christina Aguilera's career: her rendition of "Reflection" was the first song she released in the United States, and it was so well received that it landed her a recording contract with RCA Records.
- Disney hoped Mulan would smooth over relations with the Chinese government, which had soured over Kundun, its Dalai Lama biography that Beijing considered politically provocative and had threatened to curtail business negotiations over. After a year's delay China allowed only a limited release, and only after Chinese New Year so local films kept the lucrative holiday market.
