Mulan: Meet the Creative Team Behind Disney’s 2020 Live Action Remake

I never got to see Mulan on the big screen. The March 19 press screening in San Francisco was canceled. The March 27 release was postponed. For months I have been sheltering at home, wondering about the fate of this movie (and movies in general in this pandemic). When i finally looked Mulan, it was on a small screen, which is kind of a tragedy. From her visuals to her meticulously crafted costumes and hairstyles, Mulan is a movie that deserves the full cinematic experience. The film crew agrees.

“We made the movie like a big screen movie,” says Mandy Walker, Mulan’s director of photography. “We want people to see it in the movies.” I spoke with Walker in July, before the decision to stream the movie was announced.

Directed by New Zealand filmmaker Niki Caro (The Zookeeper’s Wife), Mulan is a live adaptation of the 1998 Disney animated classic. Set during the Tang Dynasty of China and infused with just the right amount of fantasy and adventure, the film Follow Mulan (Yifei Liu), from a young girl to a brave warrior.

“I’m sad because it’s such an epic movie, a big screen movie,” the movie’s costume designer, Bina Daigeler, told me via video chat from Berlin when I asked her about the real-time release. “It is a sad side effect of the coronavirus.”

The silver lining of the film’s digital debut, Daigeler said, is that audiences will at least finally get to see the team’s work, if not on the big screen. The film opens on Disney Plus on Friday.

A set run by women

Retelling a story inspired by the 6th century poem The Ballad of Mulan, Caro did not shy away from the show. With a budget of 200 million dollars, he had on his shoulders the responsibility of a great Hollywood production. A responsibility until now rarely entrusted to a director and that she carried along with a team of capable women from her team.

“It is important that women support other women,” said makeup, hair and prosthetics designer Denise Kum during a video chat from London when asked about her work with Caro. “Niki has something charming, she keeps the door open for so many women to come through.”

Baigeler, who described the director as a collaborator, emphasized Caro’s camaraderie on sets. “She always puts together an amazing team.”

“We didn’t go over our calendar for a day,” Walker added, emphasizing Caro’s organizational skills on set.

“We had three women behind the scenes,” Walker said, referring to herself, Caro and the film’s first assistant director, Liz Tan. Mulan is the most expensive live-action film directed by a woman. “We were very aware of that fact. Since we are all strong women anyway, we all felt this was a great opportunity. We were going to do the movie really well and show it to everyone.”

Doing Mulan Good

One of Mulan’s main challenges was getting the fight sequences right. A second unit filmed landscapes and backgrounds in China while the main unit was in New Zealand, with the goal of using as little CGI as possible. They worked and rehearsed extensively with numerous stuntmen, extras, and horses. Caro wanted the action to focus on the character of Mulan, covering the action in an elegant and choreographed way.

Due to those stylized battles, costume designer Daigeler faced the challenge of creating armor for Mulan that would follow her movements. “What Yifei does as Mulan is almost like a ballet performance,” she said. “I really accepted that she is a warrior.”

The costume designer also revealed the tricks necessary to pull off Mulan’s many transformations. The character goes from girl to woman, then pretends to be a boy who becomes a man in the army. The armor that Mulan wears while pretending to be a man hides his figure, but when Mulan sheds that armor, Daigeler made sure that his vibrant red robe was more suitable to cover Liu’s body.

But it is Mulan’s hair that reveals her greatest transformation. In the animated film, Mulan cuts her hair to pose as a man. Not here. She ties it in a bow like a soldier, and releases it later. “The hair did its own stunts half the time,” says Kum.

The hair and makeup designer explained that they did not wear a full wig because they wanted to use the natural movement of the hair. But looking natural still requires a touch of cinematic magic. “I had so many hairpieces on, everything had to be individually toned and baked to make it really look like it was just the wind. [moving it]”Kum explained.

However, don’t try to emulate Mulan’s appearance at home. It may not be as easy to achieve without Kum’s team of makeup professionals who seek understated perfection. The makeup team used strategically placed dirt in sequences where Mulan was pretending to be a man, sculpting Liu’s jaw and outlining his face. Then they improved the color when she transformed into a warrior woman. Even when it looks like she doesn’t have makeup on, she does. “What seems subtle and natural comes with a lot of consideration and testing,” Kum said.

Nothing was left to chance on Mulan.

Even if this is a movie designed for cinematic consumption, I still loved the streaming. It gave me the opportunity to finally enjoy the unfolding of this empowering story by a support team where women could take risks.

New film calendar for 2020 and 2021 after coronavirus delays

See all photos

Playing now:
See this:

What’s New in the September 2020 Broadcast

4:49