Disney's US$200M Mistake

Mulan is out in theatres across China tomorrow... how will it do?

Disney's live-action remake Mulan is opening in theatres tomorrow in China, but there is so much controversy around the film that one wonders if the movie studio will ever make back the US$200 million it spent to make it.

Donnie Yen enthusiastically shaking Xi Jinping's hand

Already last year pro-democracy Hongkongers were determined to boycott the film after actress Liu Yifei, who plays Mulan, supported the police and their excessive force during the protests last summer on her Weibo account.

Protesters were also not impressed with actor Donnie Yen who has written social media posts praising Beijing, and there's a video clip of him shaking Chinese President Xi Jinping's hand and not wanting to let go...

But now after months of delay due to the coronavirus pandemic, Mulan is finally out, and the credits have rolled to reveal Disney thanked eight government entities in Xinjiang, including the public security bureau in Turpan, a city in eastern Xinjiang where several internment camps have been documented. Another credit went to the Chinese Communist Party's propaganda department in Xinjiang.

Detention camps were only 7km from where Disney filmed

At the time Disney filmed Mulan, probably around 2018, did studio executives know what was going on in the region where its Uighur residents are under severe repression and surveillance? Shawn Zhang, the graduate student who has studied satellite maps on Xinjiang to find the internment camps, says the film crew were a few only 7 kilometres from an internment camp.

Critics are also blasting the studio for kowtowing to the Chinese government.

Isaac Stone Fish is a senior fellow at the Asia Society, and in a column in the Washington Post he wrote: "It's sufficiently astonishing that it bears repeating. Disney has thanked four propaganda departments and a public security bureau in Xinjiang, a region in northwest China that is the site of one of the world's worst human rights abuses happening today."

Chinese dissident artist Badiucao, who lives in Australia satirizes the film by depicting Mulan as a guard in one of the internment camps in Xinjiang.

Badiucao's satirical take on Mulan in Xinjiang

"It's very problematic and there's no excuse. I mean, it's clear, we have all the evidence showing what is going on in Xinjiang," he said.

Badiucao also accused Disney of "double standards", embracing western social justice movements such as MeToo and Black Lives Matter, while turning a blind eye to China's rights abuses.

However it's not just Disney to blame for bending to Beijing. In the upcoming Tom Cruise film Top Gun: Maverick, the Taiwanese flag that was on his bomber jacket in the original movie has been digitally erased, and the storyline in the 2013 film World War Z removed China as the source of a zombie virus.

And it's not just Hongkongers who are boycotting the film, but also activists in Taiwan and Thailand.

So any bets on how well Mulan will do?

If anything this fiasco sheds more light on the horrific plight of Uighurs to the rest of the world, at Disney's expense, at the tune of US$200 million.

Whopping Disney Bills

How about making more money for Hong Kong, Mickey and Minnie?

It was mind boggling to read that yet again Disneyland has posted a whopping HK$345 million loss for 2017 due to park expansion and asset depreciation, despite revenue of HK$5.1 billion, the second best figure since the park opened in 2005.

The number of visitors to the park also rose by 100,000 last year to 6.2 million.

We want to ask the Hong Kong government why it owns 53 percent of the theme park's shares and why we, the taxpayers, have to shell out to pay for Disney to manage it.

Imagine if this theme park was turned into housing...

Disney charges a fee set at 6.5 percent of the park's earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization. So the amount earned was HK$914 million, so the management fee is calculated at HK$59 million.

Also keep in mind the resort's American parent company also charges the park's owners royalties.

Why are we stuck with such a massive bill -- and a loss to boot?

There have been calls to scrap the theme park -- it's the smallest of all the Disneylands -- and replace the area with housing. There's already a dedicated train to connect the area so why not?

Makes good sense to me. We need to get our priorities right, and Hong Kong ain't the happiest place on earth. So why keep pretending?

Review: Little Door Gods

A movie poster of Little Door Gods, a Chinese full-length animation

Hello I'm back to Hong Kong! I have finally completed an epic journey, and am ready to tell more stories again.

I'll be going back and rewriting about my Silk Road trip in more detail, though there will be some Hong Kong new stories interspersed in between.

Raindrop learns about tradition and culture in the story

In the meantime on the plane I watched a few movies. From Urumqi, Xinjiang to Beijing, I watched a full length animation feature called Little Door Gods.

The premise is that all Chinese gods have lost their jobs because people nowadays don't believe in them anymore. They range from the God of Earth, Guanyin or Goddess of Mercy, Insect King, Wine God, Dragon Mother, and so on.

They have to take retraining courses otherwise they will lose their job, except for the God of Wealth, who has spun himself into a DJ-like character who sits on a flashing casino-like pedestal and wears modern clothes.

Raindrop befriends Shentu, who is looking for brother Yulei

Other than the God of Wealth, the only other gods that seem to be able to keep their traditional jobs are the door gods, brothers Shentu and Yulei, though their popularity is waning.

That story line is juxtaposed with today, featuring a girl called Raindrop and her mother who take over her grandmother's wonton shop. Raindrop encounters the two door gods in a wild adventure and she learns the importance of having Shentu and Yulei on your door.

It's an amusing but also informative story with lots of action to keep kids interested. The evil monster Nian looks like a precursor to Te Ka in Disney's Moana, both looking like nasty wood-like characters, though both films were released in 2016.

Shentu and Yulei are the door gods posted on people's doors

Perhaps even more intriguing is that Little Door Gods was distributed by Alibaba Pictures, eager to get into the cultural sector.

There wasn't any buzz of this animation feature that I know of in Hong Kong -- it would have had a decent play here, being kid friendly, though humour-wise it's not non-stop like The Lego Movie or hilarious like Moana with the rooster sidekick.

Regardless we enjoyed it and are curious to know what else Alibaba PIctures has up its sleeve. It's already a good step in the right direction.

Little Door Gods (2016)

Written and directed by Gary Wang

Produced by Light Chaser Animation Studios

Distributed by Alibaba Pictures and The Weinstein Company

107 Minutes

Picture of the Day: A Scary Christmas

Harbour City shopping mall in Tsim Sha Tsui hit the jackpot this year when it brought the giant rubber duck to Hong Kong.

It easily won over fans compared to the inflated Stonehenge and excrement over at M+ in West Kowloon that is set to become the city's cultural hub.

Rubber duck paraphernalia is still sold in stores and a larger version of it went around Beijing.

However, Harbour City may have missed the boat this year in its Christmas decorations.

It banked on Disney characters set in globes, including Nemo, Alice in Wonderland, Pixie from Peter Pan and Stitch.

Perhaps the most popular one of the displays is Mike and Sulley from Monsters University to be the big winner, but it really was the minions in Despicable Me 2 that won the animation battle this year.

The hot item for Christmas at Toys "R" Us is the minion toy where you can poke their stomach and they jiggle their arms and make funny sounds. Can you imagine a child having more than one of them and constantly pushing their tummies? They would be entertained for hours...

Nevertheless, the minions were so popular in Despicable Me 2 that they may have their own movie, perhaps Harbour City will book them for next Christmas?