This impressive ballad has been adapted into different versions of art forms in China such as operas, animation movies, and live-action movies, but was first adapted by Disney in 1998 in the Western world, which has boosted this character’s prominence outside of China. After that, Disney launched the animated movie Mulan 2 in 2004, and the live-action movie in 2020. They both adapted the original ballad, but have a distinct focus on each movie( see the specific comparison in Tour 3).
Disney's narratives demonstrate more dramatic tensions by displaying Mulan pursuing the meaning of her life, she proves herself by saving her father and even the whole country. Yet Mulan’s main idea in the original ballad is driven by the determination to protect her father and the family (Meijuan et al, 2022 ). Even Disney's films keep the basic information about Mulan's class, features, and cultural aspects (Meijuan et al., 2022), but the emphasized heroine figure in Disney’s narrative turned it into a culturally hybridized figure to the global audiences (Chen,2023). Therefore, Mulan’s story exemplifies transcultural intertextuality by showing diverse textual and cultural variations in different presentations (Li,2014). The manufacturers accordingly produce different versions of Mulan. This 3D model is based on the Mulan toy we chose, it shows a girly version of Mulan instead of the Worrier.
See more introduction about the Ballad of Mulan: