Roasting Mulan Chinese Cultural Confidence and Tucao Video Remixes on Bilibili

for chinese audiences, Mulan, the live-action 2020 Hollywood film directed by Niki Caro, is a failure. Mulan has an all-Chinese cast and recounts an ancient and well-loved Chinese story, yet it performed poorly in China, the very country that was expected to generate a large proportion of its revenue. In fact, Mulan is one of the least popular Disney films released in China. Its $47 million box office falls well short of revenues generated by Avengers: Endgame (Jo and Anthony Russo, 2019) at $580 million and The Lion King (Jon Favreau, 2019) at $120 million. On the community-based video-sharing platform Bilibili, remix videos emerged to express anger about Mulan and Hollywood at large. Critics’ chief complaint concerned the film's inauthentic presentation of Chinese history and culture. Chinese audiences’ scrutiny of foreign filmmakers’ depictions of their history and culture was unusual. Disney clearly did not anticipate it, since the marketing...