(Hated)changing somenthing to be more "progressive" ends up being a bad thing

[u/Morr4Seiya]

Now to be clear,i am not one of these "anti-woke" losers that complain some people exist,and i am also not the type to complain about changing somenthing in a new version or adaptation,however there are cases where it did ended up being a bad idea.

-In the anime of Cowboy Bebop there is the character Gren,despite being short lived the character is very memorable specially thanks to his tragic story.Basically his story was that he was a soldier from the titan war who was a great friend with Vicious(the main bad guy)after the war he was emprisioned thanks to Vicious who testified against him and he was forced to take a experimental drug that caused him hormonal problems,giving him a feminine appearence and even breasts.

In the Netflix live action,for some reasons they decided Gren was going to be non-binary,which wouldn't be a problem(some people believe he was gay in the anime)if it wasn't for the fact that they also removed all the nuances and complexities that made the character memorable and interesting,instead of a tragic war veteran that was betrayed and had his body changed against his will,Gren is just kinda there.

-The original Rugrats cartoon had the couple Betty and Howard,Betty was a big and masculine woman while Howard was a smaller and nervous man,it was a genuine interesting relationship that stood out from the other couples who were the standard straight couple.

In the new series however they replaced Howard with a woman named Trish,two things,first off why?What was the problem with having a woman being the stronger in a straight relationship?Second why does Hollywood seem to think that every tomboy or masculine woman is a lesbian?

Overall not the worst thing but it is jarring that they had a gender reverse roled that was progressive and decided that wasn't enough.

-Oh man,this one pisses me off the most so i am gonna have to break it down

So back in the late 80s and 90s there was this anime called Saint Seiya also knows as Knights of the zodiac,it tells the story of knights who fight for the Goddess Athena to protect earth,being divided in the golden,silver and bronze knights,the anime was a huge hit in latin america and Europe and while it floped in the US it still has a loyal fanbase.

Being a fan myself i can't recommend it enough,now granted the story does have a fair share of flaws,and that's because the author was honestly just making stuff up as he went along(also a lot of side characters are poorly used or even forgotten about)still it is a great story you should check out

But then a couple of years back Netflix got the rights and decided to a 3D reboot,in this reboot they decided to make the story more "american" to try to bring more american viewers,now i could go on and on a big rant about how that was a bad idea and the execution was so terrible that it made me want to strangle someone but this post is about one specific change.

So Saint Seiya has five main characters,those are Pegasus Seiya,Dragon Shiryu,Cygnus Hyoga,Phoenix Ikki and finally Andromeda Shun.

While the other four characters were the standard masculine and brute male characters who were always ready to throw punches,Shun was smaller,more sensitive and even feminine looking,a pacifist who didn't liked fighting,but don't mistake that for weakness because Shun was loyal to his friends and was extremely powerful.

Then Netflix decided to change Shun into a girl named Shaun.

So wait,you have a male character who goes against every male stereotype and you turn him into just another generic female character?

When asked about it,the showrunner Eugene Son said he made that change because there was no girl in the group and having a all boys group wouldn't be acceptable nowadays

First off that's not true because Athena was also part of the main cast,yeah she wasn't the fighting type but she still helped quite a lot in the story even saving the knights on several occasions,second if you wanted to add a girl to the main group why not use Marin or Shaina?Hell,if you were going to change the story anyway why not turn Seiya sister into a knight?

Thankfully this monstrosity was cancelled(so much for trying to bring more fans)

[u/Chachkhu2005]

This movie managed to suck so fucking bad. How, how I ask, do you manage to make an action movie with Donnie Yen and Jet Li in it with a Disney budget, BORING? HOW? And how do you mess up a plot as simple as Mulan's? There's nothing there that's subtle to interpret.

[u/MyneIsBestGirl → u/Chachkhu2005]

Pandering to a Chinese audience without understanding that glaze will only bring one so far, exacerbated by an unwillingness to let protagonists have serious flaws (intentionally) and a wack ass desire to turn an animated partially comedic movie into a serious drama without doing half the work.

[u/ShadySands2189 → u/MyneIsBestGirl]

And even the Chinese audience didn't like it which is hilarious

[u/MyneIsBestGirl → u/ShadySands2189]

Because, even a very nationalistic audience can tell what a bad story is and have standards. Mulan made a non-compelling story while harkening to their previous more influential and beloved classic. If they had adapted the story from the legends straight it would be better, but they couldn't even do that.

[u/ShadySands2189 → u/MyneIsBestGirl]

Exactly this, they tried to change an actual good and empowering story into a low quality power fantasy that shits on everything the OG movie tried to do, like you said, if they just adapted the actual story 1:1 they'd have made bank

AND to add to this, the fact they changed Mushu from a dragon to a phoenix which adds insult to injury since in Chinese culture there is no phoenix, the Vermilion Bird while a fire bird, isn't a phoenix, that's a Western mythology creature with wildly different characteristics, so changing what is one of the most famous and influential creatures in China to a Western beast feels like an insult

[u/nofpiq → u/ShadySands2189]

AND to add to this, the fact they changed Mushu from a dragon to a phoenix which adds insult to injury since in Chinese culture there is no phoenix, the Vermilion Bird while a fire bird, isn't a phoenix,

This isn't entirely true, Chinese culture has a fenghuang, the King or Empress of Birds, frequently referred to as a Chinese phoenix. This however shows a number of different problems that the Disney adaptation has.

The shape of the creature is a bit closer to the fenghuang, but still more similar to a a Western coded phoenix, particularly in the coloring.

Among the many, many temporal anachronisms the movie has, at the time period when the story of Mulan takes places, Chinese culture had masculine feng and feminine huang, they weren't merged into a singular feminine fenghuang until ~800 years later. The feng and huang were almost always seen/depicted together.

In the film, Mulan first sees the phoenix near the beginning of the war, when she is first heading off to take her father's place in conscription. Unfortunately, fenghuang as omens generally represent either the beginning of a new era and lineage of leadership - what Mulan is explicitly going to help a war effort to prevent from happening - or fenghuang sightings symbolize the start of a new time of peace and prosperity.

[u/KommissarJH → u/MyneIsBestGirl]

I've read a while ago that Mulan is the most adapted legend/story in Chinese media and the market is pretty much saturated with adaptions that stay more or less true to the legend. That's why the OG Disney adaptation is pretty well liked. It changes things up while still being true to the story.

The new one... Not so much.

[u/Birdbraned → u/KommissarJH]

Chinese media is saturated with many many reskinned stories about old legends and the like and those productions still make bank.

[u/brezieee → u/Birdbraned]

To be fair, we’ve had a new Odyssey very recently, and is fair to say that every story is, at his core, a retelling. I totally get what you mean though

[u/No1LudmillaSimp → u/ShadySands2189]

China already made several live action Mulan films itself that were much better than Disney's botch job.

[u/Pabst_Blue_Gibbon → u/No1LudmillaSimp]

There’s like 20 of them lol. I like “Mulan joins the army” (1939) the best. The 2009 and 1964 ones are good too. Not to mention all the TV adaptations.

[u/hidelyhokie → u/ShadySands2189]

Having no Chinese writers is a bad idea for telling a culturally Chinese story using one of chinas most well known heros. Who would have thought

[u/Ombric_Shalazar → u/MyneIsBestGirl]

shit was banned from airing in china for a time lmao

[u/hidelyhokie → u/MyneIsBestGirl]

It was a movie trying to appeal to China written entirely by white people what could go wrong?

[u/MyneIsBestGirl → u/hidelyhokie]

Going for appeal always quality will almost always fail, since it falls on the premise that pandering will achieve anything more positive than mindless clapping in a theater, especially compared to a whole audience who will not get pandered to.

[u/ShadySands2189 → u/Chachkhu2005]

Mind you, sucked so badly that it actively got BANNED from China for how bad it was, and the movie was filmed there to boot!

[u/SquareTaro3270 → u/ShadySands2189]

Wasn’t that because of the filming location? The Chinese government didn’t like that the studio filmed near a nation they were trying to erase from public consciousness

[u/elianastardust → u/SquareTaro3270]

... Why would China be trying to erase a popular tourist destination and important economic region from public consciousness?

Sinophobia is so weird.

[u/SquareTaro3270 → u/elianastardust]

If I remember correctly, they filmed next to a concentration camp… so…

[u/za_shiki-warashi → u/Chachkhu2005]

Donnie Yen

Speaking of, I was also disappointed with his character in Star Wars, so Disney let him down twice now. I wonder if John Wick is him going, 'let me show you how to do a cool blind fighter as old school wuxia intended'.

[u/JManKit → u/Chachkhu2005]

The best/worst part is that it wasn't just a departure from the animated version but also a departure from the actual folk story that almost every Chinese person knows. In it, Mulan is not magical but rather just a filial young woman who takes it upon herself to spare her elderly father and younger brother from the dangers of conscription. The folk story doesn't even really give that much detail of her time as a soldier but the fact that she not only survived twelve years of fighting and acquitted herself so well that she was honoured by the emperor tells you that she was brave, capable and incredibly determined. All those characteristics were evident in the animated film, which is likely why Chinese audiences liked it so much