Why do great empires fall? It is an age-old question for historians of ancient civilizations and modern republics alike. For film historians, the same question can be asked of theDisney Renaissancethat bookended the 1990s. While Mulan (Ming-Na Wen) the warrior saved China, why couldn’t Disney’sMulansave Walt Disney Feature Animation? A musical change may have made the difference.
Mulanis the 1998 penultimate theatrical release of the Disney Renaissance, a period that many consider the pinnacle of animated film history. The nascent Disney Renaissance began in 1989 with the release ofThe Little Mermaid, which was a financial boon for the studio and ushered in a new era of the Disney princess movie and the Disney musical.Mulanis loosely based on an ancient Northern Wei dynasty poem “The Ballad of Mulan.” The film tells the story of Fa Mulan, a young Chinese woman who pretends to be a man so that she may join the army in her father’s stead to fight against a Hun invasion.
Mulanis considered the last princess musical of the Disney Renaissance, though the term “princess” is used liberally in this case to mean female heroine. The movie is known best for its tongue-in-cheek Westernized take on Chinese history and its infectious earworm-filled pop soundtrack. With songs like the anthem “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” sung by elder teenybopper legendDonny Osmondand the end credit bop “True to Your Heart” performed by98 DegreesandStevie Wonder,Mulannever seemed to take itself or its historical relevance too seriously. That is part of the charm of the film, but it was not the initial intention.
Originally slated asMulan’s songwriter and lyricist was Broadway veteranStephen Schwartz. Now known best as the composer forWicked, Schwartz at the time was fresh off of penning lyrics alongside songwriterAlan Menkenfor Disney filmsPocahontasandThe Hunchback of Notre Dame. Schwartz had already traveled with the filmmakers on a research trip to China and written several songs forMulanwhen he was caught up in a firestorm that ultimately coincided with the demise of the Disney Renaissance.
In 1994, after the tragic death of The Walt Disney Company PresidentFrank G. Wellsin a helicopter crash, then Disney chairmanJeffrey Katzenbergset his sights on replacing Wells as the number two man at the company. Several years prior, Katzenberg had been appointed by Disney CEOMichael Eisnerand charged with overseeing animation production at the company where he was a part of the earliest meetings on the films that would usher in the Disney Renaissance. A feud between Katzenberg and Eisner had been brewing for quite some time. Soon after Wells’ death,according to the New York Times, Eisner “summoned Katzenberg to his office and handed him a four-page announcement about staff changes at the company. One of those changes was Katzenberg’s resignation.”
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In the months that followed, Katzenberg partnered with music mogul David Geffen and filmmaker Steven Spielberg to create a new animation studio, DreamWorks SKG. James B. Stewart’s bookDisneyWardives deep into this controversial transition, and the deep rift that formed in its wake. “Katzenberg had begun to staff his new animation department at DreamWorks. As the animators had predicted, he set his sights on numerous Disney animators he’d worked with,” Stewart writes. Katzenberg offered animators double or even triple their Disney salaries to join his studio. “Even before DreamWorks had created a single animated feature, it had driven up Disney’s cost structure by millions of dollars.”
Along with the many Disney animators brought into the DreamWorks fold, Schwartz was approached by Katzenberg to write songs forThe Prince of Egypt, DreamWorks’ first traditional animated movie musical. The story centered on the biblical tale of the Egyptian Prince Moses as he discovers his true Hebrew identity and his destiny to deliver the Israelites. Katzenberg was known at Disney for pushing big Oscar-worthy projects that appealed to a more mature audience, andThe Prince of Egyptwas a natural choice. Schwartz had worked previously on similar themes in musicalsGodspellandChildren of Eden, and was skeptical of working again on another biblical story. He recalled meeting with the DreamWorks leadership in the bookDefying Gravity: The Creative Career of Stephen Schwartz, from Godspell to Wickedby Carol De Giere, saying “I was predisposed to take whatever assignment Jeffrey, Steven Spielberg, and David Geffen offered.”
Schwartz agreed to compose forThe Prince of Egypt, but unbeknownst to him at the time, this would cost himMulanand his relationship with Disney. “A battle was raging that I got caught in without wanting in any way to be involved,” Schwartz described to De Giere. “When Disney said, ‘You have to make a choice,’ I said, ‘This is nonsense. People work for different companies all the time.’” Schwartz was confronted byPeter Schneider, the president of Disney Animation, who threatened to remove his name from publicity for his other Disney projectsPocahontasandThe Hunchback of Notre Dame.Eventually Schwartz received a call by CEO Eisner as well. When Schwartz refused to quit working with DreamWorks onThe Prince of Egypt, Eisner booted him fromMulan.
Schwartz’sMulansongs would remain in the vault, but there is some insight into what could have been. Two songs were in progress, but never recorded. The first, titled “Destiny,” was meant to be an opening number for the film. Another, called “We’ll Make a Man of You” was very similar in title and theme to the song “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” in the final film, which is performed as Mulan trains to be a soldier. Two songs made it into demo versions, one called “China Doll” was replaced with “Honor to Us All” in the final film for the scene of Mulan’s preparation to meet her matchmaker. Another, “Written in Stone” did make its way off of the cutting room floor, but not for the movie. In addition to someamateur recordings made publicly accessible online, the song was translated into one of the tentpole numbers for the licensed children’s staged musicalMulan, Jr.The song incorporates the pentatonic (five notes per octave) scale, which are characteristic of traditional Chinese music.
The pentatonic scale is one example of the authenticity that Schwartz brought to every Disney project to which he contributed. Schwartz’s work was influenced deeply by the ethnic settings and cultural underpinnings of each animated film.
On the research trip to China that Schwartz attended withMulan’s creative team, he took in the sounds of the country. As De Giere wrote, “In village shops, Schwartz collected tape recordings of traditional Chinese music. Standing in a market, he held up some little metal Chinese bells, ringing them to test their appeal. Convinced they could be used in a recording session, he purchased them.”
In his lyrics forPocahontas, Schwartz incorporated aspects of actual Native writings. In a letter from Chief Seattle to Congress, one excerpt served as inspiration for the lyrics to “Colors of the Wind.” It said, “The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also received his last sigh. The wind also gives our children the spirit of life. So if we sell our land, you must keep it apart and sacred, as a place where man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow flowers.” The words ring reminiscent of lyrical lines, “You can own the Earth and still all you’ll own is Earth until you can paint with all the colors of the wind.”
The Hunchback of Notre Damelikewise drew from history, utilizing lyrics drawn from liturgical phrases in the characteristic Latin of the Roman Catholic church in the Middle Ages.Phrases like “mea culpa” (meaning “my fault”) and “Kyrie Eleison” (“Lord have mercy”) are eerily chanted in the background during the theatrical “Hellfire” number towards the end of the film.
Once he signed on toThe Prince of Egypt, Schwartz went on a research trip to Egypt as well. He described writing Moses’ song “All I Ever Wanted” on an evening at the Temple of Kom Ombo, one of his stops on a trip along the Nile River. A few years earlier, he remembered writing “much of the lyric to ‘Out There’ [fromThe Hunchback of Notre Dame] sitting atop Notre Dame on a trip to Paris.” This focus on writing music in the spirit of the culture was central to Schwartz’s contributions to the Disney musicals towards the end of the Disney Renaissance.
By contrast,Mulan’s power pop centric soundtrack is a sincere departure from the Chinese sound. The songs, with music by singer-songwriter Matthew Wilder and lyrics by Disney veteran David Zippel (Hercules), incorporated authentic Chinese instrumentation such as dizi flutes and zithers, but melodically reverted to a more western style.
HadMulancontinued down the route of incorporating a truer East Asian influence to its music, perhaps the rest of the movie would have followed with greater historical authenticity. Though many adoreMulanfor its peppy songs and off-the-wall humor, was its lack of reverence its success or its downfall? In fairness,some make the argumentthat the original plan for the film went in a far more undesirable direction with an even less historically accurate East-meets-West romance narrative.
Nothing is for certain, but what is clear is that due to a series of unrelated events and Disney leadership in-fighting,Mulanended a notable film history era as one of the final films of Disney Renaissance. Maybe that was justMulan’s destiny.
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