Disney-fying Mulan

One of the articles that we were asked to read for this week was about the Disney-fication of the Chinese story of Mulan, a young girl who pretends to be a man and takes her father's place in the army. I can still remember sitting in the movie theater, watching as the credit sequence unfolded, revealing the Great Wall being painted by an invisible hand in dark watercolors. It was like nothing I had seen before, so, of course, I was enthralled. However, I think I would have appreciated it more had I known what I know now after reading this article.

Two things (one being a sort of branch of the other) struck me about this article. Firstly, I was appalled to learn that the creators had tried to make Mulan a love story. As Joseph M. Chan reports in his article, the original text is "about filial piety, which is traditionally ranked as the most important virtue" (232). Understandably, Disney wanted to adapt the story to make it "work" in the American film circuit, but, seriously - a love story? To me, this is an issue of respecting the original cultural text. Readers, do you agree that it was the duty of Disney to stay within the reasonable bounds of the original story? 

As an offshoot of this issue, the heads of this project made the writers, who had been working on Mulan for at least two years, completely rewrite the script, making it about a woman who found her own strength through her trials. Okay, so it's not the original message, but it's much closer, right? Still, do you think it was the responsibility of Disney to respect the culture of China and to produce a film that closely followed one of its cultural texts? Or do you think this deviation is acceptable, making it both enjoyable for the American audience while reminiscent of the original story? Also, I'm curious to hear what you would think if Disney hadn't been presented with this story at first. What if this were a known story in America (that is, before this movie) and they had decided to use it to create a new project? I'm not sure I could say just how I would feel if this were the case.