为什么选刘亦菲饰演花木兰？听听《花木兰》导演怎么说？（附视频&摘要稿）
近日，迪士尼真人版《花木兰》（Mulan）主演刘亦菲和导演妮基·卡罗（Niki Caro）共同登上《好莱坞报道者》（The Hollywood Reporter）杂志封面，并接受幕后采访。俩人以“对话”的形式，回答了一些影迷提出的问题。
看了刘亦菲和导演的幕后采访，还有《花木兰》的幕后动作戏花絮，感叹刘亦菲真的太棒了！刘亦菲饰演的花木兰，90%的特技表演都是自己完成而且完成的非常好，幕后的打戏训练依然是英姿飒爽！《花木兰》导演妮基•卡罗对刘亦菲说道，“当你来到试镜地点，开始90分钟的负重体能训练，我就知道你是我们要找的战士”，“我希望自己能像花木兰，像亦菲一样，成为最杰出的女演员，同时也十分漂亮。”
《花木兰》导演尼琪·卡罗在专访中表示刘亦菲是花木兰最佳人选，她谈及选用刘亦菲的原因，并透露面试花木兰过程，“坐了14小时飞机后，她没有休息就开始了紧张的面试，没有喊过一声累。亦菲是一名真正的“战士”，也是我在“战场”上真正的伙伴!”据悉，电影《花木兰》中刘亦菲饰演花木兰、甄子丹饰演唐将军、巩俐饰演女巫、李连杰饰演皇帝、李截饰演单于、安佑森饰演陈宏辉，影片3月27日北美上映。
尼琪·卡罗认为刘亦菲是饰演花木兰的最佳人选，不仅因为她会讲英文，有武术技能，符合这个角色的硬性要求，而且她还是一个不喊累不怕吃苦的演员，在坐个了14个小时的长途飞行后，刘亦菲没有休息立马投入面试当中，从未听到她喊过一声累。前几日某社交平台上不少营销号纷纷晒出电影《花木兰》剧照，表示很期待这部国际大片，毕竟片中有不少重量级华人演员现身，更是天仙姐姐刘亦菲的又一大力作!只不过片花被曝光后，许多人在感慨《花木兰》中人物服装道具贴合历史的时候，也普遍认为片中人物的形象都太丑，只能说一千人中有一千个哈姆雷特，众口难调。
如今《花木兰》的拍摄已经完成，花木兰是一个古代英雄，大家从小就认识的历史人物，有很多的影视作品以及戏曲都对她进行过演绎，花木兰这个形象让人感觉很佩服，迪士尼对这个角色的开发也很好，它是在之前的动画基础上进行翻拍，使用真人拍摄相信对这个作品还是有很大帮助的。
而且其中使用了刘亦菲作为主角，出演花木兰这个形象最初还是引起了很多人的争议，不少人对刘亦菲的印象就是比较文弱，出演花木兰这样很勇敢的角色可能会有一点欠缺，不过之前发布的预告片中刘亦菲的表现还是非常惊艳的，大家也都认为未来刘亦菲的出演一定会非常经典。没错，这部新电影叫做《花木兰》，讲的是女主花木兰替父从军的故事。
而在戏中，刘亦菲扮演花木兰，众所周知这花木兰可是巾帼英雄，而且全球声誉也很高，加上这回《花木兰》是迪士尼出品，看来这刘亦菲要刷新大家对她演技的认识。而还真别说，在预告中，刘亦菲武打动作行云流水，看来这部戏要稳了。那么在《花木兰》已经开始预热，自然是会晒出很多新剧照了，只不过这部戏有一批实力演员助阵，这回收视不用愁!
The high-profile remake, with an all-Asian cast, a PG-13 rating and a politically-charged star, was always going to pose major risks. Then the coronavirus upended its entire release plan.
Liu Yifei, star of Disney's live-action remake of Mulan, lives in Beijing, but she is originally from Wuhan, epicenter of the coronavirus. In January, the 32-year-old actress left China for Los Angeles to begin press for the film, weeks before the virus' outbreak, which has now infected more than 77,000 people, killed more than 2,500 and wreaked havoc in her home country. She says she doesn't have any family or close friends personally affected by the disease — she left Wuhan when she was 10 — but the epidemic has added an impossible-to-foresee variable to her film's March 27 worldwide release.
Liu pauses when asked about the outbreak. "It's really heavy for me to even think about it," she says. "People are doing the right thing. They are being careful for themselves and others. I'm so touched actually to see how they haven't been out for weeks. I'm really hoping for a miracle and that this will just be over soon."
In China, Liu is a household name, nicknamed "Fairy Sister" for her elegance and beauty. Modeling since age 8, she broke out in the 2003 Chinese TV series Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils, a commercial hit in China and the highest-rated Chinese drama in Taiwan at the time, and hasn't stopped working in film and TV since, earning fashion partnerships with Adidas, Shiseido and Armani along the way.
Disney and director Niki Caro selected Liu from more than 1,000 aspirants from around the world to star as Hua Mulan, the Chinese heroine who disguises herself as a man to fight in the Imperial Army in a film carefully designed to appeal to Western and Chinese audiences alike. But now there's a question of when Mulan will be released in China. With the coronavirus shutting down all 70,000 of the country's theaters since Jan. 24, it's unclear — and more unlikely every day — that multiplexes will reopen in time for its planned release.
(Several high-profile U.S. films, including Universal's Dolittle and 1917 and Searchlight's Jojo Rabbit, saw their February releases scrapped.) "It certainly has worldwide and global appeal, but there's no denying that this is a very important film for the Chinese market," says Comscore analyst Paul Dergarabedian. "It's a huge blow for Disney if it doesn't release in China." Disney president of production Sean Bailey says he's "looking at it day by day."
Of course, this puts added pressure on the $200 million budgeted film — the priciest of Disney's recent live-action remakes — to perform in the U.S. and the rest of the world. Liu, who is enveloped in her own storm of controversy based on a political social media post about the Hong Kong protests, says she is trying hard not to think about all that. "It would really be a loss for me if I let the pressure overtake my possibilities," says the actress, who learned English when she lived in New York as a child for four years with her mother, a dancer, after her parents' divorce.
Even before the outbreak of the virus, Mulan — the first Disney-branded film with an all-Asian cast and the first to be rated PG-13 (for battle scenes) — would have marked one of the studio's riskiest live-action films to date. While the original 1998 Mulan was a critical and commercial hit, garnering a Golden Globe and Oscar nomination and grossing more than $300 million worldwide ($475 million today), it faltered at the Chinese box office. Part of the reason is that the Chinese government stalled its premiere for nearly a year because of lingering anger over Disney's 1997 release of Kundun, Martin Scorsese's Dalai Lama movie that dealt with China's occupation of Tibet. By the time Mulan reached theaters in late February 1999, most children had returned to school after the Chinese New Year holiday and pirated copies were widely available. For the new film, the plan was to counter piracy by releasing the movie in China the same day as the rest of the world, a strategy that's no longer possible.
In China, Liu is a household name, nicknamed "Fairy Sister" for her elegance and beauty.
The film also has tested the ability and tolerance of Disney — which aims to be ideologically neutral — in managing global political fallout. In August, Liu stirred up a major controversy when she reposted a pro-police comment on Chinese platform Weibo (where she has more than 66 million followers) at the height of the violence in Hong Kong. Her action was seen by critics of the Chinese government as supporting police brutality; soon after, the hashtag #BoycottMulan started trending on Twitter. Liu, who has American co-citizenship from her time in the U.S., was harshly criticized around the world for supporting oppression.
"I think it's obviously a very complicated situation and I'm not an expert," she says now, cautious in the extreme. "I just really hope this gets resolved soon." When pressed, Liu, whose answer seemed rehearsed, declines to say much more, simply repeating, "I think it's just a very sensitive situation." (Bailey also deflects when asked: "Yifei's politics are her own, and we are just focused on the movie and her performance.")
"Most Chinese celebrities choose to avoid posting such political statements because of the risks to their careers internationally," says Dorothy Lau, a professor at the Academy of Film, Hong Kong Baptist University. But though Liu's post drew criticism globally, some experts believe the political drama could actually result in more support for the film in China. "At the time, the government came out in various publications supporting the film very strongly," says USC professor Stanley Rosen, who specializes in Chinese politics and society. "There's a real impetus on the part of the Chinese government to make this work. I'm sure the government is going to try to show that the boycott has had no effect." And while her comment might still anger filmgoers in Hong Kong, where the recent live-action Aladdin took in $8 million, that market is tiny compared to the mainland (total 2019 Hong Kong box office was $245 million compared with China's $9.2 billion). "Most people outside Hong Kong have likely forgotten about this controversy," says Rosen. "But the Chinese government does not forget these things."
The fact that this version of Mulan is a large-scale war epic inspired more
by the ancient Chinese ballad than the original animated film may also help win
fans in Beijing, but the choice carries its own significant risks: The film
needs to satisfy Chinese audiences raised on the legend while not disappointing
a generation of fans in Asia (and elsewhere) for whom the animated film is
foundational. "People would come in to audition and would say, 'Sorry, I know
this is really unprofessional, but before I start, I just want you to know, the
animated movie was the first time I saw someone that looked like me speak
English in a movie theater,' " says producer Jason Reed. "The stakes couldn't be
higher."
"I told [director] Niki [Caro] that I really want to show Mulan's complexity," says Liu. "What made her to choose her path? Was she afraid, was she hesitant?"
Mulan also represents a leap of faith in the film's director, Caro, whose previous two films boasted budgets of about 10 percent of Mulan's (The Zookeeper's Wife and Disney's 2015 sports drama McFarland USA were each in the $20 million to $25 million range). Caro, 53, was not Disney's first choice. Before hiring the New Zealand filmmaker, the studio targeted directors of Asian descent, including Taiwanese Oscar winner Ang Lee (he was busy promoting Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk) and Chinese helmer Jiang Wen. Still, Caro showcased a knack for representing cultures outside of her own with her 2002 debut Whale Rider, which follows a young Maori girl who wants to become chief, a role traditionally reserved for men.
The feminist story of Mulan resonated deeply with Caro. "When I first started wanting to be a filmmaker, there was so little precedent for women doing this [big studio] work," she says. She has now directed the most expensive live-action film by a woman, joining only a handful (Kathryn Bigelow, Ava DuVernay and Patty Jenkins) who have helmed films costing more than $100 million. "Patty changed the game with Wonder Woman. It was like a shot of adrenaline for me as a filmmaker," says Caro, who assembled a mostly female-led crew, including cinematographer Mandy Walker, costume designer Bina Daigeler, makeup designer Denise Kum and first assistant director Liz Tan.
Caro struggled to find an actress to play Mulan. The global hunt began in October 2016, when Caro sent a team of casting directors to each continent and virtually every small village in China. "She's a needle in a haystack, but we were going to find her," says Caro. "It's impossible to make this movie without this person."
To those still upset that an Asian filmmaker didn't get the job, Caro responds: "Although it's a critically important Chinese story and it's set in Chinese culture and history, there is another culture at play here, which is the culture of Disney, and that the director, whoever they were, needed to be able to handle both — and here I am."
Soon after Caro's hiring, rumors about the movie began to swirl online. Years of studios centering Asian movies around white protagonists (from Scarlett Johansson's Ghost in the Shell to Matt Damon's The Great Wall) meant the threat of whitewashing loomed large. An early report online claimed that the first draft, penned by Elizabeth Martin and Lauren Hynek, featured a white male protagonist.
"This is the first time I've been on a big touchstone movie with the internet what it is today. And I had a Google alert set, so I'd see these things, 'Oh, there was originally a white male lead, or they're casting Jennifer Lawrence,' and they were all just made up," says Reed, who adds that there may have been two non-Chinese characters in the initial script, but both were secondary roles.
"I was determined that whoever played Mulan was not going to be fragile and feminine," says Caro. "She had to pass as a man in a man's army."
The rumors may have been unfounded, but the fallout was real: The Lawrence-as-Mulan story sparked a 2016 petition, "Tell Disney You Don't Want a Whitewashed Mulan!" drawing more than 110,000 signatures.
Ironically, as that rumor swirled, Caro struggled to find an actress to play Mulan. The global hunt began in October 2016, when Caro sent a team of casting directors to each continent and virtually every small village in China. They were looking for an actress who could play Mulan across three phases, from a young woman unsure of her place to a soldier masquerading as a man and, finally, as an empowered warrior. She had to be fluent in English, handle the physical demands of martial arts and deliver the more emotional moments with Mulan's family. "She's a needle in a haystack, but we were going to find her," says Caro. "It's impossible to make this movie without this person."
Though the studio cast a wide multinational net, Bill Kong — a veteran Chinese producer known for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Monster Hunt who was brought on as a producer on Mulan — advised Caro that in order for this film to play well in China, not just anyone of Asian descent would work. "The first thing I told her was, 'Hire a Chinese girl. You can't hire a Japanese girl to do this,' " he says.
Actresses who made it past that initial audition were brought to Los Angeles, but, after vetting several promising candidates for months, Caro decided to start over. (The search dragged on for so long that Disney delayed the original November 2018 release date.) Eventually, Liu, who had been unavailable during the first pass because of a TV show in China, was able to audition.
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