It’s Mulan, live-action style!

Fresh out of China, Hua Mulan 《花木兰》 is kind of like that Disney movie we all know and love, but live-action and with a hardcore amount of fighting! I don’t know that it can possibly compare to the animated feature, which manifested penultimate brilliance in the form of the song “I’ll Make a Man out of You”, but I may give it a chance anyway. It’s directed by Hong Kong filmmaker Jingle Ma (马楚成) and features an all-star cast.

Vicki Zhao Wei (赵薇), a veteran of historical action films, plays Mulan in this version of the classic tale. Starring alongside her, as her steamy hot romantic interest, is Chen Kun (陈坤). The two worked together previously  in the film Painted Skin (画皮) in 2008. Let’s throw in a picture of him:

Apparently Jackie Chan’s kid, Jaycee Chan (房祖名), is also in the film…

I found all that info out on the promotional site on Sina and was thinking to myself, “okay, cool, seems like your usual Chinese historical action movie, but with a girl lead kicking the ass”.

Then, all of the sudden, I see this random white dude ~!

Wait! Hold on, hold up, hold the phone! A white dude was sooooo not in the Disney version of this film. What’s this random white guy doing in a Chinese period piece? No, really, who in the world is he?

So, I dug around the internet a little bit and I discovered that he’s the Russian pop star Vitas (维塔斯, in Chinese). Of course, it makes perfect sense that a Russian pop star would be hanging out in China, in Chinese garb, during the Northern Wei Dynasty. Why was I confused? It’s all good.

No, but, really….wtf? I guess I’m going to have to watch the movie to figure this one out. If it’s going to be the new fad to hand out Chinese historical roles to white people, sign me up!

You can see the trailer below: