TRUE GRIT
IN EVERY DIRECTION: mountains, surrounding us, dwarfing us. The beauty, the peace here in New Zealand’s Ahuriri Valley is intimidating. Then suddenly, on a nearby ridge, dozens of spear-wielding Huns arrive on horses, as ominous as the clouds above them. This is Disney’s very live-action take on Mulan , and the Huns — led by Jason Scott Lee’s fierce, heavily scarred warrior Bori Khan — survey the land, emanating evil.
“Every day in this location has been unbelievable,” says producer Jason Reed, taking it all in. It’s September 2018, and the Mulan crew has been here a week. “Coming to set every morning with the sun coming up on these mountains...it’s amazing.” There’s nothing else quite like this scenery, and it’s rare, also, to be in the midst of such classical, epic filmmaking. There are no green screens here. On Disney remakes of late, there have been stunning sets, incredible computer-assisted wizardry, and pioneering razzle-dazzle all round, from CG elephants to CG mice. Not a single living creature graced The Lion King’s digital plains. Mulan , though, ostensibly remaking the 1998 cartoon classic but delving back a lot further, is different. This is old-school filmmaking, a grand vision enacted on a grand scale. This, then, is how the world’s biggest animation studio sheds its skin.
HIRING A FRESH VOICE
“I KNEW THAT they had wanted to talk to me about it,” says Niki Caro, sitting down with in London this January. “And they knew that I was interested. But
