It's Official: 1998 Mulan's Li Shang Is Canonically Bisexual
Despite the box office flop of a live-action, Disney's Mulan remains one of the most beloved animated films of all time, and Li Chang has been an unofficial bi icon for 25 years. A new (and juicy) detail about the 1998's movie has resurfaced.
Shortly after Mulan premiered in 2020, one Twitter user decided to commemorate the original film with a series of fun facts and an analysis of historical inaccuracies.
With Li Shang being cut from the live-action, and fans outraged at the erasure of yet another LGBTQA+ character, fans started an online campaign dedicated to Shang's bisexuality.
In one of the posts, the said Twitter user supported this campaign with a hashtag.
What she probably didn't expect was that one of the animators of the original movie would pop up in the comments.
Tim Hodge shared that he wanted Shang to tell Mulan that he would have kissed her – before he knew that she was, in fact, a woman!
This means that if this line hadn't been scrapped, we would have a canonical confirmation that Li Shang is actually bi or at least somewhat queer. It's a shame that this scene never made it into the movie!
In the 2020's live-action remake, the character was split in two: Commander Tung and Chen Honghui.
While some believe that Mulan (as Hua Jun) and Honghui's relationship in the live-action was even more "homoerotic" than Mulan and Shang's interaction in the animated movie, it still lacked the soul, mutual respect, and chemistry that fans had hoped for.
2020's Mulan may have flopped at the box office and faced several controversies before, during, and after its release, but it did receive a few Oscar nominations and generally positive reviews from critics.
Is it the most rewatchable movie of all time? Probably not. However, as far as Disney 's live-action remakes go, Mulan is a pretty good example of a movie that is not just a scene-by-scene rip-off of the original.
Could have been a lot worse.