The Disney film featuring the song “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” is Mulan.
The song appears in Disney’s 1998 animated film Mulan during a training montage led by Captain Li Shang. Shang attempts to transform a group of inexperienced recruits into capable soldiers, while Mulan secretly trains alongside them after taking her father’s place in the army.
Matthew Wilder composed the music and David Zippel wrote the lyrics. Donny Osmond performed the singing voice for Shang, while the sequence also features the singing voices of Lea Salonga as Mulan and other cast members as the recruits. The number mixes military-style percussion, pop songwriting, and an intentionally ironic message about proving what it means to be a “man,” since Mulan ultimately succeeds through determination and ingenuity rather than brute strength alone.
The song is often remembered for the arrow challenge that frames the montage: Mulan retrieves an arrow from a tall pole after the other recruits fail. “Reflection” and “A Girl Worth Fighting For” are also songs from Mulan, but neither is the training song associated with Shang’s demanding boot camp.