Variable separation approach, which is a powerful approach in the linear science, has been successfully generalized to the nonlinear science as nonlinear variable separation methods. The (2 + 1)-dimensional modified Korteweg–de Vries (mKdV) equation is hereby investigated, and new variable separation solutions are obtained by the truncated Painlevé expansion method and the extended tanh-function method. By choosing appropriate functions for the solution involving three low-dimensional arbitrary functions, which is derived by the truncated Painlevé expansion method, two kinds of nonlinear phenomena, namely, dromion reconstruction and soliton fission phenomena, are discussed.