Film / Red Cliff

Among horses, Red Hare. Among film adaptations, Red Cliff.

Red Cliff (original title 赤壁, Chi Bi) is a film directed by John Woo and inspired by a famous battle in Romance of the Three Kingdoms, based on the Three Kingdoms period of ancient China. The first part was released in 2008 and its second part in 2009; in some countries, only a condensed version was released. It stars Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Zhang Fengyi, Chang Chen, Hu Jun, Lin Chiling and Zhao Wei.

In 208 CE, the centuries-old Han Dynasty is crumbling. To the South, warlords Sun Quan and Liu Bei have set up the independent kingdoms of Wu and Shu, respectively, while the scheming Prime Minister Cao Cao obtains from the young, naive Emperor leadership of a huge army to be sent to crush Sun and Liu's "rebellions". Cao Cao's Wei forces swiftly advance into the Kingdom of Shu and face Liu Bei's army at the Battle of Changban, where Liu's sworn brothers Zhang Fei and Guan Yu (who will later be deified as the Chinese God of War) successfully hold back the attackers, giving civilians enough time to evacuate. However, despite Zhao Yun's bravery, Liu's wife is killed by Wei soldiers, and only his infant son can be saved.

After the battle, Liu's master strategist Zhuge Liang is sent to the Kingdom of Wu to talk Sun Quan into an alliance against the Wei threat. Zhuge, who finds in Sun's general Zhou Yu a kindred spirit, convinces Sun to fight rather than surrender. The decision is taken to face Cao's army at the strategic stronghold of Red Cliff. During a first skirmish, Sun Quan's sister Sun Shangxiang's all-women cavalry force lures Cao's vanguard into a trap, and with the clever use of the Eight Trigrams Formation, Wu and Shu's forces defeats the enemy.

Cao's forces set up camp on the opposite riverbank to Red Cliff, and begins to plan for a large-scale naval attack. However, Shangxiang infiltrates the camp and provides Sun and Liu with valuable reconnaisance. An outbreak of typhoid fever weakens Wei forces, but Cao cunningly sends contaminated corpses to Red Cliff, resulting in Wu and Shu soldiers strickened with the deadly infection. Disheartened by the epidemic, Liu Bei pulls out of the alliance, although Zhuge stays behind out of personal loyalty to Zhou Yu. In order to remedy Wu's lack of arrows, Zhuge sends straw boats within range of Wei forces, and the latter unleash thousands of arrows into the boats.

Shangxiang returns from Cao's camp with a map of his army's formation. In order to buy time for a southeastern wind to be used as a fire attack in Wu's preemptive, Zhou's wife Xiao Qiao personally goes to Cao, knowing he has long since been infatuated with her, with the intent to distract him while Wu attacks. As the wind turns in the middle of the night, Wu send fireships to destroy Cao's navy, while Liu Bei, who had only faked defection, strikes Cao's camp from land. With the Battle of Red Cliff finished, Cao finds himself defeated and retreats to the North.

Not to be confused with Redwall.

---

Contains examples of:

• The Ace: Zhou Yu is portrayed as a superb fighter on par with the likes of Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, and Zhao Yun and a master strategist on par with Zhuge Liang. Both his combat and tactical prowess allows him to form a Bash Brothers bond with both Zhuge Liang and Zhao Yun.
• Action Girl: Sun Shangxiang; also technically a Lady of War, since she's a princess, if a rather tomboyish one.
• Actor Allusion:
  • Sun Shangxiang dressing as a guy while watching a ball game... with martial arts...
  • Zhao Wei would again dress as a man while playing the titular character Hua Mulan.
  • There's a possible jab at Lin Chiling's career in modelling, when Zhou Yu drinks her tea and praises it to her face, like he was in a commercial.
    • Speaking of whom, Zhou Yu interrupts Zhang Fei's calligraphy practice in order to analyse his handwriting. This was actually a plot point when Tony Leung Chiu-wai starred in Hero (2002).
• Adaptational Badass: Xiao Qiao. No, really. From a side character most people with passing knowlege of Three Kingdoms have never heard of, to someone who walks right into enemy territory and calmly has tea with the Magnificent Bastard, it's safe to say John Woo has done for Xiao Qiao what Michael Bay did for Bumblebee. It's not hard to see how rumors that she would get a fight scene as well would come about.
• Adaptation Distillation: The film combines some of the elements from Records of the Three Kingdoms and the historical fiction Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
• Adapted Out: Sun Ce is a Posthumous Character in this version, but for some reason his wife Da Qiao is completely forgotten despite her sister Xiao Qiao having such prominent focus.
• An Aesop: Zhou Yu demonstrates one by snapping a single straw, then trying and failing with a whole handful to illustrate the point of the alliance. Also:
  Children: What use is reading if we're hardly able to eat?
  Guan Yu: When you have mastered reading, you will have much to eat. You'll learn in time.
• A Father to His Men: Liu Bei makes straw footwear for his soldiers by hand. Gan Xing too, till his final moments
• Amazon Brigade: Sun Shangxiang's all-women cavalry archers.
• Anger Born of Worry: Not surprisingly, this is Sun Quan's first reaction to Shangxiang returning from her more-or-less successful spying mission. It's highly justified when you remember there was a typhoid outbreak in that camp... and their father and brother are gone, and they're all that's left of the family.
• Angry Eyebrows: Gan Xing's give him a perpetual scowl similar to Japanese woodblock prints of ancient samurai (appropriate since his actor is Japanese).
• Animal Motifs: Zhuge Liang and Sun Quan compare Cao Cao to a tiger they hunt in the woods. The hunt is really a Secret Test of Character for Sun Quan to decide on whether or not to go to war with Cao Cao.
• Annoying Arrows:
  • Most of the major characters shrug off up to half a dozen arrows.
  • However, averted with the infantry. And Gan Xing, who knows he's pretty much dead, thus goes for the Suicide Attack.
• Armor Is Useless: Arrows almost always punch straight through any armor they hit.

• Arrows on Fire: Used during the climatic battle to set off explosives, or just take down unfortunate mooks.
• Ash Face: What causes Gan Xing to finally decide the fire bombs are big enough is when one of them leaves his face covered in soot.
• Audible Gleam: The golden shields reflecting sunlight to blind the soldiers and confuse their horses.
• Audible Sharpness: Zhou Yu's sword.
• Automatic Crossbows: Historically Zhuge Liang invented them. China used them in battle up until the mid 1800's.
• Battle Chant: Cao Cao's troops are dying of typhoid. Then, in a rare, villainous example of this trope, he gives a rallying speech to his men, who gather around him and together with the rest of his troops begin chanting 'Victory!' over and over again.
• Back-to-Back Badasses: Zhou Yu and Zhao Yun
• Berserk Button: Do NOT interrupt Zhang Fei's calligraphy practice! It's supposed to cultivate DISCIPLINE!!
• Big Badass Battle Sequence: Three in total:
  • The opening where Liu Bei's army is on the retreat.
  • The climax of Part One, where the allies ambush Cao Cao's cavalry using the tortoise formation.
  • The climax of Part Two, perhaps one of the purest examples of this trope ever, running over half an hour of unbroken screen time in which the allies launch their full-blown assault on Cao Cao's camp, complete with catapults, hails of arrows, exploding fire ships, bombs, cavalry charges, and much more.
• Bittersweet Ending: Cao Cao is defeated, but at great cost to both sides. It's worse for those who know what happened next between the Shu and Wu alliance.
• Boisterous Bruiser: Zhang Fei, naturally. The man's known for his war cries.
• Bromantic Foil: Zhuge Liang and Zhou Yu, natch.
• Cannot Spit It Out: Xiao Qiao can't bring herself to tell Zhou Yu that she's pregnant until she pretends to defect to Cao Cao, however she all but spells it out for him before that.
  • Actually, she spells it out much earlier, when he asks her why she keeps writing the same Chinese characters for "good" (好) over and over again, and she puts his head to her stomach, asking if he can hear anything. Zhou Yu was apparently holding the Idiot Ball at the time.
    • He seems like less of an idiot in the full version. They had been trying to name a foal that Zhuge Liang helped birth recently.
• Captain Ersatz:
  • Gan Xing is based on the historical Gan Ning, right down to being a former pirate. Done because Gan Xing dies in a Heroic Sacrifice, while Gan Ning historically survived the battle.
  • There's also Xiahou Jun, presumably a stand-in for Xiahou Yuan or Xiahou Dun.
• Casual Danger Dialogue: During the straw boat scheme, along with a cup of tea. Turns out they merely collect the arrows and don't provide much defense against them...
• Close-Call Haircut: Achieved by an arrow through the topknot.
• Color-Coded Armies: White for Shu, red for Wu, and black for Wei. Their uniforms are otherwise virtually identical.
• Cool Old Guy: Huang Gai and Guan Yu
• Cultured Badass: Guan Yu combines this with Friend to All Children as he spends his offtime as a schoolteacher. Whereas Zhang Fei has yet to master calligraphy.
  • Zhou Yu, too. The northerners know him more for being a great musician, and their southern allies have to warn him that he has been their deadliest foe for years.
• Deadly Dodging: In the second part, Zhao Yun does this against Wei pikemen coming at him from all sides, with predictable results.
• Demoted to Extra: To a certain extent, Huang Gai. Historically, one of the reasons the Wu fleet was able to pull off the fire attack was because Cao Cao was expecting Huang Gai's ships from a false surrender ruse. This was expanded in the novel with an elaborate plan known as the "Bitter Meat Scheme" involving a beating and some Feed the Mole. Hand Waved in the film when Huang suggests the plan to Zhou Yu, but Zhou dismisses it, saying it's unnecessary, also stating that such a beating would leave Huang Gai unable to fight. He still appears in many scenes, often as Those Two Guys with Lu Su, and still leads the initial fire attack.
• Diegetic Soundtrack Usage: When Wu army drills led by Zhou Yu are interrupted by a peasant boy with a flute.
• Disposable Woman: Liu Bei's wives in the beginning.
• Distracted by the Sexy: Most of the male characters become visibly flustered when Shangxiang takes her enemy uniform off in front of them, before Xiao Qiao makes them turn away.
  • Xiao Qiao uses this tactic to buy time for the Sun army.
• Due to the Dead: Zhou Yu decides to give the bodies of soldiers Cao Cao sent across the river a proper funeral, despite them being enemies. The fact that they're all infected with Typhoid and need to be cremated before they infect any more of his men is also a factor.
• Ephebophile: Cao Cao admits that he was first taken to Xiao Qiao when he visited her father and caught sight of her quite a while back. "So very young, yet already a lady."
  • It is also debatable whether he is an ephebophile or he suffers from Single-Target Sexuality. Insofar as the movie is concerned, he is only interested in women that at least resemble of Xiao Qiao. He certainly does not lose interest in her when she becomes an adult. This is a plot point.
• Epic Flail: In the first part, a huge chain of spiked rods is used to break a seemingly-impassable shield barrier. In the second part, Zhao Yun rips the ropes off a burning barricade with his spear and uses it (still burning too) like this.
• Epic Movie: This is big for China, a big place we're talking about, and one of the most famous Chinese historical dramas.
• Everything's Better with Rainbows: A rainbow appears over the mountains as Zhuge Liang and Zhou Yu part.
• Evil Chancellor: Cao Cao's transparent ambition is to usurp the imperial throne once he's done with the southern rebellions.
• Evil Is Hammy: Cao Cao
• Expository Hairstyle Change: At the end of the big battle, an arrow undoes Cao Cao's topknot, and his hair comes undone. It symbolizes his defeat (while paradoxically making him look more badass)
  • Long, unfastened hair on men would only be considered badass to Western audiences. To the Chinese, only the mad, the homeless, and/or the poorest of the poor would wear their hair that way — emphasizing Cao Cao's defeat.
• Expy: Gan Xing is based on Gan Ning (courtesy name Xingba). "based" because the historical/novel Gan Ning didn't die— much less did a Heroic Sacrifice, in the Red Cliffs campaign. Also, he dies at the Battle of Xiaoting in the hands of Shamoke in Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
• Finger Poke of Doom:
  • Shangxiang brings down Lu Su's horse with just her thumb.
  • And then she does the same thing to Liu Bei. The Oh, Crap! looks on Zhuge Liang and Lu Su's faces when they realize what she's up to are priceless.
• First Love: Sun Shangxiang, the princess of Wu, forcibly rejects any proposal ideas her brother makes including knocking out Liu Bei with a punch, and falls in love with a soldier from Wei who also happens to be the star athlete. The first time she saw him, he single-handedly dominated a soccer-esque game.
  • The athlete also happens to be dumb—and strong—as an ox. And she was masquerading as a man at the time. So whether this constitutes love or friendship is open to interpretation.
• Foe-Tossing Charge: A few, but a particularly epic one courtesy of Zhang Fei. Even before that, Guan Yu breaks out of Cao Cao's forces by tackling a Wei general off his horse in order to steal said horse.
• Foreshadowing: In the second part, Zhou Yu reminisces about his school days with his old friend Jiang Gan, bringing up how he faked his handwriting and got him in trouble. This is exactly how he manages to con Cao Cao and screw over Jiang Gan in what turns out to be the very last time...
  • Xiao Qiao asks Zhou Yu whether the bloodshed could have been avoided if they simply sat down with Cao Cao and discussed it over tea. Towards the end of the movie, that's pretty much what she does.
  • When the allies first lay eyes on Cao Cao's armada, Zhang Fei claims that, if they were to use the ships as firewood, it would take over a hundred years to burn them all. No points for guessing how they defeat the invasion force, and it took considerably less than a hundred years.
  • Not a foreshadowing of anything in the film, but the exchange between Zhou Yu and Zhuge Liang about the possibility of them ending up on opposite sides of a battle in the future is precisely what happens a little while later.
• Four-Star Badass: The three Shu generals (Guan Yu, Zhang Fei and Zhao Yun) are so immensely badass that they turn battles BY THEMSELVES. Cao Cao even lampshades this at one point by essentially asking why none of his officers are as badass as the ones serving Liu Bei. Zhou Yu and Gan Xing less so, but they're not too shabby themselves.
• Funny Background Event: When Zhou Yu interrupts Zhang Fei's calligraphy practice, Zhuge Liang can be seen covering his ears just before the yelling starts.
• Genghis Gambit: The alliance between the Shu and Wu is very much the result of them facing a common threat.
• Heroic BSoD: Sun Shangxiang when her friend in the Wei Army is killed before her eyes. She doesn't move until after the battle is over.
• Historical Beauty Update: The biggest examples are probably heart-throbs Takeshi Kaneshiro and Chang Chen as Zhuge Liang and Sun Quan, respectively. Tony Leung as Zhou Yu may be an exception, as Zhou Yu was actually considered very handsome by his contemporaries.
• Historical Villain Upgrade: Cao Cao, as is common with adaptations of Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
• Honor Before Reason: Why Guan Yu didn't kill Cao Cao when he had the chance.
• Idiosyncratic Wipes: The second part begins with a Clip Show of the first, punctuated by sword slashes. They're maintained for the rest of the movie
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Guan Yu does this to Wei pikemen with their own pikes. Also see Deadly Dodging above.
• Incendiary Exponent: The fireship attack.
• Kiai: "HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!" *Zhang Fei tackles a fucking horse*
• Kill It with Fire: The famous strategy Zhuge Liang and Zhou Yu use to wipe out a navy eight times the size of their own.
• Last-Minute Reprieve: Zhao Yu and Zhuge Liang both literally bet their heads that their schemes (To eliminate Cao Cao's admirals and to steal 100,000 arrows from Cao Cao, respectively) will succeed. Both of them get notification of their success moments before they are about to be executed for their failure.
• Libation for the Dead: In part 1, the generals of Wu and Shu pour out some wine in memory of the messenger slain by Cao Cao.
• Love Ruins the Realm: Cao Cao allows himself to be caught flat-footed by the alliance attack because he was engrossed by Xiao Qiao making tea.
• Made of Iron: Zhao Yun suffers injuries that would kill mooks several times over, yet it doesn't seem to hamper his combat ability at all. Ditto for his horse.
• Merchandise-Driven: Inverted: Namco Bandai's BB Senshi Sangokuden SD Gundam model kits, also featuring characters from Romance of the Three Kingdoms, were released with no connection to the film intended, until the rising popularity of the movie in Japan led them to re-release its own versions of Zhuge Liang and Zhou Yu (Koumei Re-GZ and Shuuyu Hyakushiki) in a recolored boxset, including dioramas with screenshots from the movie
  • The popularity of Red Cliff is probably one reason why BB Senshi Sangokuden got an Animated Adaptation. Regardless, Sangokuden is awesome in its own right
  • Many tropers are probably a little more familiar with Koei's Dynasty Warriors series, where Red Cliff is The Battle of Chi-Bi, although the series share little in common with this movie, aside from characters and small tidbits of reference to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
• Misfit Mobilization Moment: And how!
• More Dakka: An amusing scene where the Gan Xing keeps asking to make the firebombs larger and larger.
  • "GAN XING WANT BIG BOOM!"
• Ms. Fanservice: Xiao Qiao stars in a Gratuitious Sex Scene with Zhou Yu to make the audience care about her more, since she goes to Cao Cao's camp before the actual battle later after in an attempt to get him to throw the fight. Also, she is usually the focus of the scenes she's in and the camera also loves to focus whatever part of her skin she has exposed at that time.
• Mundane Made Awesome: In the second part. Watch as Zhou Yu practices with his sword while Xiao Qiao quotes The Art of War (see below) and brews the CRAP out of her tea.
  • Similarly, in the first part, Zhou Yu and Zhuge Liang play zithers together instead of discussing the potential alliance. They apparently gain an understanding of each other by how the other plays, and thus secure the alliance without actually talking about it at all.
• Modesty Bedsheet: After they make love, Zhou Yu and Xiao Qiao are seen cuddling naked save for a bed sheet strategically covering their waists, and Xiao Qiao keeps her breasts hidden via a Toplessness from the Back shot since she's laying on her stomach.
• "No Peeking!" Request: When Shangxiang is stripping in front of the council in order to show them the map she had concealed under her clothing, she clearly isn't concerned about her modesty, but her sister Xiao Qiao is and sends a glare to the men, causing them all to comically turn around and wait for her to unfurl the map.
• Not Even Bothering with the Accent:
  • Chang Chen as Sun Quan; his Taiwanese accent is so thick you could cut it with a knife. (The Southlands are home the Hokkien people whose dialect is spoken by a not insignificant portion of Taiwanese, so it may not be historically inaccurate.)
    • Nevermind that Mandarin did not exist at the time. Moreover, the South had its own spoken dialect, and would rarely use official court-dialect of the Han Dynasty.
  • Shidō Nakamura as Gan Xing also has some noticeably Japanese touches to his Mandarin.
• Oh, Crap!: Cao Cao's tricked into believing his two surrendered fleet admirals are traitors, and realizes he's being duped at the last possible second. "My Lord, if you kill them, who will lead the navy?" "...HALT!" *slice* He stands there paralyzed with anger.
  • As Lady Sun prepares to give her prospective fiancee Liu Bei a Tap on the Head, Lu Su (who'd suffered from the same technique earlier, albeit via his horse) realizes just beforehand and is this personified.
  • Also when Cao Cao looks on with shocked disbelief as the wind changes direction and Huang Gai commences the fire attack.
  • When Zhou Yu announces that a farmer's water buffalo was stolen by his soldiers, the perpetrators are already looking nervous. Then it's pointed out that the perps would be the only ones with muddy feet. Cut to the perps looking very nervous.
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Zhuge Liang, on top of being a brilliant strategist, is also something of an expert in music, medicine, meteorology, midwifery and rearing pigeons. The movie itself hangs a lampshade on this.
• One Bullet Left: Invoked when Zhou Yu deliberately leaves Sun Quan with just one arrow on a hunting trip.
• Perfect Poison: Cao Cao gives a drink to Jiang Gan, who had recently failed him, and the man is dead in under a minute.
• Pet the Dog: Cao Cao's speech to his sick troops, which galvanizes his entire army behind him.
  • Alternative Character Interpretation: Cao Cao is just showing how charismatic he is to manipulate his soldiers into fighting for him. It's actually more likely an accurate interpretation considering it's Cao Cao.
• Please Put Some Clothes On: When Shangxiang strips to her undergarments to unroll the map of Cao Cao's camp she had smuggled out under her clothes and repeatedly tries to get her to put her robe back on.
• Puppet King: The Emperor gets precisely one scene, in which he is verbally bullied by Cao Cao to "order" him to launch his war against the southern kingdoms in front of the entire court. Part of Liu Bei's argument as to why he and Sun Quan must unite to stop Cao Cao is that if he consolidates his hold on the south, he'll stop bothering with the pretense that he's just an Imperial Minister and claim the throne for himself.^note Something the historic Cao Cao never did, though Cao Cao's son Cao Pi did do that shortly after his father's death
• Rain of Arrows: Played With by Zhuge Liang, who uses his famous straw boat ruse to steal Wei's arrows. It works so well, the ships start listing before he turns them around.
• Rank Scales with Asskicking: As with any Romance of the Three Kingdoms based work, the generals get to kick far more ass than any of their soldiers.
• Rasputinian Death: It takes a lot to kill those guys, especially if they're generals.
• Reformed Criminal: Gan Xing and his men are former pirates.
• Refuge in Audacity: Zhou Yu's scheme to get Jiang Gan to believe that Cao Cao's Admirals are planning to defect opens with Zhou Yu reminding his old friend that he can forge other people's handwriting shortly before "accidentally" revealing the forged letter of defection. Later that evening, Zhou Yu openly states that the letter is another one of his legendary tricks. Jiang Gan still falls for it.
• Rousseau Was Right, Humans Are Bastards: Every faction simply wants to unite China under their respective rule and bring about an era of peace. The fact every faction is willing to kill lots of people to do so...
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: Both Liu Bei and Sun Quan lead their respective forces to battle. Then there's Shangxiang.
• Rule of Cool: Each and every battle sequence. Gold-plated shields, people catching a spear in mid-air and throwing it at somebody else before landing, generals running around on top of shields...
• Scenery Porn: The Southlands are described as "paradise on Earth", and the movie makes sure you know it. The drill scene is particularly prevalent. Geographically, the South was full of fertile, lush river valleys, while the flatlands of the North were too cold and dry to sustain agriculture.
• Seven Minute Lull: In the spectator stands at a ball game, which leads to everyone hearing the carrier pigeon hidden on Sun Shangxiang's person.
• Sexual Karma: Zhou Yu and Xiao Qiao get it on like it's their last time] (even though [[ForegoneConclusion it really isn't) in an Idealized Sex scene with romantic music; Meanwhile Cao Cao has a stand-in of his Lust Object Xiao Qiao and has frequent headaches.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: Zhang Fei throws an enemy into a group of others.
• Shoot the Messenger: Cao Cao orders the execution of a Wu emissary who brings him news that Sun Quan won't surrender.
• The Siege: Cao Cao's forces lay siege to Red Cliff.
• Signature Style:
  • If there's one director in the whole world who could somehow insert a Mexican Standoff in a period movie, it's John Woo. You've got Cao Cao and Zhou Yu with swords at each other's throats, Cao Hong with a sword to Zhou's back, then Sun Quan with a bow and arrow aimed at Cao, and just to add flavor, Xiahou Jun holds Xiao Qiao hostage.
  • John Woo's favourite avians make an appearance yet again, and this time, they're even plot-important!
• Single Malt Vision: After drinking with Zhou Yu, Jiang Gan sees double when he overhears him speaking about borrowing arrows from friends across the river.
• Something Only They Would Say: Invoked. Zhou Yu's fake letters even mimic the Wei generals' writing errors.
• Stalker with a Crush: Cao Cao for Xiao Qiao, to an eerie degree.
• Stealth Hi/Bye: Zhou Yu does this at one point to head into battle.
• The Strategist: Zhou Yu and Zhuge Liang.
• Suicide Attack: Gan Xing, already wounded by a dozen or so arrows, brings down Cao Cao's main gate by charging at it and throwing explosive charges at suicidally close range. He gets killed in the resulting blast.
• Sweet Polly Oliver: Shangxiang disguises herself as a soldier in order to infiltrate Cao Cao's camp.
• Tap on the Head: Shangxiang has a talent for these. First, she uses it on Lu Su's horse in response to his Stay in the Kitchen attitude. Then gets spun into a Brick Joke when she uses it on Liu Bei, and Lu Su is the first to see it coming...
• Tea Is Classy: Xiao Qiao is renowned for her tea-making skills, and on the eve of the final battle distracts Cao Cao from his planned attack until the wind changes and her husband can launch his with a discussion of tea.
• Theme Song Power Up: Pay attention during Zhang Fei's Foe-Tossing Charge.
• Traumatic Haircut: The moment when everyone on both sides knows that Cao Cao is beaten is when an arrow cuts off his queue.
• Understatement: When Zhou Yu asks Zhuge Liang whether he knows strategy, the latter replies "A little".

• Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Zhuge Liang's straw boat plan. And done on an even bigger scale with Liu Bei pulling out his forces.
• Victoria's Secret Compartment: Shangxiang hides the map of Cao Cao's camp wrapped around her torso, and casually undresses to remove it.
• War Is Hell: Yes, the fight sequences are awesome, but they're also horrifyingly brutal and several scenes in the film are used to illustrate the tragedy caused. While the B plot with Shangxiang overly reeks of Romantic Plot Tumor, seeing the man who befriended her die before her eyes pretty much destroys her initial wide-eyed belief that being in battle is cool. This is lampshaded earlier in Part 1:
  Zhuge Liang: Princess, have you ever fought in a war?
  Sun Shangxiang: There's always a first time!
  Zhou Yu: The first time I fought, I wished there was never a second.
• Weather Saves the Day: The "straw boat" plan depends on a fog bank preventing the Han navy from seeing that the boats crossing the river are nearly empty. A major plot point in the final battle is waiting for the wind to blow the right way, allowing the fleet of fire ships to do their work. The DVD case even includes a Stealth Pun reference to the importance of weather in the campaign: "Destiny lies in the wind".
• What a Senseless Waste of Human Life: A statement echoed when the alliance finally defeats the Wei forces.

• Yamato Nadeshiko: Xiao Qiao. (Technically, more like a Zhōnghuá Yěhuā.) Lampshaded in the following dialogue:
  Zhou Yu: You talk about peace but you quote from The Art of War?
  Xiao Qiao: I've read your strategy books in secret; the better to understand you.
• You Have Failed Me: Cao Cao executes his admirals for falling for Zhuge Liang's aforementioned ruse. To be fair, it's also because he'd been given false information about their being on the other side's payroll. He then executes Jiang Gan, the guy who brought him said false information.

---