Disney's Mulan
- So it's easier to retrieve the arrow without strength and discipline?
- It's a pretty neat analogy, actually—"strength" and "discipline" seemed like burdens until you figure out how to use them.
- It's also possible that the wood was too smooth to climb up without resorting to Mulan's little trick.
- For some reason, I got the idea that oil was smeared on the wood.
- Even if it wasn't unusually smooth or slick, climbing a featureless pole which provides no hand- or foot-holds is hardly an easy feat. Used in combination, the "strength" and "discipline" weights make the process easier than it would be without them.
- Yes, but it would mean cheating (either by not using the weights, or by dropping discipline to make up for a lack of strength). So still a pretty neat analogy. And you literally need strength and discipline to retrieve the arrow, since no matter how disciplined you are and figure out the trick of it, without enough strength to lift the weights in the first place, you're not going anywhere. This is a pretty neat analogy.
- Thus making this Fridge Fridge Brilliance? What do you call it when at first it seems fine, then stupid, then clever?
- We'll call it freakin' awesome.
- While we're on the arrow scene: Shang basically kicks Mulan out of boot camp, until she proves her worth by retrieving the arrow. But couldn't she just have gone home then, since her whole reason to join the war was to save her father? I doubt they would have bothered to go back and draft her dad...
- At that point it wasn't just about saving her father, it was also about bringing honor to her family. You don't do that by getting kicked out of the army for being too weak.
- In Chinese society, serving in the war was not just a duty - it was an honour. Honour was highly regarded in those days. Mulan being kicked out during the training stage would have brought even more disgrace on her family. Plus on a personal level, Mulan had already made a spectacle of herself at the Matchmaker's and again when she spoke out of turn in public. Going back home when she had tried to save her father would mean that she had messed it up again. She wanted to prove that she could do something right.
- Agreed. She even admits to Mushu in their Darkest Hour that by that point the army wasn't about her father or her family honor but about her. As she put it, she "wanted to look in the mirror and see someone worthwhile", not slink home after failing yet again.
- Would being discharged from the army (which isn't honorable, but not a crime) really be worse than the dishonor and punishment her family would endure (they would at least be disgraced and lose their home) had she been caught (Which is stated to be a crime many times and for which the penalty is death)? I don't understand Mulan's understanding of the risks involved.
- As The Nostalgia Chick points out, if she wanted to be believed about the Huns, why not just dress up as a man again?
- Because they already knew what she looked like dressed as a man and would have recognized her.
- Troper was probably referring to the crowds around the palace - people who would not have recognized her. This troper suspects it has more to do with Mulan becoming too familiar with the respect and attention given to her as a man, the scene in the city being a rather unfortunate reality check.
- I always thought they didn't believe her because they just thought she was some crazy chick running around.
- Either she left her "man" disguise on the mountain, or she was too panicked to find another.
- This Troper always thought it was because her "man clothes" were bloody, torn armor. Her priority (and that of the soldiers in their original journey) was speed, so they packed as little extra clothing as possible.
- Also, it's very likely that the soldiers took her male clothing away so she couldn't trick anybody else by posing as a soldier again.
- Isn't she still wearing the tunic and pants when she first gets to the capital, though? They might have taken her armor away, but she still had some of her man clothing. All Mulan would have had to do is put her hair back up.
- They wouldn't have cared. Even in disguise, they'd assume she's just one panicking guy.
- At first probably because she was so used to being treated equally with the other guys that going back to being overlooked as a woman was a surprise to her. And before she had time to think of disguising herself again, the Huns attacked. It all happened too quickly.
- A minor problem with Mulan's overt motivation presents itself when you think about it: Any competent commander/officer/NCO would look at her father and stamp R.E.M.F. on his file, if not his forehead, due to his injury and age so the odds of him ending up on the front lines are pretty low.
- Not only are you correct, but that is shown to take place in the movie itself. Shang sends Mulan home when he decides she's "unsuited for the rage of war", Chi Fu decides to withhold Shang's troops from battle because he takes issue with Shang's training methods, etc. Arriving at the camp was merely a formality that would allow the recruits to be checked up and then a decision would be made. The entire movie would never happened if Fa Zhou had just told Mulan that.
- I have to agree with this point. Mulan's father is an elderly crippled war hero. Even if they did make him serve, I'm sure he'd be given a staff officer position in a command tent far away from the front lines.
- It's possible the severity of Fa Zhou's injury may not have been well known beyond his home town, and considering Chi Fu was the "competent" officer who arrived...
- To be fair to Chi Fu, he did send Fa Zhou to a training camp instead of him being one of the soldiers who joins Li, so he was somewhat aware of what was he heard and was told, if he couldn't acknowledge Mulan's point because one, Fa Zhou was visibly embarassed by attention being drawn to his age and disability, and two, she was behaving inappropriately by their society's standards.
- Averted and Justified when you study Middle Age militaries, who had an ENTIRELY different concept of "combat-ready" than we do, what with intense press scrutiny and electorates to please. And even now, if the threat was perceived to be great enough (say, a bunch of genocidal maniacs have been cutting a swath through the country and defeating the regular military at every turn) we today probably WOULD be scrounging REMFs, NFFSMFs, and any MF we could find to throw into the battle line and HOPE they do something. And given that this is Imperial China- which decidedly does NOT have such issues- and the apparent ease at which the Huns cut the regular army to pieces coupled with the fall of at least a large section of the Great Wall and the fact that even after the mountain pass they STILL made it to the Imperial City, the truly amazing thing is that they ONLY conscripted one man per family (indeed, in the historical Xiongnu conflicts, the Emperor often went even further). That, and they were recruiting for the Imperial Army in general rather than merely combat units, and the Imperial Army doubtless had support units- we just don't see them- which would include the need for REMFs, and...
- Maybe so, but that doesn't account for the fact that Shang gives Mulan the opportunity to leave and go home, albeit harboring great dishonor by doing so, once he sees she's not catching on, so it clearly hadn't come to the point of them saying, "Throw whoever we've got out there and hope they do something."
- That is probably because (from all that we see in the montage) Shang saw her as particularly incompetent and possibly (given Mushu's antics) corrupt, two things you do Not want in a serious war or with an Imperial bloodhound looking over your shoulder. The Emperor and the court bureaucrats under Chi Fu don't have to be especially discerning with who they select to show up for a levy (it is just a carpet "one man per household" draft), but that's because they leave it to people like Shang and Chi-Fu to deal with (and given the implications of Fa Zhou's impressiveness, might be blinded by his reputation to what they shouldn't be). Shang is demanding but only has so much time to "demand" improvement ("Time is racing towards us.." after all), and considering the latter was on the verge of giving a dishonorable red file to *Shang's entire cadre* Shang is probably feeling the heat. While it's more conjectural, he might have decided to simply sacrifice the worst so he can focus on the rest. And hope he can pull standards up enough fast enough to avoid the fine calligraphy chopping block.
- This troper always thought that in addition to Ping's lack of progress, Shang may have felt bad about putting Ping on the front lines. He can whip grown men into shape, but Ping is doing badly AND he's much younger than everyone else. You don't let naive teenagers get themselves killed.
- When the conscription notices are handed out. Fa Zhou gives his wife his cane and tries to walk over to Chi Fu without it. Later he's seen trying to use his sword when his injuries can't take it. It's entirely possible he would pretend he was AOK and try to fight with the younger men anyway. As a decorated hero he probably would have bypassed training and been put on the front lines before they could discover his condition.
- Fa Zhou walks with a very noticeable limp and had barely gotten his sword out before collapsing; he wouldn't have made it through the first day of training and actually probably would have been given some cushy position or other. But he has no way of guaranteeing this and neither does Mulan, and given that she was hungry to prove herself in addition to saving her father, it led her to do what she did.
- Under normal circumstances, Fa Zhou would be considered unfit for service, but since the Emperor's order was for one man from every family to serve in the army, he had no choice but to serve, being the only male member of his household.
- Even if there some commanders like Shang who are willing to let people wash out, there may be many other commanders who take a We Have Reserves attitude and throw absolutely everyone at the enemy. Mulan had no way of knowing what sort of commander her father might be assigned to. In fact, Mulan knew nothing at all about the Army when she first decided to dress up as a man. She might have simply assumed her father was destined to see the front lines even if that's not how the Army actually worked.
- We don't know why he's so well-known and respected, just that he's made enough of a name for himself that Shang refers to him as "the Fa Zhou". Maybe he isn't fit to serve on the front lines, but he could be highly skilled at tactics or some other field that isn't strictly about how well he can fight and would have still been a valuable asset in a leadership role. Granted, it's likely that he would still be expected to participate on the front lines no matter what his role was, so his physical condition would have still been relevant.
- When the crossdressing attempt fails, the three guys take out their "busts". Ling takes out apples. Chien Po takes out watermelons. Yao takes out an apple...and a banana?
- Considering he didn't even bother shaving off his beard, the banana was the least unconvincing part of his getup.
"Ugly concubines."
- Not to mention it was lampshaded in the movie. Ling glanced at Yao baffled at his choice of food boobs, if you recall.
- In the reprise of "Be A Man," when Yao, Chien Po, and Ling dress as concubines - where did they get those clothes? And wigs? And fruit, for that matter?
- Stuff they found lying around the palace? There probably were rooms set aside for the real concubines that would be stocked with stuff.
- No, they were outside the palace at the time (hence the need to break in). Maybe they found a few street vendors in the crowd?
- "Special discount! China is about to fall to the Huns! Everything must go! Buy now!"
- However, as funny as that is, remember that at this point everyone in the capital thinks the Huns are dead and defeated. So in the midst of all that celebrating, it'd be more likely for there to be fruit vendors and clothing merchants around to take stock from.
- They're Imperial troops acting at a time of extreme national emergency. Surely they had the authority to commandeer whatever resources their mission required from the civilian populace; this time, it was just a more unusual seizure than the usual food and barrack-space.
- When Chi Fu is giving the enlistment notices to the Fa Family and Mulan tries to stop her father from being enlisted, it's made quite clear to that she has no other male relatives to take his place. Yet when she shows up as Ping to the training camp Chi Fu merely comments that he didn't know Fa Zhou had a son. Chi Fu isn't stupid yet the thought never occurs to him that maybe the daughter is the son that no one's ever heard about.
- It's not made clear, all that they know is that there wasn't another male relative in the streets at that time. Shang comments that he didn't know Fa Zhou had a son, and Chi Fu's reaction to Ping's reply of "he doesn't really talk about me much" seemed to imply that he figured that there was a son who was so much of an embarrassment that he was hidden away. As for why they didn't suspect crossdressing, the penalty for what Mulan did would have been certain death. Probably "Fa Zhou has a crazy, little-known son" seemed more probable to them than "Fa Zhou's daughter is actually insane enough to dress up as a man and go to war, risking her entire family's honor and her life".
- Also note that Chi Fu simply announces each family's name and hands out conscription notices to whoever steps forward. There's no indication that he had any information about the number or gender of children in each family.
- True. Before he calls for the Hua family, Chi Fu hands a conscription notice to son who explicitly says "I will go in my father's place." Chi Fu obviously didn't care who accepted the notice so long as each family sent someone, so his willingness to accept "Ping" may just have been a result of the dire situation, where any warm body was appreciated.
- But this raises another problem. The Hua boy is Mulan's neighbor and as a new recruit would have been sent to the same training camp she was. He, if no one else, should have realized that the Fa family had no sons but that they did have a single daughter about his age. And since the conscription order was for a male from every household, how many other friends and neighbors were there in camp that should have known there was no Ping, especially given how infamous she quickly became for her incompetence.
- Clearly he and Mulan weren't friends or anything more than acquaintances - or else she would have worried about him recognizing her. So he's just going to assume that it's a son he never met. Only a close friend of Mulan's would really recognize her. People won't automatically assume the daughter cross-dressed to pose as a boy. They'll rationalize it as them never having met the son that Fa Zhou apparently "doesn't talk about". And since the Fa family appears to be a little better off, it's likely that Mulan isn't known that well to the locals. If they're of higher social class, then they won't have neighbors casually dropping in all the time.
- It's also possible that, though the young man was obviously not regular army, he was trained in martial arts, and was evaluated as being skilled enough to join the main force immediately.
- Small one: During the Honor To Us All montage, one of the women fixes a very tight sash around Mulan's waist like a corset, specifically saying, "With good breeding and a tiny waist, you'll bring honor to us all." Later, when Mulan is being examined by the matchmaker, the matchmaker says, "Too skinny. Not good for bearing sons." Um, what?
- The previous girls were skinny, the matchmaker was fat. Their differing standards of beauty are very convenient.
- Also, a tiny waist doesn't mean you're skinny. *pats her trusty old hips*
- I'd always assumed that it was to emphasize how hard it was to please the matchmaker. She might have called Mulan "too fat" without the sash.
- Also the overall hypocrisy of treating girls like marriageable property, in whom the only traits of value are superficial physical qualities that aren't even consistent.
- Why is Mulan's group so small? I don't think I ever saw more than 20 soldiers onscreen at once. Such a ridiculously tiny number of reinforcements wouldn't have had an impact one way or the other in the war if it hadn't been for Mulan's cannon trick; even the assassination of the emperor, while tragic, wouldn't have been such a big deal for the country. And before anybody mentions Thermopylae as an example of small troop numbers making a huge difference, that was several thousand men with superior armor and weapons deliberately holding a choke point. It could be an animation simplification, but they were able to animate the hundreds/thousands of Huns descending down the snowy slope to kill them all, so I doubt it.
- The animation for the thousands of Huns probably cost enough as it was.
- I thought they were just supposed to get trained in a small group, and later join the bigger group (led by Shang's father, the General). Meeting the Huns was an unfortunate coincidence.
- This. Her group was supposed to just be a small force of reserves to be used as backup (particularly since Chi Fu had been made suspicious of Shang and so was determined to keep him and the men he trained out of the war), and the rest went with General Li's army, where Shan-Yu killed them.
- I remember seeing a piece where they talked about the "horde of Huns" animation sequence. Long story short, they cheated, using a few tricks of animation to make it a lot easier than it should have been (such as looping sequences of animation) in ways that an audience generally won't notice.
- The second answer was right; Shang's father left with a HORDE of men on horseback at the start of the movie, and Shang trained the few that were left. Pretty clever way to save on animation...
- It's possible that there are more, and they weren't cut for animation issues but for time issues.
- In the "I'll make a man out of you" song, there were quite a few of them, although not as many as there were Huns. Most of them mysteriously disappeared after they encountered the Huns, leaving just the main characters. My theories are that either they ran away after seeing the Huns, or they were killed in the avalanche.
- There still seems to be a pretty decent number of them during the "A Girl Worth Fighting For" sequence, so some of them running away and/or being killed by the avalanche does make a lot of sense...
- There's also a good chance a few of them died, either due to the avalanche or injury/illness. Keep in mind, the movie makes it seem short, but to trek that much land back in those days would've taken days if not WEEKS at a time. They had limited supplies, food, water, etc. Not unlikely a few of them just dropped on the way.
- Or just plain deserted, consequences be damned, once they'd had a good look at the scale and brutality of the Hun threat. Especially once it became clear that there weren't enough Imperial troops left to waste on rounding up deserters.
- Dang. So Mulan struck them with a Pyrrhic Victory?
- Since I can't quite pin this on a conventional timeline, I have to ask: if Mulan is old enough to pose as a man, shouldn't her feet have been bound for many years at this point? Her family is also clearly a family of means, so wouldn't she be expected to have bound feet? Or is it too early for that? Footbinding started around the 10th century.
- Depending on when the story actually takes place, this could be during the Tang dynasty proper, or Mulan could be descended from some of the northern families that founded the Tang dynasty. Some Chinese groups didn't favor foot binding, since it basically incapacitates the woman.
- The legend of Hua Mulan was commonly accepted as written in the 4-7th centuries, and that was a few centuries before foot-binding appeared.
- I think I recall reading somewhere that foot-binding was only practiced among the wealthier classes. Even if this was set in a time period when feet were bound, wouldn't Mulan have been spared anyway on account of her being the only child of a farming family?
- This is correct. Early foot binding was limited to the classes where the daughter would not need to work, as foot binding would leave her unable to do much besides make the fancy silk slippers to go on her mutilated feet. Like many upper-class trends, it would eventually spread to the lower classes so much so that in the 19th Century, up to half of all women in China had their feet bound.
- "only child of a farming family?" They live in a pretty fancy house, with the pond and statues and all...I figured that was some benefit Mulan's father got after working in the army.
- Probably not. This isn't the Dirt Ages (which weren't like that either). The premise that being a peasant/non-upper class child and thus required to do some sort of labor is probably the best rational.
- At the beginning Mulan is shown as performing chores around the household. A) Foot binding would obviously not allow her to perform those chores B) If Mulan's family was rich enough to bind her feet they wouldn't have needed her to perform chores in the first place having the money for servants and such.
- IIRC, the Hua Mulan story is supposed to be set in northern Wei dynasty (386–534).
- The earliest evidence of the practice comes from the 10th century, while Hua Mulan at the latest the 6th century. And it took centuries to spread to anything approaching universal even among the upper classes.
- Actually I always assumed it was a noble family who fall on hard times. They're rich enough to have a place to worship their ancestors (and that would mean they could recite ancestors or have a written record somewhere). Actually footbinding broke one's toes since it made the toes get very bent.
- Well, given the implication that Fa Zhou is a war hero/Living Legend, it's possible that their estate was granted to them as a reward for whatever deed(s) Fa Zhou did. They probably ONLY got the land, though, so that's why Mulan still does chores.
- I figured they were the Chinese equivalent of yeomen in that they owned enough land for a decent farm but were not rich enough that they could hire people to work the farm for them.
- It's worth noting that the movie isn't historically accurate. Mulan embodies the Anorchristic Stew trope.
- Mushu. Dragons in the East are generally associated with yin energy and water - see Tiger Versus Dragon. Wise, patient, calm and wet. Mushu breathes fire.
- This gets kinda-sorta addressed in Disney's Hollywood Studios where Mushu is (as of last visit) the focus of their segment on character design. Mushu is a Composite Character of several potential companion dragons, and Mushu at least has the overall shape of a classic Chinese dragon.
- Actually, Eastern Dragons can be associated with any element.
- I don't know about other countries, but as far as I know (and being Chinese, I'd say I know quite a bit) Chinese dragons are water spirits. (On a separate note, dragons are yang, not yin.) This is likely a result of either But Not Too Foreign or a mistake.
- Of course Mushu breathes fire. When he's not animated to protect the family, he's an incense burner!
- Makes for some more Fridge Brilliance that he's so proud of his fire-breathing ability even though it's pretty weak; he's possibly the only dragon in China who can do it at all!
- If we look for the out of universe explanation, it seems to be more convenience for the western audience whom the film was primarily for. They seem to have done their research - as they were initially doubtful about Mulan having a dragon as a sidekick out of fear it would be too big and scary, but then they were told dragons could be any size in Chinese culture. But in the late 90s without everyone connected to the internet as we are now - and therefore able to Google any query or fact check anything - they might fear a western audience wondering why the dragon doesn't breathe fire, because aren't all dragons supposed to? Making Mushu an incense burner seems to be the compromise between being culturally accurate and giving the target audience what they want.
- Maybe Mushu actually isn't a dragon, but merely claims to be one to make himself look better, or genuinely thinks he is one (the way he thinks Khan is a cow). Maybe he's a salamander or something, I think one WMG proposed he was actually the spirit of cooling steam? I mean, do you remember anyone in the movie besides Mushu referring to him as a dragon?
- This almost definitely isn't culturally accurate, but I could see how a Chinese fire dragon could manifest. Aren't eastern dragons commonly depicted as long and serpentine to represent the rivers that they personify? You could apply that same characteristic to a lava flow from an active volcano. And what's better to apply it to Mushu's case is that these lava flows are temporary and cool off relatively quickly. So a dragon could be born, but it would be small, and its powers could go 'dormant' for centuries at a time. Thus why Mushi is so tiny and lackluster flame-wise. He's a bit of a 'flash in the pan' dragon.
- At one point, Chi Fu makes it clear that he intends to send a failing report about the unit's training so that Li Shang's soldiers will "never see battle." Overhearing this, Mushu takes the initiative and delivers a fake message claiming that the unit is needed on the front lines... Isn't that kind of a stupid idea? Mushu's job is to make sure that Mulan is kept safe, so shouldn't it be a good thing that her unit is being kept out of the fighting?
- The unit being unfit and never seeing battle would dishonor everybody in it. That's a big thing.
- Plus although Mushu was ordered to keep Mulan safe, his personal goal is to help her win honor and glory so that he can regain his place as one of the family's guardians.
- Also if you recall, Mushu said something along the lines of "I have worked too hard to get Mulan into this war."
- Mushu's job wasn't to keep Mulan safe. It was to awaken the Great Stone Dragon so that the Stone Dragon could bring her back before she got herself killed or brought dishonor to the family. When Mushu broke the statue, he said that he'd "have to bring Mulan home with a medal to get back in the temple;" his main reasons for going were to act as Mulan's guardian and, more importantly, to try fixing his own screw-ups.
- I haven't thought of this until now, but what happened at home when Mulan was in the army? Wouldn't anyone have found it weird that Mulan seemed to have just disappeared randomly, and that her father still seemed to be around?
- The father could have stayed inside and away from people, and they could say Mulan was sick, working in the house, or recovering from humiliation and dishonor.
- This troper watched the DVD commentary, and the directors actually said something about this. They said there were going to be more scenes back at home while Mulan was away, but they ultimately decided not to include them
×× So what was going to happen in those scenes? And why did they decide not to include them?
- Also she had made a spectacle of herself at the Matchmaker and again when Chi-Fu came with the conscription notices. The family could say that she was being kept in hiding because she had publicly disgraced herself.
- As suggested above, the Fa family seems to be a bit better off than most. So it doesn't seem likely that they'll have neighbors dropping in. And if someone asked about Mulan, they could just say she was off doing her chores somewhere.
- So... Shang seemed pretty upset that Mulan lied about being a man and snuck into the army. However, if they all knew that the penalty for revealing that she was a woman equaled death, shouldn't he be a lot more understanding?
- Just as everything seems to be going well, Shang is suddenly thrown into a situation where he has to either execute a person he likes and respects, or disobey the law. His reaction is quite natural.
- Having "Ping" exposed as a woman also disrupts the cohesion and morale of Shang's other troops, at a time when they really need to work together effectively if they're to survive the war at all. He'd have been upset about any stunt one of them could've pulled, that had such an effect.
- As far as he knows, they'd just won the war. Thanks to Mulan. And her friends obviously don't care that she's a woman.
- That's not the penalty for revealing that she was a woman. That was the penalty for being a woman in the army. To his mind, and the law, that's like saying, "Well, the penalty for murder is death, so won't he be understanding that she tried to hide it?" That she hid it isn't the issue. It's that she did it in the first place.
- He could have been upset that the trust between himself and "Ping" wasn't mutual. "I trust you with my life, why couldn't you have trusted me with your secret? If you had just told me this earlier, I could have covered for you."
- Shang is disciplined. He believes in rules. His father is a general who probably raised Shang from birth to be a disciplined, rule-following person. So when he finds out that his closest friend has broken an Important Rule, a rule so important that breaking it carries a death penalty...yeah, that's not gonna sit well with him. He has enough of a conscience to spare Mulan's life, though even then he has to find a formal-ish way to justify it. ("A life for a life. My debt is paid.") But he's still upset about it, because that's just his default mindset around rules. (He's more relaxed about it by the end of the movie, though.)
- Why didn't The Emperor have any bodyguards around him during the finale? That would've stopped Shan Yu and his men from kidnapping him. Even if everyone thought all the Huns had died, surely the ruler of China would have bodyguards protecting him anyway when he's visiting a huge gathering of people, as there would be plenty of other potential threats besides invading Huns.
- Who says he didn't, and that the Huns didn't just kill the bodyguards?
- When he is kidnapped, the Emperor has come down from his palace to a long and wide set of stairs, with no bodyguards in sight. If there were guards, they were either so far away that they were effectively useless, or the Huns had killed them before he came down the stairs. But if it's the latter case, why would the Emperor have come down the stairs at all, since his life was obviously at risk? Also, it would've meant the Huns were already in the palace, so they could've kidnapped the Emperor before he even came down the stairs.
- The bodyguards were part of General Li's army that was slaughtered in the Tung Shao pass. After being informed of the Hun invasion the Emperor discounts his own security and allocates all military resources to the defense of his people.
General Li: We'll set up defenses around your palace immediately!
Emperor: No! Send your troops to protect my people.
- How did Shan Yu and those last few Huns survive being buried in the snow for hours? Even if they didn't die from being suffocated, they'd at least have frostbite or something. But the survivors look no worse for the wear.
- Either 1) they weren't buried for as long as it looks like, or 2) they'd been struggling to get out for a while and managed to make some air holes for themselves. Note that when we see Shan Yu burst out of the snow, we can see a good part of his wrist, instead of just his hand or fingertips, so they were probably at least close enough to the surface for this to be (somewhat) hand wave-able. Though I still question those two who weren't even wearing shirts.
- This might be a stupid question since Mulan is an anachronistic movie, but are the cannons used in the movie historically accurate? (in the sense that any of the dynasties that inspired the movie might have had them?)
- The first real gunpowder weapons were "Fire Lances". They were bamboo tubes filled with gunpowder and a projectile and tied to the ends of Chinese-spears. They were mainly used in close-combat to give the wielder an edge, and had an effective range of about five feet. These were created around 900CE. Fireworks were created to ward of evil spirits and were created around 600-700CE, being used in combat around 900CE. The Han Dynasty, where the movie was set, was between 206BCE to 220CE and the Legend of Hua Mulan is set, according to the earliest accounts, in the Northern Wei dynasty around 386CE–534CE. The use of gunpowder weapons in Mulan is about 100-800 years out of date.
- Judging by the clothing and building styles I would have guessed Tang dynasty. The audio commentary admits that they seemed to be going with the most recognizable images, so dating the film isn't easy. For example, the Great Wall is drawn as it was in its final incarnation, since that is the most recognizable to audiences.
- It's mentioned that the Emperor portrayed in the movie was the one by whose command the Great Wall was built (Shan-yu says at one point "By building his wall he challenged my strength"), which means this is Emperor Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China, who unified the country in 221BC. If we date the movie based on his appearance, then no, the cannons are absolutely not historically accurate. But as the OP says, Mulan is an anachronistic movie at the best of times.
- It's doubtful that it is Qin Shi Huang; the Qin walls were not very impressive and had to basically be rebuilt over and over and over again (like even the massively impressive Ming and Qing ones have had to be today). The cannons are still probably historically inaccurate (given the time of the Xiongnu and their Shan-Yus), but they're probably well advanced from the first emperor.
- Was the Great Stone Dragon just an ordinary statue and not supposed to come to life or was Mushu just banging the gong the wrong way?
- Given how Mushu was the dragon guardian at some point, it's pretty likely that the Great Stone Dragon was just a normal statue (and maybe even a fairly new one at that).
- The Great Ancestor referred to him as the most powerful one. I doubt they'd just tack that title on a statue because it's new and spiffy looking. Mushu was quite indignant and probably wasn't ringing the gong properly.
- While we're on the subject, did the Fa family ever notice their giant stone dragon statue suddenly crumbling into itty bitty pieces?
- On the Fridge Brilliance page (and the main one) it's been suggested the Stone Dragon's spirit left with Mulan, after she sat under it and was inspired to have the courage to go to war in her father's place. It's also possible the Stone Dragon knew Mulan would only succeed the way she did, with Mushu's help, so rather than go with her and be forced to bring her home (and let China be doomed to invasion), it didn't answer the summons so that Mushu would be forced to go instead.
- It seems not unthinkable that the real Great Stone Dragon was broken years ago and a replica put in its place. All Mushu did was smack its ear with his gong, whereupon the ear broke off...and the entire statue crumbled. Rule of Funny aside, if this happened in real life, you wouldn't think that Mushu was so clumsy that the little bit he did reduced a high-quality statue to rubble, you'd think, "Man, that was a cheap piece of crap."
- Chi Fu calls Mulan's act "high treason". This has never made sense to me. The definition of treason is to plot against one's government or country. Um, excuse me? There's a difference between illegally joining the army and betraying your country. Yes, joining the army disguised as a man was breaking the law, but I'd hardly call that treason.
- Remember how the girls in "Honor To Us All" said that it was (literally) their job for the emperor, as Chinese women of child-bearing age, to bear sons to be soldiers? Depending on the era, and the imperial decrees that happened to be standing at the time (even implicit "in times of war" bureaucratic decrees), it could have technically been high treason.
- Or, since Chi Fu is a sexist jerk, he could have just been shouting random crimes out of anger and/or to give reasons to execute Mulan.
- Nope, even if Chi Fu wasn't a sexist jerk, Mulan not being upfront about her true identity most certainly would've been seen as "deception against the crown" (欺君). Even if her actions or motives were far from treasonous, the very fact that she dared to lie to a representative of the government (we're not told exactly what rank he was, but it's highly possible he was a 钦差, an envoy who was under direct orders from, and answered only to, the emperor) could've been grounds for immediate execution of both herself and her entire family. Luckily for the plot he "only" decided to strand her in the middle of nowhere.
- Oh, and yes, it is illegal to hug the emperor like that. He's the Son of Heaven, sacrosanct and inviolate; you didn't talk to, or, depending on the emperor, so much as gaze upon the royal countenance without permission.
- Very well said on both parts. Though especially with the latter case, Your Emperors May Vary. The Emperor is the Son of Heaven, ruler of the world, and sacrosanct. So he would have a very big say on deciding what is illegal or not.
- Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that shortly before we see him watching in horror as she grabbed the last cannon from where they were preparing to kill the enemy leader and ran up to the incoming enemy army with it, which, from where he was standing would definitely look treasonous, even with the avalanche, which even Shang, her friend and later Love Interest found to be crazy. Chi Fu was standing near the tent where she was treated looking pretty ticked off about something before he found out.
- I have long had a problem with the "beads of jade for beauty" (which Mulan "must proudly show"). Would the very regular string of jade beads (especially in that color) have clashed with the outfit Mulan was wearing for her visit to the Matchmaker in the time periods when that outfit would have been worn? Was Grandmother so obsessed with superstition (not an unreasonable explanation) that she would rather disrupt the flow and cohesion of the outfit with the expectation that the beads of jade would bring more beauty than they would disrupt? The cricket cage was also disruptive, but it was clearly separate from the outfit, and not intended to be an accessory. Would a different type of necklace, such as a string of small jade beads regularly broken by a larger or cylindrical jade bead, or jade of a pale or reddish colour, have been better (had it been available, and assuming pale green jade or red jade would have had the same effect in Grandmother's mysticism)? Long point short, that necklace seems like a bad choice, aesthetically, and I'm wondering if that's just me (from the perspective of my time period and culture) or... what?
- Grandmother was referring to Mulan's natural beauty as being that which she must "proudly show," with the beads of jade being meant to assist her via Grandmother's mysticism. If you rewatch the matchmaker scene I believe the jade is beneath her dress.
- I never saw a problem with it, aesthetically speaking... the outfit is multicolored, with pink-tending to mauve, blue-tending to indigo, deep red — nothing primary, so the bluish green jade isn't too out of place. And I think it provides a nice contrast. Or maybe, who knows, the jade beads were a family heirloom, traditionally worn at every matchmaking session, and Grandmother Fa brings them out because it's a family tradition! She's stubborn enough.
- Mulan is a very tomboyish girl and not particularly ladylike. So maybe Grandma is hoping the beads of jade will highlight the unconventional beauty Mulan has, and help potential suitors to see that in her.
- When did The Emperor get Shan-Yu's sword? It was last left on the roof where it pinned him, yet a few moments later he takes it out from nowhere to award it to her.
- Watch the previous scene again. After Mulan ziplines off the roof to escape the explosion, she crashes into Shang on the way. As they collide, Shan-Yu's sword falls down near them, having been flung out from the blast.
- A better question regarding that sword is how Shang and his men got it. Wasn't it buried in the avalanche with Shan Yu himself? Yet Shang brings it to the Emperor to confirm Shan Yu's (supposed) defeat, right before the falcon swoops down and bring it to the warrior to surprise everyone that he survived the avalanche, and was about to take down the Emperor.
- What kind of injury did Mulan receive? It was from Shan-Yu's sword and was obviously bad enough to cause some severe bleeding and pain. Yet once she's bandaged up, she's in no pain whatsoever.
- Been a while since I've seen the movie, but I think she received a blow to the right side, and it was enough to take her out. As to how she is in no pain whatsoever once she's been bandaged? Simple, the medic did his job. He treated her wound and gave her something to drink, likely something herbal, to dull the pain. Leaving a patient in agony is...not what a medic is supposed to do.
- She probably would have had to have kept drinking that tea to not stay doubled over in said agony, though; jumping around on rooftops after Huns is not fun with torn abdominal muscles.
- Yeah, this is a Disney movie...so they probably used some pixie dust or something to make her better.
- The wound might not have been that bad, and she maybe just passed out from the stress and shock of the situation.
- This was partially addressed above, but with a different specific instance. "You're unsuited for the rage of war, so pack up, go home, you're through." "Okay cool. I was just here to replace my father, so I'll be off now." Oh wait, that's not what she did. There a reason she didn't just leave? I mean I get wanting to prove herself, but who cares enough to continue risking their life on two fronts?
- Getting drummed out of the military like that would dishonor her family, and if you hadn't picked up on it, that's kind of a big deal in the movie. In a lot of ways, they'd have considered it worse than dying.
- Said dishonoring would also probably have drawn attention, and opened up some questions they wouldn't be able to answer. "Where'd that failure son of yours come from?"
- Considering how easily they accepted that Fa Ping was a son Fa Zhou didn't like to talk about, that doesn't seem like an issue at all. They'd probably just think he was just being hidden back away again.
- Mulan has not been told that her unit is intended only for emergency reserves. She only knows that the Huns have invaded and the Emperor has called on every family in China to do its part to repel the invasion. If she were to go home, there's no guarantee that the Huns wouldn't have shown up to butcher and burn her village. (And that's what would have happened.) Shang's clearly having self-doubts about his own teaching ability, but Mulan shows that she's taken his words to heart.
- But this is the military. Wouldn't continuing to use the equipment, even successfully, just get her into even more hot water?
- Mulan cares enough to continue risking her life on two fronts. We're not meant to think of her as an ordinary person. The whole reason she gets to be the hero of the story is that she makes extraordinary choices that most people wouldn't make. She really wants to prove herself.
- At the very beginning of the movie, after the signal is lit, we cut to the Emperor's palace. Shang's father tells the Emperor that the Huns have crossed the "Northern border" (the Wall), and he says that Shan-Yu is leading them. How could they possibly know that Shan-Yu is the one leading them just from a fire signal?
- The Emperor knows that Shan Yu is the leader of the Huns, and there isn't anyone else up in that area at the moment.
- After the fire alerted them, some other soldiers got close enough to identify Shan-Yu and get the message out before being killed by the Huns.
- Bingo. It's likely that — as he did later on — Shan-Yu might've sent a few prisoners back with the word that The Great, Magnificent Shan-Yu has decided to test the Emperor and make sure everybody knows. It's also likely that while Chinese military intelligence isn't great, they can know that only *The* Shan-Yu of the Huns (rather than one of his kinsmen/subordinate commanders) would have the ability to command an army as large as the one that took the Great Wall.
- If the Imperial forces had any scouts observing the Huns' forces preparing for the attack, they may have seen the nomads' clan standards being used to muster and organize their invasion-force. Presumably the biggest standard was that of Shan-Yu.
- How is this mysterious? We see Shan-Yu allowing a soldier to light the signal. He explicitly wants the Emperor to know that he's coming. I just assumed he told that same soldier "My name is Shan-Yu. Go tell the Emperor that I'm coming to murder him." So that's what the guy did. (Indirectly, at least.)
- So... why exactly didn't Mulan's father go after her when she left?
- Because 1. Mulan took his horse so he'd have to walk and get there a long while after her, and 2. he was afraid that getting her would publicly reveal that she was pretending to be a man and get her executed. So he decided to play it safe and count on her keeping her identity hidden rather than risk blowing everything.
- Clearly you missed this exchange between the two parents:
"You must go after her. She could be killed!"
"If I reveal her...she will be."
- Following on from that, his choice is to definitely condemn her to death by going after her and revealing her secret or to let her go and there's a chance that she comes back later. This is partly a result of the adaptation change; in the original ballad, Mulan was a wannabe warrior who beat her father in a duel to earn the chance to go to war. So in that sense, the parents were AOK with it.
- How did Huns get into the Emperor's city before Mulan? They were walking on foot, she was riding a horse. And for that matter, how the hell did they manage to hide inside that dragon costume without anyone noticing?
- Because the spot where the Huns popped out of the snow like daisies was between Mulan and the Imperial City. The Huns had a head start since they were ahead of Mulan and she had to be careful since she was just one person trying to sneak ahead of them without being noticed so probably took a more cautious route to the imperial city whilst the Huns just headed in a straight line.
- Also, steppe nomads seldom limit themselves to just one horse. They probably found some of their army's spare animals, that'd escaped the avalanche and were roaming around loose.
- The avalanche was big enough to bury the ENTIRE army. No horses were seen afterward, aside from Khan.
- They may have left their spare horses away from the site of the battlefield to rest which was standard MO irl for the Mongolic armies (which the real life Huns were classified as coming from). Its why the Mongols were so fast especially post Genghis Khan where they actually had the concept akin to camps to leave horses in so that they can travel to and fro with lightning speed. And even if they didn't prepare a resting location for horse or found any survivors from the avalanche, considering they are plunderers they probably robbed some local farmers of their transportation or attacked a stable or something.
- As for the dragon costume, clearly they mugged the actors... dancers... crew? Whatever you call them, they must have been assembling in a fairly private place before joining the procession.
- A bigger puzzle will be how are the Huns able to convincingly perform the dragon dance itself to the point that no one in that big crowd as much as suspected that a bunch of imposters had hijacked the original dance troupe? The dragon dance is full of specialized and complex moves that are associated with symbolic meanings; these moves have to take place in accordance to specific timings and sequences; all moves require considerable coordination of fairly athletic actions among troupe members; and all the above also apply to the drummers providing the beat. If you are just randomly jumping or shaking about, it will be very obvious, and any crowd in China will very quickly and massively make known their disapproval of it. That is because it is not just disrespectful but downright very, very unlucky to mess up the dragon dance (both to performers as well as to the locale), as there are taboos and superstition associated with its correct performance. Put it another way, those Huns were such smooth operators, you'll have to think where they manage to fit in all those necessary dragon dance rehearsals in their presumably otherwise very busy nomadic hunting and raiding steppes lifestyle.
- In real life the Mongols had special agents who studied local culture so thoroughly they could imitate the way the average person walked or patrol routes and even off-topic stuff like dances in costumes or how a woman was supposed to properly cover her face with Taliban-esque veil. Considering Shan-Yu had troops who could learn specific details from a town just by observing and smelling a random doll, it wouldn't be a far stretch especially since some of the survivors appear to be some of the scouts who were analyzing the doll. Since it's shown Shan-Yu had prepared so much for the campaign he can analyze shortcut routes and such just by the sight of a hill, its obvious he was Crazy-Prepared and had his troops learn Chinese customs including useless complicated ones like how a woman should move, how a merchant should speak and of course the Dragon Dance.
- Simpler answer: no matter how bad the dancers are, The Show Must Go On. The crowd might have noticed the random movement, but they wouldn't have any authority to halt the parade. Whoever was in charge of the parade definitely noticed, but as long as the procession kept on moving they'd just make a mental note to have the troupe executed or something after the event. Unless there's some kind of horrific accident or something actually preventing the performance from continuing, you don't waste everyone's time by shutting the whole thing down just because you failed at your job.
- Why is Mulan so upset after her secret is discovered and she is left behind in the mountains? She laments how she went on her journey to prove that she could do something right, and she did! She defeated the entire Hun army and, as far as everyone else knows, saved China from being conquered. Sure, she's not going to be recognized nationally for her achievements, but that's not really what she said she wanted anyway, and she would still end her journey as a woman regardless of whether they found out or not.
- Because the reason she went wasn't to accomplish something or do something right, it was to gain and preserve honor for her family. Being thrown out of the army for being a woman is the opposite of that.
- Yes, but she says, "Maybe I didn't go for my father...Maybe the real reason I went was to prove I could do things right...so when I looked in the mirror, I'd see someone worthwhile," before going on to say that she sees nothing. I can understand the dishonoring thing, but she shouldn't act like she's worthless and can't do anything right after accomplishing something so important, just because they found out she was a woman.
- Because honor is a huge deal. It's not like her family would just have a reputation and go about their normal lives, it's that her family would be effectively blacklisted. No matter what task or deed she accomplished, if she's dishonored her family, that means she didn't do right. It supersedes everything else.
- And let's not forget that she got kicked out of the army for high treason. The only reason she wasn't executed on the spot was because Shang owed her. Yeah she killed a bunch of Huns with her avalanche trick, but things haven't ended well for her.
- If Mulan's father didn't want to go after his daughter and expose her to certain execution, then why didn't he at the very least go to the camp and play along with her disguise, telling Shang that his son snuck off to join the Army without him knowing, and stepping in to take his (her) place and sending Mulan home? He decided it was better to let her go into battle against the Hun army and just...hope that his daughter who has no combat experience on top of illegally being in disguise manages to come out on top? Seems like a pretty nasty thing for a father to do.
- Because then the "son" would be seen as weak and a coward, and dishonor the family. Basically any reason for Mulan to get drummed out of the army would have been seen as dishonorable.
- And perhaps he thought Mulan might stand a better chance than him. After all she's young, and it's not as if she's an idle dame who's never done anything in her life. She's used to working around on the estate and doing chores, so she's quite strong - and that's probably why she made it through the training in the first place.
- So...I'm sorry, but he thought it better to risk his daughter dying in battle, which was a very likely possibility, than to face dishonor to the family?
- Yes. Again: Honor was a huge freaking deal in ancient China. Honor was seen as more important than someone's life. A family being dishonored basically meant the entire family was ruined.
- Different cultural example here, but see The Magdalene Sisters; in Irish culture as late as the 20th century, it was considered better to lock a woman who'd committed a sex crime (premarital sex, baby out of wedlock, getting raped before marriage) in a prison so as to spare the rest of the family the shame and improve their chances of getting into heaven. That was happening in a patriarchal society in the 20th century. Mulan is set in a patriarchal society several centuries earlier - in a world that does not have the same cultural standards as the modern day.
- Also, he may have feared that he wouldn't be able to fool everyone in the camp. After all, he didn't exactly know what kind of story Mulan told. If he said one thing wrong, Shang or Chi-Fu may have become suspicious and they may have discovered everything. He would have lost both his honor and his daughter.
- And if the Imperial authorities caught on that Mulan was female after he'd backed up her ruse, they would have executed Mulan and her father. He'd have abetted his daughter's crime. Even his wife might be charged with complicity, because she certainly knew they didn't have a son.
- Imagine how that conversation would go. "Yes, hello Captain. I am an old man who can no longer walk more than a few feet without a cane. Please send my able-bodied son home and let me fight instead."
- He was unable to-Mulan took their only horse. A lame old man, and two old women could never hope to catch up to Mulan without Khan.
- So, in that culture, women were supposed to bear sons, right? So why doesn't Mulan have any brothers?
- Because her parents didn't have any sons. "Supposed to bear sons" doesn't mean it's something under their control.
- In the original poem, Little Brother (the dog in the movie) was exactly that, but he was too young to serve.
- Sons may be priority but any children will do. Daughters are simply used to secure alliances in marriages. So it's not as if Mulan was useless to them. And sons are only really priority to families with large amounts of property or titles.
- Surely you know that in fiction, a couple's odds of having a son are inversely proportional to their desire to have one? Although adoption processes existed at some points in Chinese history, it's safe to assume Adoption Is Not an Option for the Fa parents (at least in terms of a legal heir.)
- Well now you see why there's that much more pressure on Mulan to marry well at the start. She has no brothers to inherit the family's property, so she has to marry well - just like in Pride and Prejudice.
- This troper always believed that Fa Zhou was left infertile after whatever impressive war feat he accomplished
- What did the emperor mean when he said Mulan dishonored the Chinese army? What happened to Mulan's brothers in arms as a result of her breaking the law?
- He means that Mulan entering the army disguised as a boy dishonored their traditions. One of the reasons that women were not allowed in combat zones until the 20th century was the belief that Women Are Delicate while Men Are the Expendable Gender. The army had a woman in its ranks, didn't realize until months (?) later and put her in life-threatening danger several times. The death of a woman in a combat zone would automatically be seen as worse than any number of male deaths. The army would be dishonored for allowing such a thing to happen.
- There's also the separate bit of the army being dishonored on account of being too stupid to notice that one of their own people was in disguise the entire time. Sexist authorities would just assume that no woman could possibly keep up with men's training, so if they didn't notice the woman then they were either incredibly stupid or else they never really trained that hard. Either way it's an embarrassment.
- What I mean is, would the army have been punished, too, as a result of Mulan's actions? We already know her family would have lost their home.
- Why did Mulan go? Was it to save her father, or prove her own worth? The movie seems to be unable to decide what her motive is...one scene has her looking afraid when her father can't use his sword well, another scene has her telling Mushu that she might've wanted to see "someone worthwhile when she looked into the mirror".
- It's clearly both. The father is the main motivator, as she's very close to him and the idea of him dying in battle is heart breaking to her (and she knows he has little chance of surviving due to his age). But her inability to fit into the society she was born into is what gave her the idea to pass as a boy. The latter motivation was why she didn't leave the army when Shang told her she was unsuited for war. So on the surface, she went to spare her father's life, but deep down she wanted to prove herself.
- Just why exactly is Mulan's horse named "Khan"? For a China that does not seem to be Mongol-ruled, it seems pretty odd.
- Perhaps because he is/was especially fierce and disobedient, and thus naming him for a feared (but, to an extent, respected) foreign war-leader's title felt appropriate.
- Is there any Watsonian reason why Mulan doesn't just stab Shan Yu through the heart with his sword once she gets it, instead of going through the complicated maneuver of kicking him back, pinning him to the roof with the sword, and getting Mushu to fire a pyrotechnic rocket at him? Was she just being extra for no reason about how she killed this man? While it's less bloody for the kids in the immediate audience of the Disney movie, it sure brings up a lot more Fridge Horror, that Mulan would, in the spur of the moment, think not only to kill him but to kill him an especially showy way the crowd could cheer to.
- From a practical standpoint, Shan Yu's sword might be of the wrong size or weight to be wielded properly by Mulan, and Shan Yu himself is much bigger and stronger than her. She resorts to outwitting him primarily because it's a plan she'd already come up with before she took the sword from him and also because her wits are still her greatest advantage.
- She seemed to have come up with the plan to simply get him on the roof and have Mushu blast him with the rocket once he was in position. She was incredibly lucky that she was able to get the sword off him in the first place, and if she struck at him with it, she had no guarantee that he wouldn't be able to overpower her and get the upper hand. As it happened, she used the sword to trap him where he was and distract him (he'd be too busy trying to pull the sword out to get out of the rocket's way) - both of which would allow her to get off the roof safely.
- Why didn't Mulan try to talk to the other women in the city? There were definitely quite a few available in the background, and even if they wouldn't have been in much better shape t alert a guard then Mulan was, then they could have at least listened, told her what they'd seen anything, maybe helped her indirectly. And if she tried to do so offscreen, what went wrong?
- If the men in the city wouldn't listen to Mulan, why would they listen to other women delivering unlikely secondhand information?
- While the situation was dire and decisions needed to be made quickly, what gave Mulan reasonable certainty that she could pull off the avalanche? We see her examining the angle and picking a specific trajectory to aim for...
- Is it that Mulan doesn't understand snow and was semi-accurate by assuming that hitting it the way she did?
- or was she running because she knew she'd be dogpiled by the other soldiers for seemingly stealing the last cannon?
- And if she didn't know about snow, then why did she expect that she would get more out of the blast by going at a certain angle?
- And why wouldn't she know that killing Shan Yu-the leader-who she knows they can probably hit, would actually demoralize the Huns and cause power struggles, thus making it a safer bet as well as more effective?
- And since she seemed to have at least have planned far enough ahead to whistle for Khan, how did she expect an avalanche that her single warhorse could outrun to do decent damage? or maybe it can, can it? IDK.
- A) The army training would most likely have included the more Boring Yet Practical knowledge of how to safely cross through snowy terrain without causing an avalanche (especially for a procession with horses, ammunition, vehicles etc) - since the army would be likely to end up in that terrain and would need to know how to survive and operate in that environment. So in that event, Mulan would know what an avalanche was in theory and that one could be triggered in a certain way. While they can be triggered by much weaker factors depending, it's safe to say an explosive blast would cause one. B) She was running to put as much distance between her team and herself as possible to protect them; banking on them being unlikely to run with her into what appeared to be a suicide mission (they thought she was planning to aim the cannon at Shan Yu). C) She aims the blast in the direction the Hun army came from, guaranteeing that the avalanche will travel in the same way and the main casualties will be them rather than her army. It's near impossible to outrun an avalanche without a massive head start, so it was guaranteed to put a stop to most of them. D) Killing Shan Yu might demoralize them, or they might have another potential leader ready to take his place (after all, she just saw Shang discovering his father's death and resolving to finish what he started; logically there could be such an equivalent in the Hun army). Triggering the avalanche had the guarantee of wiping a lot of them out, removing an advantage in their numbers; if she even kills 50%, that's half the army gone like that. The lessened numbers would either convince them to abandon the invasion and retreat, or be less of a threat in a future battle (which is exactly what happened; the remaining Huns were not enough to accomplish very much). D) I see that as a moment of personal sacrifice; Mulan not caring if she survives, because she's doing this for the good of China and to save any other innocents from the horror she just witnessed. Plus, if she dies in battle wiping out most of the Hun army singlehandedly, that's sure to bring honor to her family. And she's bound to know Khan's abilities by this stage; she's been riding that horse most of her life and could guess that their close bond would allow the horse to trust her and get her to safety.
- Why, exactly, did Mulan's plan involve sending Shan-Yu into the fireworks tower ? While I understand that having him die in the explosion provided a spectacular Disney Villain Death, plot-wise that decision makes no sense : even if Shan-Yu was tough enough to survive the rocket's explosion, the following fall would most likely have finished him off. And even if he survived that too, he would be severely injured, all alone, and surrounded by both the city guards and Shang Li's soldiers. Blasting him into the fireworks tower was unnecessary overkill that achieved nothing except causing heavy damage to the Imperial Palace.
- This was partially if not totally addressed previously, but I must say that you're giving Mulan just a bit too much credit. This was not a plan in that she already had something figured out. She flat out says that she doesn't have a plan until she sees the fireworks tower and gets inspired. You can easily blame anything less than perfect on the fact that she's improvising. However, look where Mulan is, where Mushu is, and the shape of the roof. Unless he's going to set the rocket off right in Shan-Yu's face, there's little to no room to fire except lengthwise, which almost mandates having the fireworks tower as a backstop. Mushu almost couldn't fail to hit it if he hit Shan-Yu. Other justifications include making sure that the villain who just survived an avalanche and came within seconds of killing the emperor is unquestionably dead and simply not taking collateral damage into account. The actual damage to the palace consisted of a few pillars wrecked by Shan-Yu, a ruined wall, and a destroyed tower so small it could only hold two men at a time. That hardly seems catastrophic.
- As he is about to be hit by the rocket, why is Shan Yu's first reaction to try to run towards the rocket? Of course he wasn't going to analyze the situation with the little time he had, but shouldn't someone's first reaction in that position be to move aside? If Shan-Yu had done that, he would have easily survived.
- Remember how Shan Yu first got on that roof? He literally jumped straight upwards from the floor below, bursting through the ceiling and leaving a hole behind. The hole is still there when the rocket gets lit; it's between him and the rocket. So his plan is to drop through the hole while the rocket passes harmlessly overhead. He didn't count on getting stuck in place by his own sword though. Yeah, if he'd realized he was stuck he would've opted to just roll to one side, but he didn't realize until it was too late.
- The end of the "I'll make a man out of you." Training Montage has Mulan and her fellow recruits displaying several feats of Improbable Aiming Skills and martial prowess. It seems a bit excessive for the bare minimum standards of trainijng for fresh emergency levies before they can even be considered to be deployed to the front line. Makes you wonder why the much larger and better trained regular army was such a Red Shirt Army.
- True, if this weren't a disney movie there's no way they could have gotten to such advanced levels.
- Shang was just that determined to train his troops to be as elite as his fathers. He was contemplating being "the Leader of China's finest troops. No! The greatest troops of all time!"
- How old is Cri-Kee meant to be? Kahn is clearly an adult and Little Brother is clearly a puppy, but Cri-Kee is more vague. He seems to give off the impression of being a Cheerful Child, yet also seems to be incredibly smart for and more mature than Mushu.
- He appears to be fully grown (as oposed to a larva), but he probably is naive to the ways of the world.
- Is Mulan’s horse male or female? It looks male, and everything on this site refers to it as male, but I don’t think the film or any tie-in material have ever stated otherwise. Mushu refers to “him” as a cow (and uses the name “Bessie”, a common cow name), and we see “him” exhibit somewhat maternal behavior when “he” drapes a cloak/blanket over Mulan. Am I just reading too much into it?
- What exactly does Mulan’s grandmother mean by “an apple for serenity”? How exactly do apples represent serenity?
- It's apparently a pun, since "apple" in mandarin, sounds like mandarin for "serene fruit".
- Why did Shang feel it necessary to devote an entire class to the recruits practicing breaking boards with their faces? When in his mind did he think that would come in handy? I think Ling used it once in the entire final battle, but the circumstances were pretty...specific.
- What was the point of training the soldiers in archery if they didn't appear to even bring bows and arrows on the march, likewise with the bo staffs?
- While the story almost certainly would have ended in disaster for China but for Mulan's actions, there's a good chance that her father wouldn't have been deployed as a foot soldier, which she was obviously concerned about. He's a decorated war hero, but he's clearly not in stellar physical condition. To a Reasonable Authority Figure like Shang's father, the answer is obvious: Keep Fa Zhou at his side in an advisory role. Of course, then he would have been slaughtered along with the main Chinese force, so the Fridge Logic loops back around and Mulan really did save his life.
