Inconsistencies in Mulan’s “I’ll Make a Man Out of You”
That musical number “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” in Mulan. Everyone loved it. Kids’ karate classes must have been packed wall-to-wall that year it came out. Okay, I’ll admit that the trick where they climb the pole with the weights completely blew my 7-year-old mind. The first time. But it’s just a simple application of static friction, right?
By now I think it’s important to bring up some glaring inconsistencies in the beloved song and video.
1) The training exercise where they deflect rocks with a stick while balancing a bucket on their head. (2:11) Okay, I can understand the archery and the hand-to-hand combat for an ancient Chinese army. The missiles also came in very handy in the whole avalanche situation. The whole “balance” element of martial arts even has a lot of merit. But under what circumstances would a soldier have to deflect rocks being thrown with a long pole? In what scenario would their enemy be reduced to throwing rocks? Or are they learning that in case they pass by a schoolhouse full of angry Hun children?
2) Ling was a fool at school for cutting gym. (2:39) Impossible. In ancient China, you would be either heavily disciplined or expelled for cutting any class. Besides, there was no gym class– only “morning exercises”, where you march in unison, and if you skip that it’s considered an act of huge disrespect. I’m surprised these guys have such a hard time adjusting to army life, since it’s pretty much identical to what their school would have been like.
3) The annoying advisor, Chi-Fu, gets his tent blown up 2 inches from his face and he’s completely fine. (3:00) I guess people really were tougher back then, even the annoying, squirrley guys.
4) The arrow on top of the pole. Li Shang appears to shoot the arrow such that it hits perpendicular to the wooden pole. But at 0:58 we see that the pole is really quite high, in comparison to the distance from which he shot it. Therefore, he must have shot it at an angle close to vertical. To do this he would have had to aim very carefully so that the arrow would hit its maximum height at precisely the moment it hit the top of the pole. Moreover, with a pole of that height, and an arrow fired from such a short horizontal distance, the arrow would have had very little momentum in the horizontal axis at the time it hit the pole. I doubt that it would have enough momentum to actually embed itself into the pole
