Mulan
Mulan mistake picture

Continuity mistake: When Xianniang chokes Bòˆri Khan the position of her fingers changes between shots. Note how the index finger is separated from the rest in one shot, or close to the others a shot later. (00:12:29)

Sacha

Continuity mistake: When Mulan baths in the river and his friend enters the water, a strand of hair along her left jaw appears and disappears randomly.

Sacha

Mulan mistake picture

Continuity mistake: After Mulan breaks the winged sculpture she chases the chicken and runs past a couple. A mere second later Mulan is in a different place: the stuff on the wall has vanished, the ladder and, of course, the couple. There's a brief shot afterwards where you can now see the ladder but the couple is nowhere to be seen. The whole editing is a mess.

Sacha

Mulan mistake picture

Continuity mistake: After jumping off the roof, Mulan smiles at her dad while neighbours walk away, and a strand of hair falls over her forehead. A shot later her hair is brushed. She didn't move between shots.

Sacha

Continuity mistake: When young Mulan is chasing the chicken, a man walking down the stairs is suddenly several steps behind, repeating all previous movements. (00:01:57)

Sacha

Mulan mistake picture

Continuity mistake: When Mulan watches the flying burning catapult balls her hair is behind her shoulders. In the close-up it's over her shoulders. (01:08:51)

Sacha

Continuity mistake: When Mulan steps on the winged sculpture the ramp next to the steps is clean, a shot later it's dirty and with mud all over. (00:02:00)

Sacha

Mulan mistake picture

Continuity mistake: In the desert, when a man sees Xianniang he wipes is face with a handkerchief. The way he holds it changes between shots.

Sacha

Mulan mistake picture

Continuity mistake: After slipping down the roof, Mulan smiles at her father and bends her arm. From the opposite angle the arm is lowered. (00:03:00)

Sacha

Mulan mistake picture

Continuity mistake: When Mulan moves the teapot to trap the spider, the teapot is at different distance from the tablecloth depending on the camera angle. (00:17:20)

Sammo

Continuity mistake: When Mulan is back home and her mother hugs her, in the first shot her hand is on Mulan's shoulder, on the top, but after the cut it's behind it. (01:40:35)

Sammo

Continuity mistake: Mulan opens her armor to extract the throwing weapon blocked by her makeshift corset. In the first close-up the long strand of hair that was in front of her left hand is gone, and in the second one (when she pulls the weapon out) her left hand is holding the armor below the dagger - it was above it before. (01:04:25)

Sammo

Mulan mistake picture

Continuity mistake: After the first clash with the Witch, as the narration says Hua Jun 'dies', but Mulan lives. The close-up on the blade shows a hand gripping it a couple inches below the blade, while whenever we see her face, before and after that close-up, she is holding it with her finger alongside the guard. (01:03:45)

Sammo

Mulan mistake picture

Continuity mistake: Once Mulan has reached the top of the mountain with her buckets, the action moves to the Rouran troops assaulting a city. Gong Li's witch is womanhandling a bunch of soldiers who try to impale her. She grabs a spear a few inches away from its feathers, but in the next shots her hand is covered by them. (00:50:50)

Sammo

Mulan mistake picture

Continuity mistake: The commanding officer (Donnie Yen) intervenes to stop the sword-pointing nonsense with his kung-fu badassery. He easily disarms the two litigious rookies and holds both their swords, but the pose he strikes is a different one in the two shots; Mulan's family heirloom is held alternatively low and high. (00:29:55)

Sammo

Mulan mistake picture

Continuity mistake: Chen Honghui extends his hand to "the little man" to help 'him' back on his feet, but Mulan pulls her sword on him. The sword strap dangles freely in the shots by the side, but it is held up in the close-ups of the blade pointed at his neck. (00:29:45)

Sammo

Continuity mistake: On the way to the conscription office, Cricket introduces himself, or tries to do so, but the token bully starts tormenting him by prodding his ear with a small straw. The straw has split ends which make noticeable the fact that the straw is turned at a different angle between shots; the second time he gets poked in particular, the smoother end is floppy and tilted downwards in the wide angle, straight and horizontal in the ear close-up. (00:29:25)

Sammo

Mulan mistake picture

Continuity mistake: Mulan is having dinner with her family after her father has been drafted. During the scene depending on the camera angle her arms are folded, or her right arm is leaning against the table while she is holding chopsticks in midair. (00:20:55)

Sammo

Continuity mistake: Mulan sheds her armor and is back to the battlefield, where she begins mowing down the bunch of Rourans. When she impales her last one, look at the shot when Yifei Liu is barely in frame; you can tell that there's just a tiny portion of her by her eye, but when the camera is focused in the next shot on the cool pose that sends everyone else hightailing, there's a lot of hair down that side of her face. (01:06:25)

Sammo

Plot hole: There is no reason at all why, being targeted by a few arrows by unseen enemies - a fire suppressed already by the salvo of their own archers - the Rourans would turn around their heavy siege equipment, away from the bulk of the enemy forces, and fire it, hurling a single heavy stone to the middle of nowhere when they have the whole rest of the army who could storm the rock the supposed enemy commandos hide behind, or the archers who could keep shooting - again, they proved to be completely successful. It also makes no sense that the all-powerful witch who made the warriors flee managed to do any of this, 'sneaking' by horse in the middle of the steppe.

Sammo

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

Suggested correction: Mulan used the helmets of the fallen warriors to make it appear that a large force has flanked Rourans. Rourans didn't expect this new "force" and knew nothing about it. They didn't know its size. And while their original target seemed harmless, this new "force" was killing Rourans. Fear and death were the reasons. What you see in this scene is an enactment of one of Sun Tzu's famous quotes: "All warfare is based on deception. [...] Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected."

FleetCommand

What we see in the scene is laughable, and not because of the idea, which surely is based on the profound strategic motto you mentioned and we find in many folkloric tales in other cultures as well; what we actually see in the movie, is that she grabbed a couple helmets lining them up on a rock, and she shot a few arrows. Then she stops shooting, and we see helmets knocked down in their full view. The movie truly surpassed itself in showing it in the most phony way; had they shown her shooting from behind the rock responding to their fire, or the helmets not falling, or them just shooting at mist, terrified, it would have maybe worked. It's an enormous overreaction. That and, under no circumstance trebuchets are used that way anyway. And she did all this setup unseen, again.

Sammo

In response to death, nothing is an enormous overreaction. Something or someone was killing them. They wanted to kill it, and they didn't have time for Facebook's famous brand of pseudo-myth-busting. What if they knew it was one girl shooting at them? They'd still have done the same. Being killed is a very personal matter.

FleetCommand

More mistakes in Mulan

Mulan: I'm Hua Mulan. I will bring honor to us all.

More quotes from Mulan

Trivia: Ming-Na Wen, the original voice of Mulan in the 1998 animated movie, has a cameo as an esteemed guest who introduces Mulan to the Emperor.

More trivia for Mulan

Question: Since one male from each family in her village is required to report for training to serve the emperor, how is it that no-one recognizes Mulan - especially when she gives in to her chi?

Answer: Although it isn't said (in either this film or the animated original), she reports to a different camp than anyone else in her village. Otherwise, the men would not only recognize her physically but they would know beforehand that Hua Zhou never had a son so the ruse would never work. How she knows nobody from her village will be at that particular camp is never explained in either film.

BaconIsMyBFF

More questions & answers from Mulan

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