Archery in the new Mulan film

I just watched the trailer for Disney's live action Mulan reboot. Years ago I was forced to watch Mulan 2, which was a nightmare. Compared to that, this cannot fail, but I really hope it will be better than those other completely unnecessary live action reboots of animated Disney classics. I saw the original Disney Mulan in 1998 in the movies, and I really liked it. Shan Yu, the leader of the evil Huns was a terrifying baddie, I really feared him as a child. And the avalanche scene was awesome!

After some googling around I found out that for some reason Shan Yu is not featured in this reboot (replaced by a random witch in stupid clichéd fantasy costume). This reboot also lacks Mushu, the Cricket, and captain Li Shang (who would've made men out of you all)! Apparently (as the producer of the film stated), the moviemakers fealt that having a superior officer of Mulan felling in love with her is "inappropriate" for this age we're living. As if it would've mattered in ancient China! Seems like I don't need to go to see this movie after all. Sad.

At least the film looks cool. I really love the colours used in this movie. Why is it that ancient and medieval China get's to bee colourful (as it was) but ancient and medieval Europe doesn't (it was too)? Could we get colours back to European historical films also, please!

Costumes in this trailer looked pretty good, especially for a Disney movie! They feature actual Chinese helmet and armour designs from almost the right time period (a few hundred years too new compared to when the story of Hua Mulan was originally set, but then again it's a fantasy story not based on real characters, so it doesn't matter as much).

Archery features heavily in this trailer, and got me excited, so let's get to it!

While not delving into too much detail, let's just say these recurve bows with long siyahs (the unbending parts at the end of Asiatic composite bows) were often used in China from the Han dynasty through the Yuan dynasty (206 BCE–1368 CE).
What is also good is that the archers start their draw from a level above their heads, which is done in East Asian archery, such as Japanese kyūdō.

 Mistakes:
1. All soldiers wear leather bracers. If these are meant to be archer's bracers, then only the archers should wear them, and only in their left arm. And they should be smooth side inside the arm, not like shown here. Leather bracers were not a part of traditional Chinese armours.
2. These bows make a creeking sound when drawn. If a bow creeks, it's somehow broken. I hope not all of these bows are broken. A standard movie cliché, a mistake nonetheless.

Other good thing was that the commander shouted: "Release!" instead of "Fire!". "Fire" was never shouted before the invention and/or widespread use of firearms. Bows don't shoot fire, but arrows, so English language commands to shoot with a bow were most probably "shoot", "loose" and "release". This was really excellent to hear from this trailer.

Now I changed the language in the speech bubble to Chinese since Chinese didn't historically speak English. I don't know Chinese, so according to Cambridge Dictionary this 发射 means "release". More specifically: "Release; to fire a bomb or a missile (= flying weapon), or to allow it to fall". They have used the word "fire" there also, so I don't know if this would be correct term regarding arrows, but someone who knows Chinese can correct this.

 Mistakes:
3. Archers are shooting upwards to create a rain of arrows.

Arrow rain is often depicted in popular media, such as films, games and books, but there is insufficient historical evidence of it being done, at leat regularly. Archers did not stay stationary on battlefield and launch arrow rains after another, but instead they were an inseparable part of the armies, they moved around the battlefield, often among infantry soldiers searching for targets to shoot. The used trajectories of arrows were much flatter and the distances shot much shorter than often imagined by modern people.

4. Mulan here is shooting with a Mediterranean grip. And that is also erroneous, since she's using all four fingers, instead of the regular three. This is anyway not the style of shooting prevalent in Asia, instead she should be shooting with a Mongolian thumb grip. I hope this was just one scene, and she uses the thumb grip in the rest of the movie. Otherwise the archery coach is to blame for this.

5. We have an arrow camera stolen from TV tropes storage of clichés. But it's not a bad cliché, I like it a lot, since it's fun to look at. That's not the mistake. But the arrow flies a long distance (nothing wrong with that either) without spinning. Arrows have those fletchings at their back to give the arrow a spin in the air. This works the same way as rifling on a gun, which makes the bullet spin around it's axis. This spinning makes the projectile fly more accurately. This arrow doesn't even make half a spin during this flight. It's impossible.

Legolas did it better in the The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring. His arrow spinned somewhat, while still too little, it looked more believable than Mulan's arrow in flight.

All and all the new Mulan trailer faired exceedingly well compared to many other travesties of archery I've seen during the last few years on screen. Good job!

Compare here how this reboot fairs against it's predecessor regarding archery. I think this new one did a better job in that respect (easier to do it alive than to animate, and some of the mistakes of the animation is due to the exaggerated characteristics of cartoons, not suitable for live action, so it is understandable). It seems I gave both versions of Mulan the same amount of mistake points, but I had more good to say about archery in this live action one.