Favorite Characters: Zhu-ge Liang (Red Cliff)

Shoutout to one of the two smartest guys in Red Cliff.  Due to A Little TLC(w), I’ve already talked about Zhou Yu, but now it’s time to take a look at his partner, the awesome war strategist Zhu-ge Liang.  In a pair of films full of badass soldiers, he – a non-fighter – is something of an odd man out, and yet he also deserves a lot of the credit for the allied army’s approach to fighting Cao Cao (some Zhu-ge Liang-related spoilers.)

We quickly get used to seeing Zhu-ge Liang outside the action.  While the bloodshed is going down, he stands apart from it, either from a vantage point where he can see the battle or somewhere he can receive messages about its progress.  The fact that he himself does not fight, however, in no way reduces the importance of his contribution to the war effort.  Beginning as a strategist for Liu Bei, Zhu-ge Liang is the first one to recognize a need for an alliance, and he’s the one who rides south to broker a partnership with Sun Quan of the neighboring kingdom.  So, even at the most basic level, without him, we’d be talking about a very different movie.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.  Watching Zhu-ge Liang in (mental) action is watching a master at work.  He comes up with the idea for using tortoise formation in the battle at the end of the first film, and it’s only through his strategic employment of this inventive, “outdated” formation that the allied army is able to hold its own against Cao Cao’s vastly-larger force.  And that’s Zhu-ge Liang’s MO in a nutshell:  figuring out how to use what limited resources the army has to its best advantage.  Not enough men?  Put the (incredibly awesome) shield-bearers to work dividing and conquering Cao Cao’s army, boxing them into small areas to be taken out more easily from the (relative) safety behind the shields.

His strategy for getting 100,000 arrows in three days marries the “use what you’ve got” philosophy with two others: “use what your enemy’s got” and “let Mother Nature work for you.”  This made it into my Top Five Big Damn Hero Moments post for these films despite Zhu-ge Liang not lifting a single weapon himself – it’s badass ‘cause it’s just so damn smart.  He takes a small number of boats, covers them with straw, and sails them to the edge of Cao Cao’s camp under heavy fog with a skeleton crew.  Cao Cao’s naval commanders, fearing an assault hidden behind the fog, orders wave after wave of arrows fired at the ships, which get stuck in the straw, turning the boats into arrow-laden pincushions.  Thanks, Cao Cao!

Zhu-ge Liang’s knowledge of the physical world helps in the final battle as well.  When Zhou Yu recognizes that the wind is blowing in the wrong direction to use fire in their attack, it’s Zhu-ge Liang who reads the signs of the weather and season to realize that the wind is going to shift.  His predictions help the army plan their attack for exactly the right moment.  Additionally, when an epidemic hits the camp, his quick thinking prevents the spread from being even more severe than it is, and he knows which plants to collect for making medicines.

Basically?  He’s the epitome of a non-threatening guy who calmly walks around with his everpresent fan, but Zhu-ge Liang is one of the allied army’s most valuable assets.  His mind saves countless lives and helps turn the tide of the war.  In my book, that’s very cool.