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| Things are exploding left and right and a frightening siege is apparently taking place, but star Matt Damon is on the wall with a bow and arrow on this poster for Yimou Zhang's The Great Wall |
An Irish mercenary adventurer with a Spanish companion is searching for gunpowder in Song dynasty China [about 1,000 years ago], but they come into a massive battle against the monsters that the Great Wall are meant to keep out.
The Great Wall is written by Carlo Bernard (The Uninvited (2009)), Doug Miro (The Great Raid (2005)) and Tony Gilroy (State of Play (2009)), with Max Brooks (World War Z (2013, novel)), Edward Zwick (The Siege (1998)) and Marshal Herskovitz (A Marriage (2009, TV movie)) contributing story elements, and directed by Yimou Zhang (Red Sorghum (1988)).
It is an ambitious, giant production, which attempts to please both a Chinese and an American/Western audience with the result becoming an often involuntarily comical compromise. The presence of Matt Damon's (Syriana (2005)) ponytailed character alone in this old-Chinese context is comical: He is a hero of Western fabric, full of one-liners and incredible fighting skills. Across from him are Chinese by the boatloads, who appear very different; saluting uniformity and sacrifice for the majority's improvement. The Great Wall also marks a major cultural meeting that may be more than a bit anxiety-provoking for the China-skeptical Westerner.
There are impressive sets and costumes, strange, not very interesting monsters and a thankfully contained running time. The main problem for this film, though, is a fundamentally unexciting story: The Great Wall marks a cultural summit that so far as the plot goes never really takes place.
Watch a trailer for the film here
Cost: 150 mil. $
Box office: 334.9 mil. $
= Flop (returned 2.23 times its cost)
[The Great Wall premiered 6 December (Beijing) and runs 103 minutes. Shooting took place in China and New Zealand from March 2015 - ?. It is Zhang's first English-language film and reportedly the costliest movie shot in China to its day. It reportedly employed 100 on-set translators to help with the communication between the international cast and crew. It opened #3, behind holdover hits The Lego Batman Movie and Fifty Shades Darker, to an 18.4 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it spent another two weekends in the top 5 (#3-#4) and grossed 45.5 mil. $ (13.6 % of the total gross). It was the film's 2nd biggest market; the biggest by far was China with 170.9 mil. $ (51 %); 3rd biggest was Russia with 10.9 mil. $ (3.3 %). 110-120 mil. $ were reportedly spent to market the film worldwide, making its overall loss in the neighborhood of 75 mil. $ according to Deadline Hollywood. Regarding critique of his part in the film, Damon has stated: "For the first time, a film deeply rooted in Chinese culture, with one of the largest Chinese casts ever assembled, is being made at tentpole scale for a world audience. I believe that is a trend that should be embraced by our industry." The Communist Party of China have had negative reviews of the film removed from online sites in China. Zhang returned with Shadow/Ying (2018). Damon returned in Downsizing (2017). The Great Wall is rotten at 35 % with a 4.90/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of The Great Wall?
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