It is the only thing that elevates The Great Wall from an ambitious, yet clichéd action film into what turned out to be a surprisingly intricate, visually breathtaking monster movie: Director Zhang Yimou.Īlso, yes it’s a monster movie. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.The similarities, heavy as they may be – they’re both historical fantasies set in a far-eastern land, they’re both distributed by the same studio, and both films star a famous Hollywood actor as a (and this is problematic) white saviour character – are rather harmless, and thankfully very superficial. MPAA Definition of PG-13: Parents strongly cautioned. “The Great Wall,” a Universal Pictures release, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America for “for sequences of fantasy action violence.” Running time: 104 minutes. “The Great Wall,” in the end, bridges worlds only by that sad commonality we all share: the disappointment of a bloated, half-baked blockbuster.
There’s surprisingly little sense to the entire ordeal as Lin Mae and Garin fight to stave off the monster hordes. Characters appear largely as cardboard cut-outs. Garin watches her in awe, and quite rightly realizes he’s out of his depth.īut the film altogether isn’t well stitched together. She’s part of an acrobatic group of warriors who bungee jump off the wall to spear the Taotie. General Shao (Zhang Hanyu) presides over the Nameless Order, but it’s Jian Tian’s Lin Mae who most resonates. Yimou’s images are almost entirely computer generated in “The Great Wall.” For all the attention to its China-set production, the film feels like it takes place nowhere but in a rather dim digital realm that often appears like a knockoff of Peter Jackson’s Middle Earth, complete with orc-like beasts.įew characters emerge out of the blur. The whiff of propaganda surrounding “The Great Wall” only adds to the trend.
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Yimou has long known how to dazzle with movement and historical sweep, notably in films like “House of Flying Daggers” and “Hero.” He was also the director of the 2008 Beijing Olympics opening ceremony, and there’s a sense that his earlier, feistier art-house days (“To Live,” ″Raise the Red Lantern”) have given way to a cozier relationship with the Chinese government - and that the films have suffered for it. The teaming army along the exaggerated, heightened wall is a vibrant swirl of color and choreography. They are prisoners initially, but they prove their worth in battle during the first Taotie attack and are subsequently, and somewhat reluctantly, drafted into the epic fight. Garin and his Spanish partner, Tovar (Pedro Pascal of “Game of Thrones”), are captured by a group of elite warriors dubbed the Nameless Order whose fortress lies along the Great Wall. Though many feared Damon’s character was another example of Hollywood’s fondness for “white saviors,” he is less a heroic protagonist than an audience stand-in for a lavish pageant celebrating Chinese values and valor. Six writers are credited for the script and story, which centers on a medieval Irish mercenary, William Garin (Damon), who has come to the Gobi Desert in search of “black powder,” that is, early explosives.
It, after all, originated as a thinly sketched conceit of Thomas Tull, the former chief executive of the now Chinese-owned Legendary Entertainment. But it turns out to be little more than a monster movie (and a poor one at that) that says more about corporate-driven global moviemaking than anything about either culture. With acclaimed Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou directing and Damon starring, “The Great Wall” would seem to at least promise to be an intriguing artifact, a movie that would, even in failure, illustrate something interesting about the culture clash it’s predicated on. Those are the four-legged, man-eating creatures of ancient Chinese folklore that are here attacking the Great Wall and the armies that defend it, as the Taotie are said to do every 60 years. But if “The Great Wall” is a forerunner to the cross-cultural blockbustering to come, we may have just as much reason to flee as those being hounded in the film by the Taotie.