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Good Reason to Build a Wall?


          Pairing East Asian filmmaking with Hollywood isn’t as crazy an idea as it may sound. Combine genius outlandish ideas with a Hollywood budget and great international actors at the top of their game, and you get Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer. This is what I was resting my hopes on for with The Great Wall, a monster epic from House of Flying Daggers director Zhang Yimou.
          A pair of tenth-century mercenaries, William (Matt Damon) and Tovar (Pedro Pascal) searching for black powder make it to the Great Wall of China shortly before its besieged by prehistoric monsters called Taoties. William in particular soon finds favour with the young General Lin (Jing Tian) and puts aside his quest to help defend the Wall and China from this invasion.
          This is another movie criticized early on for whitewashing, but that’s the least of this films problems. This movie where monsters attack the Great Wall is pretty stupid in its set-up, but it’s not helped by a ton of other logical inconsistencies and actions that don’t make sense. For instance, because the main characters don’t speak Chinese, a lot of what the Chinese characters say is translated for them. But the movie also uses subtitles. Sometimes Lin will purposely mis-translate something to mess with William, but half the time they’re repeating what we just read. The writing is pretty poor, especially the dialogue Damon has to work with, and the editing is horrible. The cutting between scenes is often swift and jarring which hurts the pacing. There could be one scene where William and Lin are fighting Taoties head on, and then an immediate cut to Tovar wandering in the desert. The mythology though partially based in Chinese folklore doesn’t make much sense and as to that whitewashing thing, it’s not necessary these characters be westerners. It would have made as much sense if they were from a distant part of China. The casting was clearly an opportunity to get some star power attached.
          Speaking of which, Matt Damon is not at his best in this movie. His anachronistic and irregular American accent sticks out like a sore thumb and his deliveries are very stunted making for many an awkward moment. There’s little chemistry between him and the other actors, most of whom are just okay. Pascal who’s a veritable scene-stealer in many of his other projects, is relegated just to the role of sidekick in this movie and his arc is fairly predictable. I’d have much preferred if he was in focus as much as Damon, because the banter the writers try to give them is clearly an attempt to make them out as a duo, yet Damon consistently gets more spotlight because he’s the bigger star. Willem Defoe’s also in this movie as a prisoner-turned English teacher of the Chinese and though he’s not as typically crazy as most of Defoe performances, he does get a few good over-the-top moments. The best performances are from the Chinese cast, though apart from Tian who’s good enough I’d like to see more of her, none are very well-developed. Andy Lau and Zhang Hanyu are the only ones who make an impression, which is unfortunate when you look at the numerous great performances from Asian actors recently in Silence.
          By far the worst part of The Great Wall is the visual effects. Sure the production design is fine, the look of the Wall is decent, and it has some of the same visual vibrancy particularly regarding the Chinese costuming, of House of Flying Daggers. But the creature effects here are worse than Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them! At no point is there an ounce of substance to them, and though I admire the creativity, their look isn’t at all interesting. The action scenes are a CGI mess. And this movie has the most obnoxious 3D I’ve seen in years. It’s extremely irritating how exploited it is: CGI arrows flying in slow motion at the screen (there’s a lot of pointless slow motion), monsters jumping right at you, it’s all horrible. It’s even used in a scene where William shows off his archery skills which are just as goofy as but less endearing than Robin Hood’s. 
          With a premise like this, The Great Wall was always going to be a dumb movie. But it could have at least been fun too. In addition to all I’ve mentioned, the movie’s just bland. If it was written tighter, if the story was polished up and the monsters given a better design, and if William and Tovar were given more equal screen-time with better CGI and a complete wipe of the 3D gimmicks, this could have been something along the lines of Road to El Dorado meets Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Instead we got a movie that’s not the worst thing playing in theatres right now, but is definitely one that’ll be quickly forgotten. 

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