The Great Wall

Formulaic Epic Bores In-Between Action Scenes                    1/5



EPIC
     Armies and monsters clash in fantastic fashion

Behind the Scenes
     One of the first of hopefully more collaborations between Hollywood and Chinese studios

Defy's Genre Trends
     There is more to the "White Savor" plot here then it first appears

Rotten Tomatoes 35%                                  Cinemascore: B

The story behind The Great Wall happens to be more interesting then the movie itself. The product of a collaboration between Hollywood and Chinese director Yimou Zhang, The Great Wall is the most expensive undertaking for a Chinese studio with a whopping budget of 150million$. But this isn't the place to talk economics, how is the movie and was the money well spent? Unfortunately, while I completely endorse collaborations between Hollywood and foreign directors like this in the future, I have to admit I did not enjoy The Great Wall due to it's boring characters and it's tendency to rely on the most common genre cliches.

The Great Wall stars Matt Damon (kind of) as a western mercenary William, who stumbles into a army occupying the Great Wall while searching for black powder, the not so mystical substance that can open any lock. While there he gets caught up in a ancient war between the Nameless Order and a race of monsters referred to as the Tao Tei. As the war rages on Damon must find his place in the army all while Commander Lin (Jing Tian) must find a way to defeat their ancient enemy once and for all.

There are several key ingredients lacking in this movies recipe that keeps it from maintaining its relevance shortly after its exceptionally long crawl of credits. For starter the CGI is bad, like PS2 early 90s bad. For a movie that has a budget of 150million$ this just isn't acceptable, even if the studio has little practice with it. On a more major note it's central characters are bland, possessing barely more than the typical genre traits. Damon fumbles around contributing little to the overall plot (which is more of a statement on the films design then its plot structure but thats a post for another time), and the films second lead, Lin, is exactly what you expect her to be minus the fact she's a woman. The Tao Tei, while creatively designed, don't make for a threatening or compelling antagonistic force, and most of the human characters and plot points are equally one dimensional. I understand in monster movies the monster is rarely a compelling character but theres nor reason why the army of lizard dogs couldn't be scary at the least.

The Great Wall isn't going to be on my top ten worst of the year or anything (unless were in for a really good year), but this film surpasses no expectations. When soldiers aren't jumping off the Great Wall, or when the Tao Tei aren't tearing apart somebodies flesh, all we're left with are the cookie cutter characters. Characters are the foundation of any film, giving weight to a plot by investing our interest and sympathies, but here there is no investment and as a result there is no take.