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This film was also rated low on Rotten Tomatoes, an American review aggregation website for film and television. It only grossed US$45.1 million in the United States and Canada, the biggest film market in the world. In the United States and other markets outside mainland China, the box office performance was disappointing. Although moviegoers rated it 4.9 out of 10 at Douban, the most influential film social media networking site, the film gained US$170.9 million from Chinese market. Directed by the most renowned Chinese director Zhang Yimou, and casted by many superstars in both Hollywood and China such as Matt Damon, Andy Lau and Hanyu Zhang, this film attracted the attentions of film professionals, critics, and moviegoers in China. People are going to die anyway so don’t bother building them.“The Great Wall” film is the biggest US–China co-production in history with a cost around US$150 million. Thankfully no, it’s just saying that they’re pointless.
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Is it saying that walls are, actually, a good thing? Oof, dangerous territory. I half-thought that The Great Wall would have me over-analysing and asking all kinds of critical questions in an attempt to garner something other than vertigo from watching it. And yet, at just 104 minutes, it couldn’t move fast enough. The audience doesn’t become emotionally attached to anyone because this film moves too fast for character development. The world was saved by a badass Chinese woman which is cool, but no one you like dies because there aren’t any characters to, actually, like. In the end Damon and Pascal learn that identity is better than money, while Lin gets a promotion.
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As pretty much the sole female actor to say anything (let alone in English), Tian provides the bridge between the Chinese and non-Chinese worlds, while Damon and Pascal provide the comic relief because this film doesn’t know what it wants to be. Unfortunately, the effects were pretty average and Commander Lin’s troop of bright blue, all-female soldiers provide nothing more than an exhibition of cool gymnastics, since none of them, except for Tian herself, have speaking roles. It’s all special effects, fireworks and bungee ropes. On the other hand, The Great Wall is a beautiful, colourful show reminiscent of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. And I’m okay with that, if I need something to watch while I eat my dinner or smoke a joint or count the minutes until I can go to bed again. I honestly felt like I was sitting on my sofa at home, watching my housemate play badly written games on his increasingly decrepit PS3, one after the other. You can imagine yourself in control of its characters, running around like an idiot, madly mashing buttons and thumbing analog sticks to set off catapults and trigger giant blades that fly out of holes in the wall, cutting enemies in half. And I’m by no means against that (favourite line: “Kill the queen or we all die”), but as far being an allegory for the all-consuming greed of mankind (and the West), it’s pretty weak. No, it’s trust in each other and a collective, collaborative effort to survive. But trust in what? You can bet your ass it’s not the annoying, adolescent emperor, who sits in his golden palace while all his subjects get eaten. But how? Do literally hundreds of Chinese extras equate to just two Western actors? Damon and Pascal are mercenaries, fighting for food and money, while their counterpart, Commander Lin (Jin Tian), The Nameless Order and, clearly, the entirety of China, fight for something more: trust.
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But more than anything, The Great Wall has been commended as the largest ever collaboration between Chinese and American cinema. With a budget of $160 million and a gross take almost double that, it’s fair to say that this is a pretty good earner. Under the command of General Shao (Zhang Hanyu), the wall itself is manned by The Nameless Order, so-called because we’re given no information about them other than that they’ve been guarding China (and therefore the whole world) against monsters known as Taoties, who they believe were sent by god to punish people for being too greedy, when really their meteorite just crash landed on Earth and they’re trying to survive, too. Matt Damon (of Matt Damon Fame) and that guy who gets his head crushed in Game of Thrones season four (Pedro Pascal) are travelling through Mongolia, maybe, in search of black powder so they can kill people in the west more efficiently, when they accidentally-on-purpose stumble across the Great Wall of China. But Zhang Yimou’s (House of Flying Daggers) The Great Wall isn’t that. That is, some white, Western men go to a foreign land and end up saving the natives despite being responsible for their near-destruction in the first place. I won’t pretend I didn’t go into this wary of what I’m going to call the ‘Avatar Formula’.