ALTERNATIVE HISTORY
Damon fights ancient monsters in warrior saga The Great Wall
“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” wrote the poet Robert Frost in 1914. But it took more than a century, and the combined might of the Chinese and Hollywood dream factories, to determine what that thing was.
Turns out it was monsters. In the latest action picture from Yimou Zhang (Hero, House of Flying Daggers), we learn that the Great Wall of China was constructed in part to defend the realm against slavering beasts called taoties that attack every 60 years with zodiacal precision and timing.
William (Matt Damon), a mercenary and sometimes trader, stumbles on this in what the film’s press notes refer to as “an alternate vision of ancient China, circa 1100.” (You may now indulge your own President Trump/alternative facts/wall-building jokes. I’ll wait.)
It’s a very alternate vision indeed, one in which the Chinese invent human balloon flight some six centuries before the French (bronzepunk?) and where Damon’s character can marvel to one of the Chinese warriors: “You speak English!” (In 1100, Old English, as it is now known, sounded more like German. But hey, it’s only a movie!)
William and fellow mercenary Tovar (Pedro Pascal) are captured by agents of The Nameless Order, led by General Shao (Hanyu Zhang) and later by the fierce, Englishspeaking warrior Commander Lin (Tian Jing, also in the upcoming monster movies Kong: Skull Island and Pacific Rim: Uprising). The prisoners meet Ballard (Willem Dafoe), another captive.
The Europeans have come in search of a new weapon called “black powder,” which the Nameless Order is using to fight the taoties. Along with “screaming arrows” and “ring of fire,” these are either cutting-edge defensive tactics or Johnny Cash hits. Possibly both, as when a drumbeat from the great wall’s sentinels gradually morphs into the film’s rousing score.
There has been much handwringing over the notion of Damon showing up to rescue the Chinese from their demons, but in fact William’s character just gets lucky: He happens to have a hunk of magnetic ore on him that temporarily stuns the taoties. And he learns some important lessons in trust (including how to say it in Mandarin) from Commander Lin, who eventually lets him join in the fight.
The Great Wall represents a great leap forward in U.S.-China co-productions, which have previously been the stuff of terrible acting (John Cusack and Adrien Brody in Dragon Blade) and awkward pro-Communist/product placement messages (Transformers: Age of Extinction).
There’s a bit of the former here — Damon’s acting is wooden, but it’s a pliable wood, like young bamboo. And while this isn’t Yimou’s best work, it’s still an effective monster/ action picture, with taoties scaling walls like the zombie hordes in World War Z, and Damon beating them back with the combative efficiency of Jason Bourne. (The film’s screenwriters’ credits include work on both those movies.)
There are a few plot holes, not least why the “crane corps” of fighters look more like a flying acrobatic troupe than effective warriors. And how do you even recruit fighters to an outfit called The Nameless Order? But the taoties are superbly designed. They even look Chinese, in that their rippling skin carries a design motif that I later learned was copied from ancient Asian pottery and is called — wait for it — taotie. It may be an alternate history, but it features some intriguing overlays with the real thing.
1 The China syndrome Studios pay attention to numbers. Pacific Rim, for instance, did just OK in 2014 until its China box office doubled its total. The performance was enough to convince the money folks to do a sequel currently shooting and soon heading to China to complete filming. Last year, Warcraft stumbled domestically but the China box office, at more than $220 million, made the movie a financial hit.
2 Location, Location ... The Great Wall filmed in the government-owned China Film Group studios in Beijing from March to August 2015. Since much of the film is digital, the wall, most of the battles and a lot of the interaction moments were shot inside. The cast and crew did venture outside for exteriors that include scenes near the Gobi Desert and the Painted Mountains northwest of Beijing.
3 The fame game Jason Bourne’s Matt Damon is the famous headliner of the co-production, but in China filmmaker Yimou Zhang is more acclaimed. The Great Wall is the director’s first English-language production. North American movie audiences might know Yimou for his best foreign language film Oscar nominations; 1990’s Ju Dou, 1991’s Raise the Red Lantern and Hero in 2003.
4 Spinning the yarn Despite the 12th-century China setting, the story and screenplay is all Hollywood rewrite with a cleanup by Tony Gilroy, who fashioned the scripts for Michael Clayton and the Bourne films. Meanwhile, Damon describes The Great Wall sub-genre as historical fantasy in the Game of Thrones realm.
5 So far, so rich As anticipated, The Great Wall is already a hit in China, raking in more than US$170 million since its December release there. Internationally, the movie is attracting fairly strong business with a $60 million total and counting. In Canada and the U.S., The Great Wall opening weekend is tracking at close to $65 million.