The OK Wall of China is closer to the truth
It helps to suspend belief while watching Matt Damon and Chinese warriors fight ancient monsters
“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 Zhang Yimou (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/alternate 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/ sidekick Tovar (Pedro Pascal) are captured by agents of The Nameless Order, led by General Shao (Zhang Hanyu) and later by the fierce, English-speaking warrior Commander Lin (Jing Tian, 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 hand-wringing 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 half-dozen 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.