Re:tro Re:view - The Great Wall!

The Great Wall is currently available on Blu Ray and DVD.  Ok, I got this on Netflix disc because the wave of negative criticism made me wary, I shouldn’t have, this movie is exactly what it should be - an action movie.  To put it in simple terms, it is Two Towers meets Starship Troopers meets Mulan, if that sounds interesting to you (it should), then you should see this film!  I was also hesitant to see it from all of the backlash of Matt Damon as a White Savior, he isn’t, he doesn’t Save the Day, but he does help the day.  It really is all Tian Jing’s film, Matt Damon’s William Garin is the wild card, that gives help and clues on the beasties that threaten to swarm the Great Wall.  

This of course is an East - West collaboration with director Zhang Yimou who is known for Raise the Red Lantern (1991), House of Flying Daggers (2004), and of course the Beijing Olympics in 2008.  He knows spectacle and delivers here.  The writing has a team with screenwriters Carlo Bernard, Doug Miro, and Tony Gilroy with a story by Max Brooks, Edward Zwick, and Marshall Herskovitz.  They maintain some of the Chinese elements, I actually wanted more Chinese (sub-titled) in the film, including the sermonizing that comes with Chinese films; you shouldn’t fight for money, you should fight for respect, beasties are attacking because of greed (not really, we don’t see greedy merchants being eaten, only soldiers).

So here we go.  First, the effects, very good except the beginning, it is almost painful to see a CG Great Wall, it reads fake.  After that part, the rest of the movie was convincing, I wasn’t torn out of any of it.  The beasties are the Tao Tie, they look a little like the Demon Dogs in Ghostbusters (1984), but with Chinese symbols on their foreheads and flaps on their backs.  They are a mythical Chinese creature, taotie, fairly common in Chinese statues, but I’ve always seen them as green.  The Tao Tie swarm like the Bugs in Starship Troopers, their hordes trample the canyon that is right out of Two Towers, there is even a rocky outcrop in the center!  The beginning of the film follows the mercenaries cut down by raiders.  A smaller group escapes, all headed to China for the black powder, this includes William and Pero Tovar (Pedro Pascal), he was Oberyn Martell in Game of Thrones (2014), in the series Narcos, and was Whiskey in Kingsman: The Golden Circle. 

The rest of the mercenaries are killed by a mysterious creature, William slices off its paw and carries it with him along with a fist-sized magnetic rock which he hopes to make into a compass.  The next morning they again escape the raiders and get captured by the soldiers to be taken to the Great Wall.  The raiders are part of the logic gaps, they range around the Great Wall, yet they don’t seem to not run into the beasties or the Great Wall soldiers.  There are many logic gaps, but this is an action movie about mythical creatures, what do you expect?  We are quickly introduced to the soldiers on the Wall, Commander Lin (Tian Jing) Mae, the last names are from IMDB, they are really known only by their first names.  Jing was featured in Kong: Skull Island (2017) and Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018), both Legendary films.  She is a deadly commander, leader of the Crane Corps with their female sculpted, blue armor. They go bungee cord jumping off the Wall to fling down to attack the Tao Tie with spears.  

Lin also speaks English, one other soldier does too, which she learned from an ex-pat, Sir Ballard played by Willem Dafoe.  Dafoe has a long list of genre credits including playing Vulko in this year’s Aquaman, but also Murder on the Orient Express (2017), and the brilliant independent drama, The Florida Project (2017). The downside to Yimou’s direction is that the characters are sparsely identified as well as the Tao Tie, the creature that was killed, the movie keeps rolling on and doesn’t repeat the names too often.  It’s just general and commander.  The general on the Wall is General Shao (Hanyu Zhang), but leaders don’t last too long.  There is also a foot soldier who is dismissed by the commanders, but William knows his worth, moral.  The other logic gap is the Crane Corps, they risk their lives to bungee jump, usually wall defense is pouring oil or boiling water, dropping rocks, or other means.  They even have a novel defense, but apparently hold it back for some reason. 

They find out that the Tao Tie are led by the queen who is protected by big beasties that can fold out armored umbrellas that give her protection from missiles.  There is an interesting back story, a tie in graphic novel, The Great Wall: The Last Survivor, which had a meteor hit 200 years before the film and unleashed the Tao Tie, alien invaders!  Back to the film.  So there has to be a way to take out the alien queen and the aliens have to have a weakness!  No spoilers on that front.  They are in the north and head south to spread across the world.  The Nameless Order protecting the Wall has to stop them and protect the capital.  This is where the Mulan part comes in with the female soldier leading a group into the city and stop the leader.  Is it a perfect movie? No, but I liked the action, and you should give this movie a chance.  

Three Magnetic Rocks out of Five! 

#TheGreatWall, #ZhangYimou, #TianJing, #MattDamon