It’s not often that a film does so well to fall right in the middle, where the good and bad of its parts come together to represent one, halfway decent blockbuster for a very specific crowd.
That crowd is the group of moviegoers who might crave a Chinese produced movie that’s been written by Western storytellers, an idea that’s a lot better in theory than it is in practice, as evidenced but what was clearly a film designed by the committee to fully utilize a global box office. What if the Great Wall of China, a true wonder of human history, was built as a mythical shield against ancient aliens with a hive mind?
The Great Wall unfolds from there as an elaborate love letter to medieval Chinese ingenuity (indeed, the weapons and tactics of the film’s primary military is the true star, not Matt Damon or Jing Tian). It’s just too bad that they lumped in a passable script featuring a weightless performance from Damon himself.
Go on…‘The Great Wall’ Is A Middling Mashup Of Western And Eastern Tropes