And in addition to the Wall – probably because a lot of the monsters slip through anyway – the Chinese have bred warriors, whom they’ve been training all their lives, just for this.Īside from the parallels to how modern China ‘breeds’ sports stars, you’d be lying to yourself if you said you weren’t interested in watching this movie – especially since it opens with a stunning 20-minute action set-piece, which is followed by two more, equally breathtaking sequences, in the film’s second and third acts. To keep them out, and to protect the mainland from their onslaught, that, the movie says, was the real reason behind the Wall’s erection. The whole thing revolves around the fantastic idea that every 60 years, a horde of mythical beasts known as the Tao Tei attack China. Their quest for a mysterious item known as ‘black powder’ lands them at the foot of The Great Wall, where they are immediately arrested for trespassing.Īt the centre of this movie, Zhang’s first in the English language, is a knockout of a concept. Matt Damon and Pedro Pascal (you remember him, and the unfortunate fate of his eyes, from Game of Thrones) play a couple of mercenaries of hazy nationality who find themselves in medieval China.
It is the only thing that elevates The Great Wall from an ambitious, yet clichéd action film into what turned out to be a surprisingly intricate, visually breathtaking monster movie: Director Zhang Yimou.Īlso, yes it’s a monster movie. The similarities, heavy as they may be – they’re both historical fantasies set in a far-eastern land, they’re both distributed by the same studio, and both films star a famous Hollywood actor as a (and this is problematic) white saviour character – are rather harmless, and thankfully very superficial.