The Great Wall (spoilers)

[JRoss]

I know that the film is bombing in the US (it's a hit elsewhere), but I'm surprised not to see a thread in the first three pages of this forum. The wife and I went to see it on Friday, and I was so surprised at how much we liked it. Maybe it was the fact that there were a lot of similarities between the film and the game that I created (Kaigaku, link in sig), especially about an asteroid impact creating or releasing the monsters. It was beautiful (to be expected from Zhang Yimou), but I really liked it.

It wasn't perfect. The story advanced without a whole lot of characterization. I would have liked to see more about the commanders of Deer, Eagle, Tiger and Bear squadrons. I honestly think that a prequel comic or Netflix series would be cool. Despite this, I was left wanting more, not being frustrated.

I appreciated that the film showed Westerners and Asians learning to cooperate, with people from both cultures adding information to the solutions. It was a far cry from the Mighty Whitey being called by Constance Wu. I also liked that the guy didn't get the girl in the end. Not everything has to be a romance, and there's no way that the Crane commander/General, would ever end up with a foreign commoner.

 

[Gaith]

If the Chinese government wants me to watch their propaganda flick, they'll have to pay me $12.50, not the other way around.

(I know that's an oversimplification of the movie's origins, but I don't care. The suppression of civil rights pisses me off.)

 

[Kemaiku]

The Great Wall was actually built in various stages over centuries, across several major changes in early Chinese history. So yeh, blame the current post-WW2 communist era government (which has also actually undergone several internal upheavals) for something that happened over a part of their history that cannot be pinned to even one philosophical epoc of their ancestry.

Genious.

 

[Gaith]

^ LOL, wut? This isn't a documentary about the Great Wall, it's an acion fantasy about how metaphorically awesome the Chinese government was/is, and by extension how trivial concerns such as free speech, freedom of religion, and messy, "ineffective" representative government is, from the guy who choreographed the opening ceremonies of the Beijing games.

I don't overly begrudge Chinese artists making silly flicks about how awesome their country and/or government is, whether that's set in a fictionalized past, with metaphorical spillover to modernity, or in the present day. But I'm not going to pay to see it.

 

[JD]

Where does all that come from? I haven't paid that close of attention to the stuff popping up about this, but I don't remember getting that impression from anything I've read.

 

[Gaith]

^ Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, The AV Club:

Zhang, who is best known in this country for the eye-catching martial arts films Hero and House Of Flying Daggers, couldn’t care less about these burbling monsters, and his human characters come a distant second at best. His interests lie in the Olympic pageantry of spears, signal flags, and color-coded military regiments, and the cogwheels and lantern gears that drive wondrous war machines—like something Leonardo Da Vinci might have doodled in a paper margin and scratched out as impractical. Think of the result as The 13th Warrior as remade by Leni Riefenstahl.

[... ] The only logic it follows is that of propaganda and spectacle—of impressive mass formations and troop movements and the sight of the Great Wall snaking toward the horizon over a rugged landscape.​

Matt Goldberg, Collider:

While some may decry this as Chinese propaganda, it’s no more brazen than the American President leading the world in a rallying cry against aliens in Independence Day. China footed the bill for The Great Wall, and although American audiences may not be used to another country getting to lead the way, they may want to get on board. China isn’t going anywhere, they play a huge role in international box office, and studios are realizing that Chinese audiences want to see Chinese people play the heroes. Matt Damon may be the lead on the posters, but China is the true star of The Great Wall.​

A key difference being, of course, that the US government didn't finance Independence Day, while denying its citizens the most basic freedoms from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Follow the money - Jordan Zakarin, Inverse:

The Great Wall may be a period action movie starring another white man on the surface, but it’s really a preview of a near-future in which China, soon to be the world’s largest movie market, has gained control over mainstream corporate Hollywood.

[... It was] directed by Zhang Yimou, co-produced by the state-run China Film Group and Legendary Entertainment, the American studio that was recently bought by Chinese mega-conglomerate Dalian Wanda. Incidentally, Dalian Wanda also owns 20 percent of the world’s movie theaters and is run by Wang Jianlin, the richest man in Asia and one of the most powerful people in China.

[...] The movie is more or less light propaganda, as the American actor is set on a more moral path by the disciplined, technologically advanced Chinese military.

[...] Strangely, the good news for the studios may be that it looks like The Great Wall will not be particularly successful at the American box office. It also failed in China, which just goes to show that extreme nationalism at the expense of character and story don’t sell with audiences these days.​

"Failed" may be too strong a word for its Chinese performance, but it did have a smaller opening weekend than Marvel's Civil War by a third, so it's definitely not a runaway hit.

Kayleigh Donaldson, Screen Rant:

The film’s grosses were strong but nowhere near that of other 2016 releases like The Mermaid or the previous year’s efforts like Monster Hunt. For a film with such a high budget to be grossing a third of the revenues of Chow’s film, which cost a mere $50m, presents a problem for both Chinese and American studios. If audiences aren’t interested, they simply won’t come, no matter how much a film panders to them.​

Make no mistake: this movie is a commercial for China's military and government, presented through the barest veil of historical fantasy, paid for in large part by the Chinese government, and also by Universal, which is sucking up to said government so they can continue releasing (more and more) American movies there. If you don't mind buying into all that for a mediocre glorified video game demo, well hey, enjoy. Myself, I'm not interested.

 

[JD]

I wasn't aware of that. But don't the government fund pretty much all of their major movies and TV shows?

 

[Kor]

The Great Wall was actually built in various stages over centuries, across several major changes in early Chinese history. So yeh, blame the current post-WW2 communist era government (which has also actually undergone several internal upheavals) for something that happened over a part of their history that cannot be pinned to even one philosophical epoc of their ancestry.

Genious.

There is much precedent for historical settings to be used as propaganda for current politics.

Kor

 

[Mr. Adventure]

I'm waiting for the US remake from Trump Films.

 

[Kemaiku]

It's a generic horror movie made of up dozens of cheap jumpscscare around a whitewash casting *yawn*

 

[JRoss]

^ LOL, wut? This isn't a documentary about the Great Wall, it's an acion fantasy about how metaphorically awesome the Chinese government was/is, and by extension how trivial concerns such as free speech, freedom of religion, and messy, "ineffective" representative government is, from the guy who choreographed the opening ceremonies of the Beijing games.

I don't overly begrudge Chinese artists making silly flicks about how awesome their country and/or government is, whether that's set in a fictionalized past, with metaphorical spillover to modernity, or in the present day. But I'm not going to pay to see it.

Oh, sweetie, no. It's really not like that at all. Yimou's done that sort of thing before, like with Hero, but it's not that. The only Chinese government officials we see in the film are cowards and idiots. It really does present a situation where Westerners and Chinese folks learn from one another. Every film is propoganda, and yeah, this one has government backing, but I'm sure that the message they want to give is cooperation and understanding (with the idea being to get seats in buts for more Chinese films).

 

[Gaith]

^ Well, as Kemaiku noted, it's not a portrayal of the contemporary Communist government, so the censors can afford to paint the alternate-universe political leaders in a less than glorious light. But that's still not anywhere near enough to coax a ticket sale out of me.

 

[JRoss]

To each their own. Only thing about Kemaiku's post is that it is not a whitewashed role. Damon's character is very far from a Mighty Whitey. He's a competent soldier, and a very skilled archer, but he is not a match in a one-on-one with most of the named Chinese characters. Each side learns from the other, and there is plenty of bad behavior from members of both cultures.

White guy doesn't save the day (or at least doesn't have a part in it any more prominent than other characters). He doesn't master an exotic martial art, but he does learn to be more selfless. The white guy does not get the Asian girl (nobody does). This is a spoiler, but if you're not going to see it, then you probably don't mind. The Nameless army, which I suppose would be your stand-in for China, is actually shown to be overly prideful to the point where it gets their capital city destroyed. The way it happens doesn't seem plausible to me (the monsters tunnel under the wall in a very dense fog. The good guys save the day in that the cowardly boy Emperor gets to live another day, but the capital is absolutely wrecked and most of the inhabitants die.

There are some really positive messages here about understanding and brotherhood. Sure, it's nothing that a person shouldn't already believe (that every individual and culture has something to offer, even though nobody's perfect), but I find it a refreshing change of pace from Hollywood arrogance and darkness.

 

[Aragorn]

The whitewashing cries are from people who choose to judge a book by its cover. They see name Matt Damon over the title The Great Wall, and that's all it takes. One uniformed person rages about it online, other people fall in line without ever checking a second source.

 

[publiusr]

^ Well, as Kemaiku noted, it's not a portrayal of the contemporary Communist government, so the censors can afford to paint the alternate-universe political leaders in a less than glorious light. But that's still not anywhere near enough to coax a ticket sale out of me.

People want to see themselves and their culture up-lifted. I have no problem with that.

If anything--I feel sorry for them.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/chinas-rent-a-foreigner-industry-is-still-a-real-thing

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The only thing that held China back--other than perhaps the lack of optics early on--was the burning of the treasure fleet.

That deserves a movie.

Silkpunk has hardly even been touched on screen.

http://io9.gizmodo.com/author-ken-liu-explains-silkpunk-to-us-1717812714

I consider this movie to be the beginning.

 

[Kemaiku]

From the guy who choreographed the opening ceremonies of the Beijing games.

I have never heard anything that destroyed any faith I had in a movie possibly being decent more than this.

 

[JD]

To each their own. Only thing about Kemaiku's post is that it is not a whitewashed role. Damon's character is very far from a Mighty Whitey. He's a competent soldier, and a very skilled archer, but he is not a match in a one-on-one with most of the named Chinese characters. Each side learns from the other, and there is plenty of bad behavior from members of both cultures.

White guy doesn't save the day (or at least doesn't have a part in it any more prominent than other characters). He doesn't master an exotic martial art, but he does learn to be more selfless. The white guy does not get the Asian girl (nobody does). This is a spoiler, but if you're not going to see it, then you probably don't mind. The Nameless army, which I suppose would be your stand-in for China, is actually shown to be overly prideful to the point where it gets their capital city destroyed. The way it happens doesn't seem plausible to me (the monsters tunnel under the wall in a very dense fog. The good guys save the day in that the cowardly boy Emperor gets to live another day, but the capital is absolutely wrecked and most of the inhabitants die.

There are some really positive messages here about understanding and brotherhood. Sure, it's nothing that a person shouldn't already believe (that every individual and culture has something to offer, even though nobody's perfect), but I find it a refreshing change of pace from Hollywood arrogance and darkness.

This does relieve a lot of the fears I had about the movie. I might have to add this to my Netflix queue once it's out on DVD/Blu-Ray.

 

[JRoss]

People want to see themselves and their culture up-lifted. I have no problem with that.

If anything--I feel sorry for them.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/chinas-rent-a-foreigner-industry-is-still-a-real-thing

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Accept third party cookies

The only thing that held China back--other than perhaps the lack of optics early on--was the burning of the treasure fleet.

That deserves a movie.

Silkpunk has hardly even been touched on screen.

http://io9.gizmodo.com/author-ken-liu-explains-silkpunk-to-us-1717812714

I consider this movie to be the beginning.

Silkpunk?! I've never heard that term before, and I'm a huge fan of steampunk, raygun gothic, dieslpunk and clockworkpunk. I've written what you'd call silkpunk before. The link in the bottom of my sig is to a silkpunk game.

 

[Mudd]

Saw this on Amazon video last evening. Really enjoyed it.

 

[Ridcully]

Thought it was a fun flick....