A decade and a half ago Hollywood was obsessed with China. It was the corporate equivalent of hanging outside China’s bedroom window and playing a mixtape from a boombox held over the studio’s head. The pandering was off the charts. Marvel included exclusive scenes of Chinese scientists in Iron Man 2, every action movie somehow ended up taking place in Asia (Transformers: Age of Extinction was one of the worst culprits) and yet, none were as shameless as 2017’s Matt Damon and Pedro Pascal fantasy adventure, The Great Wall. It was so obviously a massive business venture between the East and the West that it managed to flop on every continent.
An Irishman And A Spaniard Save China
Pedro Pascal In The Great Wall
The Great Wall turns China’s engineering marvel into the last line of defense against a horde of alien monsters who attack every 60 years. Dubbed the Tao Tei after the mythological Chinese monster, these aliens ravage a band of European mercenaries, leaving behind only Damon’s Irishman William Garin and Pedro Pascal’s Spaniard Pero Tovar. Their mission to retrieve black powder is put on hold to help the Chinese fend off endless waves of monsters.
Outside of Willem Dafoe as the English teacher Ballard, the rest of the cast is Chinese. Once you get beyond the Chinese setting and cast, The Great Wall is a by-the-numbers fantasy monster movie filled with people making grand sacrifices for the greater good. That happens all the time in Hollywood movies and even the most expensive movie in China (as of 2015), can’t escape the gravity of a dull script with barely any characterization.
Director Zhang Yimou is one of the greatest directors in film history, and that was before 2022’s Full River Red became one of China’s top ten highest grossing movies of all time. Yimou’s films have an epic visual style that puts every single dollar of the production on screen. You might know House of Flying Daggers or the Jet Li film, Hero. Despite the faults with The Great Wall’s script, it looks incredible. Yimou somehow wrangled a truly international production team to build three separate fake sections of the Great Wall, and coordinate through 100 translators for the entire shoot.
The Great Wall Alienated Every Audience
No one thought The Great Wall would fall flat on its face in the Chinese market. It made $170 million, and worldwide, only $334 million, which wouldn’t be bad, except the film had a budget of $150 million, a marketing budget of another $110 million, and the distribution pie was cut into a dozen different pieces. Coming as it did on the heels of so many movies pandering to the Chinese government, this was a film with an audience of no one. Hollywood was surprised when China stopped spending money on importing Western films and instead bolstered their own domestic talents.
Removed from the political discourse of the 2010’s, The Great Wall is a “not bad” movie you can stream today on Netflix. Since reappearing on the service, it has been in the top ten, proving that with a low enough barrier of entry, people will watch almost anything. That and it has Matt Damon. He’s on a bit of an upswing lately.
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