The Great Wall

• Chinese: 長城 / Hanyu Pinyin: Cháng Chéng
• Directed by Zhang Yimou
• December 6, 2016 (Beijing) / December 16, 2016 (China) / February 17, 2017 (US) / April 14, 2017 (Japan)

A pair of European mercenaries imprisoned in Imperial China in the Great Wall after arriving in search of gunpowder join forces with the Chinese to help fight monsters.

I certainly like the idea behind The Great Wall-monsters in Imperial China and Europeans getting caught up in the whole mess. It’s just stupid enough to be fun. It is an unrelenting enemy you can slaughter in great numbers without offending any particular group because the villain is not human or even real. While it is fun, it never figures out how to make the most of what it has.

There is something that bothered me from the start. I have watched movies with Nicolas Cage or Bruce Willis where both feel like their scenes were inserted in after the main film was done. Matt Damon as William Garin and Pedro Pascal as Pero Tovar feel somewhat the same. Like with the original Godzilla film where they added in the Raymond Burr elements to make it accessible to western audiences. Part of me would not be surprised if there is a Chinese version completely missing them or largely missing them to the point they are glorified cameos. 

In this movie The Great Wall was not built to keep out a human enemy but to protect against an alien reptilian threat called the Tao Tie that arrived on a meteorite ages ago making this a weird combination of fantasy and science-fiction. Every 60 years they attack and take food back to the queen so she can breed more. This time around she is trying to get enough food to I guess expand all over the planet. Maybe. I am not sure based on dialogue if they even know.

The Tao Tie have a bit of a collective intelligence. They are brutal beasts, but are a type of thinking creature. Yet they have minimal thinking in their attack. Intelligence comes when convenient for the plot. They’re smart enough to engage in tactics and communicate intentions with one another but when one of their own shows up with explosives strapped to them they don’t give it a second thought.

The creatures look a touch on the generic side. They remind me of these creatures called The Brood from the X-Men comics who are basically an Alien knockoff. At least some of them do. There are a few creature variations but what exactly each means is known to the characters but not well informed to the audience.

Garin and Tovar are mercenary buddies looking in China for some gunpowder to take back to Europe to get rich. Garin’s arc in this is that he has never fought for a cause but rather money or because he was forced to do so. He learns to fight for something more though when that change of heart happens exactly other than seeing the face of Commander Lin Mae (Jing Tian) and getting the hots for her I do not know.

The attraction between Garin and Lin Mae is just for convenience of the story. It’s there but it’s mild flirtation and nothing that really resonates. The bromance between Garin and Tovar works much better. Their battle buddies have been through a lot together. These are old friends who have become family to one another.

The Great Wall is just missing that spark. There’s just something not there. There is the implied threat of a of them spreading across the planet, but it doesn’t feel as if that’s a strong probability. These creatures have been content dining on the local Chinese for centuries and now suddenly they’re going to burst out across the planet?

The film itself is fun yet inconsequential given the purported stakes. The characters are all disposable and barely filled out. It’s more about the fighting scenes than it is about anything the participants are doing. And without anybody to care about you have trouble caring about the movie. Do not get me wrong. I like to watch killer monsters attack and the big battles, but I enjoyed it for that reason and not the story itself.

I can’t call The Great Wall entirely a waste of time, but because it’s more about the action scenes than it is about the story it’s kind of forgettable. I want to watch it again for the visuals, but not for the story. I label this an if you want.