The Great Wall, starring Matt Damon

Every now and then, I’ll catch a movie that isn’t all that great, flawed in many ways, but I will still find highly enjoyable. The Great Wall, starring Matt Damon is one such movie. I’m sure none of you have heard of it. The Great Wall bombed at the theatres in early 2017 and thus is now available on DVD. Rent it from Amazon or from Redbox. Please don't steal it.

Last year, when I saw the billboard advertisements for The Great Wall along Ventura Avenue, with Matt Damon’s face plastered on the poster, my first thought was WTF! Not another movie (e.g., Dances with Wolves, Last of the Mohicans, Last Samurai, etc.) where the white man who learns the ways of the red man, yellow man, or brown man becomes superior not only to the white man, but also to the very men who taught him the non-white man ways. I am glad to report this isn't the case with The Great Wall. China Film Group was a significant investor, so I’m sure the Chinese Government had plenty to say in the film. It’s also possible by now, given the potential of the Chinese market, that Hollywood has gotten a bit smarter in terms of how Asians are portrayed or not portrayed. On that note, I’d like to send Hollywood and M. Night Sham-A-Lot a big f**k YOU for ruining The Last Airbender by casting East Asian or Eskimo characters with white actors, Prince Zuko with an Indian dude, and his uncle Iroh with an Iraqi dude. The handsome Zuko and jovial-wise Iroh (voiced by Mako) should have been portrayed by Korean actors. But I digress.

The Great Wall was directed by Zhang Yimou. I liked his arthouse movie Raise The Red Lantern in the early 90s. Zhang has also directed such movies as Hero and House of Flying Daggers. Many of Yimou's films have espoused ideas that made me suspect that he was a tool for the Chinese Communist Party. In Hero, imagine that Luke Skywalker embraced the dark side because he was somehow convinced that the ends (galactic order and harmony) outweighed the means to achieve it (Death Star, autocratic capitalism, and stormtroopers). A a director, Yimou has always been more of a pretender than a great. His films often come off as too artsy-fartsy because on his overreliance on one shtick: well-choreographed movement of deeply saturated red, yellow, blue, and green colors. Fortunately, The Great Wall is an action fantasy type film heavily laden with computer generated visual effects, so Zimou is constrained, limited in his opportunities to be pretentious.

What makes The Great Wall atypical for Hollywood is that all three main white characters in the film are greedy shitheads. They are mercenaries in China looking to steal black powder (secret advanced technology of that time, safeguarded by the Chinese because of its destructive power, and jealously sought after by the West). We have Pedro Pascal, Hollywood's designated Spaniard du jour. Willem Dafoe, typecast as the creepy piece-of-shit of a human being (reminds me of someone I used to know), and Matt Damon, the one redeemable white guy, who also happens to be a virtuosic archer.

We learn that The Great Wall was built for a purpose, not too dissimilar to the Wall in Game of Thrones or Star One in Blakes 7. The Great Wall is the one thing that prevents the extinction of all humankind on the planet. And that knowledge of what lies beyond the Great Wall has been forgotten by most, kept hidden away from the public in the Chinese imperial achives dating back thousands of years (a reminder to Americans just how young the United States is as a country). The guardians of the Great Wall belong to a military organization called the Nameless Ones, sort of like the Night’s Watch in Game of Thrones. However, unlike the Night’s Watch, a ragtag band of knaves and knuckleheads with petty alpha dog squables, the soldiers of the Nameless Order are disciplined, well trained, and work exceptionally together in their respective color coded specialized units (think of classes in World of Warcraft, but with everybody working like clockwork in an iPhone factory, complete with the casualites of people who jumped or fell over).

The Chinese put the importance of the group (and all of humanity) over the individual. For example, when the Wall is breached, and all of humanity is in danger, the Chinese protagonist Lin tells Damon effectively: “You are free to go! Tell the others (in the West)! Warn them!” Many of the loveable Chinese characters, such as the young solder initiate (Lu Han), or Strategist Wang (Andy Lau) make the ultimate sacrifice (I’m not ruining anything because anyone will see this coming a mile away, although not without some twists). The Chinese are a stark contrast to the individualist greedy self-serving white people. Lin admonishes Damon's character: "How many flags have you fought under? You are nothing like me."

Obligatorily, Yimou presents the viewer, like in House of Flying Daggers, with the Chinese word of the day, Xin Ren, which means trust. The glyphs in Xin Ren literally mean to bear (as a burden) belief. This is the point in the film where Damon’s character is planted with a seed, where he receives an empowerment to become a better person. Ultimately, it’s this trust between Damon’s character and Lin (portrayed by Jian Tian, who is pretty, but not distractingly so, which makes her character slightly more believable) that saves the day, and the world.

Moral of the story: The United States should trust China.

 

I have not read Liu Cixin. I would be interested in reading his books, so long as he is not a tool of the CPC. I can only take Yimou-like pandering to Chinese Government about once every five years.

 

The premise of monsters beyond The Great Wall is just so silly that it's hard to take the film seriously. I'm sure some very sensitive Asian Americans may still find something to object to as Matt Damon does play a crucial role as co-savior of the Emperor, China, and the rest of the world.

 

Ang Lee has had mainstream success. He's particularly good, actually quite special, at directing personal interactions among people.

 

Oh yeah. A larger threat requries the "renegade" provinces, I mean space colonies, or outer rim planets whose kings once paid tribute, to align with the mother central nation, I mean planets near the core, for the greater good. Uh huh.

 

Keep in mind where Trump got the dumbass idea that Korea was once a part of China. And that Vietnam has been fighting China on and off for thousands of years now, otherwise they would be China.

 

TLDR... That's as far as I got. I'm sure Marv said something prolific in there.

But really, that's all I needed to read. I had the same reaction when the adds started for this movie. I only went to see it because my wife is in charge of picking the movies we see. It totally shocked me and blew away any low expectations I had. I thought it was really entertaining!

You missed out if you didn't see it in the theater. It's definitely worth renting!

 

Hahaha. The Last Samurai was like visting Disney's Epcot World Showcase and taking the boat rides to learn that people in Holland wear wooden shoes and live in windmills, people in Mexico party all night long in skeleton outfits, or people in Norway work on oil rigs and eat danish pastries.

 

I think of this way: would Life of Pi or Brokeback Mountain have been better if Ron Howard, Martin Scorsese, or JJ Abrams directed them? Directors only have so much control. This is why I hold some directors like Irvin Kershner such as Empire Strikes Back in such high esteem. ESB was incredibly well directed considering that extremely shitty group of actors and not much in terms of script (I do feel Mark Hamill is a much better actor today). Also why the Ang Lee films earlier in his career, where he could choose the actors and pick the scripts were better.

 

On that note, a Martin Scorsese directed Life of Pi might have been comicly violent and gorey.

I don't know where to start. When I moved to the States almost 30 years ago, I was asked stupid stuff like "Do Canadians end every sentence with an 'Eh'?" A few years ago in a larger corporation, Americans co-workers actually asked a Canadian intern: "What do people speak in Canada? Do they speak Canadian up there?" We are talking about people who graduated from universities with bachelors degrees.

I've also noted in my kids primary school education, there is absolutely no coverage on our neighbors, Canada and Mexico in social studies classes. But a shitload of time is spent on Mesopotamia and Greece, and the differences between Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism, where the textbooks get it all wrong because it's written by stupid American University scholars who attempt to dissect, compartmentalize, and simply things. There materials are not written by those who actually live in that culture. It feels like one of those Hollywood sci-fi movies were the humans get it all wrong about an alien culture.

I had a super odd WTF moment when my kid asked me things about Buddhism (because they know that I am a Buddhist) like the Eighfold Path, and I couldn't answer it because I adhere to the Mahayana / tantric school which unlike the Theravada schools, do not utilize the Eighfold Path. I told my daughter her book totally over-simplified things about Buddhism; but to just reguritate whatever the teacher and the book said. So much for the progressive "Common Core" shit, which is supposed to encourage critical thinking. Sometimes I think Common Core is an insideous plot from the KGB to destroy America and make Americans dumb, without fundamental skills, understanding, or knowledge.