Expectations matter a great deal for The Great Wall. Ignore the prestige behind and in front of the camera, and laugh as I did with the premise: what if the Great Wall of China was keeping out aliens? That premise is stupidly fun, like most of this movie. However, do NOT try to place some deeper meaning on the story; if you do that, the movie will fall apart for you immediately.
Irishman (read: white) William (Matt Damon) and Tovar (Pedro Pascal) are traders/mercenaries from Europe trying to find China’s black powder and bring it back home. While trying to escape bounty hunters, the men barely survive an attack from….something. They quickly escape only to run into Commander Lin (Tian Jing) and a massive army protecting the great wall. The mercenaries help the army hold off these interlopers and are shown the black powder they desperately want by Ballard (Willem Dafoe). Tovar wants to head back, but William, fighting for nothing for a long time, senses that this fight might mean something, and desires to stay.
The joy of The Great Wall is in the simple stuff; whether intentional or not is anyone’s guess. So the aliens come once every 60 years? Got it, sure, makes sense. The banter between William and Tovar is fine enough to generate a chuckle. The fact that almost everyone speaks English is played for laughs just enough, even though it makes no sense. Director Yimou Zhang color codes the different factions of the Chinese army to make it easy for us to distinguish the fighters, which I appreciated. “Oh, red is being attacked, got it, the archers are under fire.” The fighting between the dog-like aliens and the warriors involves insanely elaborate ballet spearing, which was fun in its stupidity. There are explosions, really good guys, really bad guys, and Matt Damon faking an Irish accent. The Great Wall plays like a great fantasy epic if you were 6 years old.
Which means the script plays to a 6 year old. I instantly pegged every plot point up to the end. Black powder explodes, magnets control the beasts, and the queen controls ALL the beasts? I wonder what’s gonna happen in the third act? The quiet guy behind the scenes who talks about leaving without honor is capable of betrayal? NO!!!! No idea that was coming. When the actors get on their “honor” high horse, it’s time to take a quick trip to the bathroom or catch up on texts for a few minutes. I wish the action were a little better, the beasts move so fast that this movie cuts more quickly than Top Chefs do, which could be disorienting in 3D (I saw it in 2D). The movie spends most of its time trying to not make Matt Damon the White savoir to the inferior Chinese, and to their credit he NEVER has a chance to run the army. However, it’s very discomforting to watch this very precise army take lessons from a Caucasian dude with a ponytail off the street for much of the movie (at least Commander Lin is indeed a badass).
Ever want to see a pony-tailed guy from Southie team up with a Chilean political refugee and fight space beasts in China? Then The Great Wall will do for you what it did for me. When the nonsense amps up, you’ll dumb laugh, and when it tries to make you learn something, you’ll sleep. The only thing this movie needed was the Power Rangers to help show the Chinese how to morph to defeat the evil aliens. That would have been something!