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The Great Wall (1 Viewer)

Patrick Sun

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I'm not really sure what I watched, it was so... foreign in the telling of the story of a legend pertaining to the Great Wall of China that is just fantastical enough to make you scratch your head.

But it was directed by Zhang Yimou, so I checked it out. It's kinda like the usual medieval fortress defense system on display against a swarm of would-be invaders against the Great Wall of China, but with Yimou's directorial flourishes. I wasn't prepared for the amount of CGI on the screen, so it was just weird. Matt Damon seemed to be sleep-walking through this role, though.

I give it 2.5 stars, or a grade of C+.
 

Hanson

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The Great Wall is Chinese Sharknado. It's terrible in so many ways with CGI circa 1998. It's incomprehensibly bad.
 
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Edwin-S

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I didn't mind the film, myself. I'd say a C+ is about right. The CGI was definitely not at the level of American films today. Damon didn't have a lot of chemistry with the Commander Lin character, but I chalk that up to cultural sensitivities in China. My biggest issue with the film was the propagandist feel with its simplistic Westerners bad, Chinese good theme.

The actor who did the best job in the film was the fellow that played Damon's partner.
 

Hanson

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It's actually shocking how bad it is coming from Zhang Yimou. I'm not sure how much CGI stuff he's done, but there's so much of it in the movie and it's just amateurish. Even the design of the Tao Tie is uninspired and simplistic. It is possible that there's an entertainingly campy flick in there somewhere, but it's buried in shit CGI.

I'm not into movies that are in the category of "so bad it's good", but if any movie is so bad it circles back on itself, it would be this one.
 

Malcolm R

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I was interested in this when I first read about the concept a while back, but when the trailers came out I lost interest. Looks like just a bunch of overgrown iguanas storming a castle.
 

DavidJ

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It looked horrible to me from the trailers, but then I learned it was directed by Zhang Yimou. That made me want to see it. Now the reviews have me concerned. I'll probably see it just to see it for myself.
 

Martino

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Went to it for free on a company outing - glad I didn't have to pay for this one.

It is a turn your mind off at the door movie, and even then was bad.

The Bad:

-- Why if you have some superior weapons and defenses would you not just use them? I guess to build suspense you use your inferior stuff first and get a lot of your men killed before you upgrade to your already available defenses and weapons. It wasn't like they were developing new things, just sort of remembering - like "The basic arrows are not working on these things, and they can scale the wall...oh yea, we have gun powder and exploding arrows we could have used - next time they come back, lets use them..."

-- Matt Damion trying to be Braveheart with arrows instead of a sword....and not pulling it off at all. The shots he was making were just too unbelievable, even for a master archer.

-- The main "general" in charge looked like a 13 year old girl - the casting just didn't work.

- Having 98% of the main characters have to be subtext because they were not speaking English was distracting. It was not like this was an actual period piece. To make it worse, the sub titles were in 3D and would get lost hovering on top of the backgrounds and often times made it impossible to read them.

-- CGI "bad" things just didn't make since as monsters who actually could have actually lived. Having eyes on your shoulder blades, so far away from your mouth that you could never actually eat anything. They did make convenient targets for the archer, but just looked stupid. Not sure how they could see and run with their eyes on an unstable platform....but there they were.

The Good?:

- There was a lot of 3D going on in this one - from arrows and guts coming at you to fear of heights shots of looking down from the Wall. Was more like an amusement park 3D thrill ride then an actual movie.
 
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Edwin-S

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Criticizing the movie on bad CGI and story issues is one thing.

Criticizing the movie because Chinese actors spoke Chinese, requiring subtitling, is ridiculous. English isn't their first language. I'd rather they speak their own language and read subs than try to translate broken English.
 

Martino

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Agreed - the problem was more that you couldn't read the sub titles when they were mixing in the 3D wash - so you ended up not understanding what was going on. Not sure how you should do 3D subtitles, but this wasn't it. Either dub it or make the sub titles more readable...
 

steve jaros

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I saw this film and give it a "C-", I agree with the "Chinese Sharknado" comment, LOL. As soon as I saw the endless swarms of lizard creatures, I slapped my head. There were some pretty women in it, which helped. A little.
 

Citizen87645

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I think he hasn't been entirely the same since the Beijing Olympics, though I haven't seen "Coming Home," which seems like a return to his '90s form, but could also be a pale imitation...of himself.
 

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