The originating intelligence here is likely Max Brooks, who has the first story-credit position and whose background as the creator of “World War Z” jibes with the fact that “The Great Wall” is basically a swarming zombie story set in northern China around AD 1100, with mythological creatures called the Tao Tei standing in for the legions of the undead.īefore we meet these glum creatures we are introduced to a group of Europeans fleeing roving bandits in China’s vast outback. The respected team of Edward Zwick & Marshall Herskovitz has a story credit, and the gifted Tony Gilroy, who wrote four of the Jason Bourne scripts, shares screenplay credit with Carlo Bernard & Doug Miro. If ever a film was made with more money than sense, this is it.Īs with the casting, this didn’t happen because “The Great Wall” stinted on writing talent. Rather “The Great Wall” is a failure of the imagination, a reliance on a god-awful core idea of a fight to the death against supernatural monsters in ancient China and a narrative where each moment is more preposterous than the last, each plot point flimsier than the one that came before.
Not this time.Īs the presence of gifted actors like Damon and Lau, not to mention a budget estimated to be in the $150-million range testify, this misbegotten movie, the largest ever shot entirely in China, didn’t happen because things were done on the cheap. Starring Matt Damon, the veteran Andy Lau and a host of Chinese stars and directed by the esteemed Zhang Yimou, “The Great Wall” was supposed to be a game-changer, proof that the burgeoning Chinese film industry could make a blockbuster that would be successful on Western screens. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men (and there are a lot of them here) won’t be able to put this snore of a movie together again. “The Great Wall” is poised to take a great fall, creating the kind of mess not seen since Humpty Dumpty sat on a similar structure.
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