Review: THE GREAT WALL

     Another year ends, and with its close comes the critic's time to ruminate on the good, bad, and ugly of the previous year while hopefully looking forward to the new films on the horizon that will, unfortunately, probably underwhelm us. I, obviously, haven't seen everything that came out in 2016, nor ever will, but I remember fondly my favorites. As it stands, Shane Black's super-entertaining The Nice Guys, is still my favorite film of the year. The other ones I loved were Hunt for the Wilderpeople, White Girl, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Everybody Wants Some!, The Wailing, Finding Dory, and Sing Street. Two so-called masterpieces, Moonlight and La La Land, were good but not great, and a ton of mega popcorn features like Star Trek: Beyond, Suicide Squad, Doctor Strange, and Captain America: Civil War, were average to awful.
     2017 looks to be a huge year for us fan addicts mostly because a new Star Wars is coming out (although, thanks to Disney, a new Star Wars film will come out every year for the foreseeable future). There's also a new King Kong, a new Blade Runner, and a new Joon-ho Bong film (my current favorite director). When the dust settles at the end of 2017, though, there's already one surefire worst film of the year candidate. If you haven't heard of it yet, well, it's basically Matt Damon fighting monsters on the Great Wall of China...and what could possibly go wrong with that movie?
     When the first trailers for The Great Wall hit, the internet trolls went wild. What the fuck was Matt Damon doing in a Chinese movie? Are there no Asian actors out there? They have to get an American face? What the hell is wrong with the world?
     At the end of the day, every Asian actor on Earth should be thanking God they weren't cast in this mess. The Great Wall is so awful, so ridiculously bad, that it would fit perfectly on Mystery Science Theater 3000. Which means it does have some merit...if you consider it a good thing to be the kind of film you watch and make fun of and laugh at and wonder who the hell actually let this piece of crap into the world? It seriously should be banned in most countries. Who ever has copies of the film right now should burn it on the spot and save the world, and Matt Damon, the embarrassment.
     The biggest disappointment in all of this is that Yimou Zhang is an awesome, prolific, and pretty famous director. He's known for making poetic, lush, beautiful psuedo-kung-fu films like Hero, The House of Flying Daggers, and Curse of the Golden Flower. With The Great Wall, though, the studio system seems to have chewed him up and spit him out because it certainly doesn't have any poetry, any semblance of artistry, nor any world class art direction. So what happened? Why is this just atrocious?
     The Great Wall kicks off with three white, English speaking dudes in the desert in China in ancient times. Matt Damon is one of them, silly long hair, beard and all. They end up at the Great Wall of China while looking for gun powder. Why is there a Great Wall of China? Oh, yeah, because a comet hit a mountain and unleashed lizard-like monsters that attack every sixty years. Huh? Bring on the battle scenes of cartoon special f/x monsters fighting an army of Chinese men and women! Bring on scenes of these soldiers beating drums for no good reason! Bring on scenes featuring Willem Dafoe cowering in the shadows (yes, he's in this movie, too, although I'm sure he wishes he wasn't)! Bring on Matt Damon being a better fighter than every single Chinese warrior!
     This short, ninety minute film, is pretty much all battle scenes. It definitely reminds me of the battle scenes in the second and third Lord of the Rings films. The sequences where orcs and trolls and dragons are attempting to scale castle walls and fortified fortresses? The Great Wall is pretty much that, albeit with worse special f/x, which is odd, since doesn't technology get better over time? 
     This all means that somebody somewhere saw The Lord of the Rings and wanted to re-do it but their own, fresh way. And I suppose getting a big time star and big time director to do it makes sense, but there's problems with who they picked. Damon does not fit in here. Neither does Yimou Zhang. This is a big budget, silly, preposterous, popcorn summer film. It's not an art film, not a sweeping epic. Zhang is a master at making kung-fu fighting look like a colorful, sumptuous display. It's rather difficult to showcase any sort of kung-fu with frigging monsters. Not to mention that they're about as scary looking as something out of a bad Anime TV show. Hell, Matt Damon's fake beard is scarier than the monsters. And you know what's even more frightening? Matt Damon is gonna have to go on talk shows to promote this piece of shit!
     Welcome to 2017!
     1/2* (out of ****)