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The Great Wall

"There are many things you have not seen."

The Great Wall (2016) is a Mandarin- and English-language fantasy action film directed by Zhang Yimou, written by Carlo Bernard, Doug Miro, and Tony Gilroy from a story by Max Brooks, Edward Zwick, and Marshall Herskovitz. The film stars Matt Damon as William, a mercenary who stumbles onto the Great Wall and finds himself fighting alongside a Chinese army against a horde of monsters—Jing Tian as Commander Lin Mae of the elite Crane Troop, Pedro Pascal as William’s partner Tovar, Willem Dafoe as a captured Western prisoner, and Andy Lau as the army’s chief strategist Wang. Cinematography is by Christopher Doyle and Zhao Xiaoding, with a score by Ramin Djawadi. Andy Nelson and Pete Wright discuss the film on The Next Reel, a TruStory FM podcast covering cinema since 2011, as the concluding episode of their Zhang Yimou series.

An Unlikely Series Finale

No one watching Ju Dou in 1990 would have predicted this as the destination: a $150 million Sino-American fantasy blockbuster about mercenaries and monsters on the Great Wall of China. And yet Pete and Andy come out of The Great Wall more entertained than either expected, and both find more Zhang Yimou in it than the trailers suggested. The color-coded armies—blue crane soldiers bungee-jumping off the ramparts, black foot soldiers, yellow archers—are exactly what you’d expect from a filmmaker who has spent decades treating color as argument. The tower filled with stained-glass light is unmistakably his. Even the fog sequence, where the usual color drains away and the cinematography shifts into something more ominous, reads as a deliberate formal choice rather than a budget limitation.

The question Pete and Andy keep returning to is whether this represents Zhang Yimou being creatively free inside a massive commercial machine, or Zhang Yimou as a director for hire given someone else’s story and doing his best with it. The answer they land on is somewhere in between—and they find the film more interesting for that ambiguity than they would if it were clearly one or the other.

The Whitewashing Debate, Examined

The controversy started before the film even opened, when the first teaser landed and the internet concluded that Matt Damon was being positioned as the white savior of China. Pete and Andy engage the charge directly and find it doesn’t hold up against the actual film. William is a mercenary who explicitly fights for whoever pays him—he arrives at the wall in flight from a different enemy entirely, and his arc is specifically about learning what it means to fight for something rather than someone. Commander Lin Mae leads the army. The Chinese soldiers do the actual fighting. The screenplay, notably, was written by a team that includes no Chinese writers, which Pete and Andy flag as genuinely interesting—but they conclude the whitewashing label was applied to a film that most of the people applying it hadn’t seen. Andy reads the casting of Damon as part of a deliberate Legendary Pictures strategy to build Sino-American co-productions that can succeed in both markets simultaneously, and sees this as the future of big-budget filmmaking rather than a retrograde move.

Greedy Monsters and One Land

The thread connecting this film to the rest of the series comes from Andy Lau’s interviews: the Taotie, the monsters assaulting the wall, are a symbol of greed. The army of humanity holding them back is, in this reading, civilization resisting the corrosive force of pure appetite. Pete latches onto this and finds the film genuinely more interesting once you watch it through that lens—the same “one land” ideology that runs through Hero, now rendered as monster-movie metaphor. Andy is a little more skeptical that Zhang was operating at that level of intention in a film this commercially driven, but agrees the reading holds. The Taotie communicate via some kind of hive-mind frequency, they get smarter across the film, and by the climax they’ve tunneled under the wall to reach the capital—which, Pete notes, suggests other tunnels and other walls they may have already breached. Andy loves this conversation about a deeply silly film.

What Zhang Actually Brought

The production discussion is rich. Stuart Dryburgh and Zhao Xiaoding split cinematography duties—Pete speculates Dryburgh handled the smaller human moments while Zhao managed the large-scale sequences, though neither host found confirmation. The production design by John Meyer includes the color-coded army as a world-building system Andy finds immediately legible and deeply satisfying: you always know who’s doing what and why, which matters when you have thousands of soldiers in a frame. The costumes are elaborate enough that Andy predicts awards attention. The Weta Workshop creature design for the Taotie builds in traditional Chinese decorative motifs—maze patterns, temple gargoyle shapes—in a way Pete finds recursively smart. Mary Jo Markey and Craig Wood, veterans of Star Wars and Guardians of the Galaxy, cut it with the efficiency the film needs. And Ramin Djawadi’s score, which Pete says left him wailing on the way out of the theater, draws from the same tonal palette as the Tan Dun work on Hero without copying it.

A Franchise That Didn’t Happen

Pete and Andy record this episode on the Monday after opening weekend, which means they’re working with early US box office numbers that are, by any domestic standard, disappointing—$22 million, third place behind Lego Batman and Fifty Shades Darker. Pete points out the film has already crossed $200 million worldwide at that point, with roughly 80% of its international gross coming from China. Andy acknowledges this and recalibrates: as a Chinese market success, the film works. As the Legendary Pictures proof of concept for a new model of Sino-American blockbusters, the verdict is less clear. They’re recording in February 2017 and genuinely uncertain whether this experiment will be repeated. History has since answered the question, but the conversation captures a real moment of industry transition that still reads as sharp.

Key Discussion Points

The trailers were widely agreed to be terrible—selling a generic Matt Damon action film rather than a Zhang Yimou visual spectacle. Both Pete and Andy credit the film’s opening setup, which frames everything as one of many legends about why the wall was really built, with buying goodwill the trailers had spent.
Jing Tian’s Commander Lin Mae leads the film’s most visually spectacular combat unit—women in blue armor bungee-jumping off the wall on rope harnesses to slash at monsters below. Pete calls it “so stupid and so beautiful.” Many of the performers came from the Shaolin Temple, according to Matt Damon in press interviews.
Pedro Pascal’s Tovar is intended as William’s foil and eventually his reason to stay—but both Pete and Andy find the friendship never quite locks. There’s a stretch where Tovar disappears from the film and neither host notices until he reappears. The ending, where William rides off with Tovar rather than staying with the army, strikes Andy as a studio-mandated buddy-comedy resolution that doesn’t fit the character he’d watched for two hours.
The stained-glass tower sequence is the moment both Pete and Andy identify as unmistakably Zhang Yimou—Taotie reaching through the ceiling in columns of colored light, soldiers being pulled upward through a rainbow. Andy saw it in IMAX 3D and describes it as mind-bogglingly beautiful.
The language logic of the film—Chinese characters speaking Chinese, English-speaking characters speaking English, and a plausible in-world reason for the crossover—gets specific praise from Andy as a choice that grounds the film in a way it didn’t have to bother with.
Pete maintains the film is an entertaining romp and thinks context matters—having spent four episodes with Zhang Yimou, both hosts came in primed to find his fingerprints even in a monster blockbuster.

Before You Watch

Is this a serious Zhang Yimou film or a popcorn movie?

Honest answer: it’s both, and more comfortably popcorn than serious. Pete and Andy spend time finding the political metaphor and the auteur fingerprints, but they’re also clear that the film works best if you go in expecting monsters, color, and spectacle rather than the intimate tragedy of Ju Dou or the formal rigor of Raise the Red Lantern. The series is a good entry point—watching the earlier episodes first makes the Zhang Yimou elements pop. But you can also just watch it as a fun monster movie and have a good time.

What did Pete and Andy make of it?

Both were surprised by how much they enjoyed it, given how bad the trailers were. Andy went in expecting nothing and came out with genuine appreciation for what Zhang Yimou pulled off at this scale—even with real structural problems. Pete found it an entertaining romp and thinks the film is better experienced through the lens of Zhang’s career. Neither would rank it among the director’s best, but neither felt their time was wasted.

Is the whitewashing criticism fair?

Pete and Andy argue no—or at least not once you’ve actually watched the film. Matt Damon’s character is a mercenary with an explicit arc about learning to fight for something beyond himself, the Chinese army does the actual fighting, and Commander Lin Mae is the film’s most capable character. The criticism landed hard on the teaser before most people had seen a frame of finished film, and Andy and Pete think it says more about trailer marketing than about the movie itself.

Do I need to watch the other Zhang Yimou episodes first?

Not to enjoy the film, but it helps for the conversation. Pete makes the point explicitly—he thinks his appreciation for what Zhang Yimou brought to The Great Wall is directly proportional to the time he’d spent watching and discussing the earlier films. If you’re coming in fresh, the Hero episode is the most direct predecessor, since both films work in the same action-spectacle register.

Join us—Pete Wright and Andy Nelson—as we wrap up our Zhang Yimou series on The Next Reel. The conversation continues across the Next Reel family.

Episode Resources

🎬 Watch & Discover

🍿 Watch the Film: Apple TV | Amazon | Letterboxd | The Next Reel on Letterboxd
📽️ Original Theatrical Trailer

📚 Film Sundries

The Discovery trailer — Andy’s pick this episode—Charlie McDowell directing a sci-fi romance starring Robert Redford, Jason Segel, and Rooney Mara set in a world where proof of the afterlife triggers a global suicide crisis—Andy loves the concept and the cast
The House trailer — Pete’s pick—Will Ferrell and Amy Poehler run an illegal casino to pay for college, Jason Mantzoukas co-stars, and Pete is hoping for another Old School—a bar he announces and refuses to lower

🎧 What to Listen to Next

Explore the full Zhang Yimou series — this is the final episode of the original 2017 run—the series continues in Season 15 with To Live, House of Flying Daggers, and Shadow
Hero — the episode right before this one—the wuxia film that made the visual language of The Great Wall possible, and the one where the “one land” ideology gets its clearest articulation
House of Flying Daggers — Zhang Yimou’s other major wuxia spectacular, covered in Season 15—where the action filmmaking reaches its most lyrical
Wuxia Unleashed on Cinema Scope — the genre context for everything in this series run—Leon Hunt and Chris Hamm on martial arts cinema and myth
The Infernal Affairs series — Andy Lau is one of this film’s most compelling presences, and he’s at his best in Infernal Affairs—the series starts with the original and extends to the sequels as member bonus episodes
The Film Board on Mandalorian & Grogu — Pedro Pascal has come a long way since Tovar—Steve and the Film Board cover his biggest recent film
The Film Board on The Fantastic Four: First Steps — another recent Pascal outing worth tracking

🔓 The movie ends. The conversation goes further. Become a member.
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Episode Transcript

*This transcript is produced using transcription software and reviewed for quality. Despite our best efforts, some passages may be incomplete or contain errors due to audio quality or software limitations.*

Pete Wright
This is The Next Reel, everybody. I’m Pete Wright and that over there is Andy Nelson.

Andy Nelson
Hey, hey, hey!

Pete Wright
And we spoil movies. Tonight in the show, the final in our Zhang Yimou series with his latest film. The Great Wall. Before we get into that, you should learn more about us at thenextreel.com and subscribe to the show and your favorite podcast app. You can follow us on Twitter and Facebook at thenextreel. And friend of the show, Ben Lott, has written in with a blot spot. A rebound on our last Zhang Yimou film, Hero.

Andy Nelson
He says, Hero is a stunningly beautiful film. I love the visual style and how Zhang Yimou utilizes unique colors to differentiate each act. This type of storytelling, where you keep going back and presenting events from a new point of view, is something I absolutely adore I tend to have an aversion to foreign films, but here was a delightful treat that I’m anxious to watch again soon. Your rank 116, my rank 28.

Pete Wright
Wow!

Pete Wright
I didn’t see that coming. It’s a keeper. What was it that happened? I’ve already forgotten how did it end up at 116? What did it lose to that dropped it to 116?

Andy Nelson
Uh Raise the Red Lantern. Oh Oh yeah. Sorry about that.

Pete Wright
Hey, uh, friend of the show, Ocean. Caught up with us about a review of Coming to America and his criticism apart from saying that we broke his soul a little bit with our review was that he needed a clearer definition of holding up for these movies that we revisit after many years when we say the movie didn’t hold up. And we s that was something that we said about coming to America. And uh um you know, his comparison was to The Godfather. He says, You show that movie to someone who’s never seen it, and he contends it wouldn’t hold up at all. Uh and so a part of his constituent sort of element of it of this definition was y had you gone through the period uh and then watch it again, maybe it holds up better for you or something. How do how do we define holding up, Andy? What do you think?

Andy Nelson
You know, that’s an interesting one. I guess it’s a film that uh lives on past its time and doesn’t feel uh kind of antiquated and stuck uh like dated. The reason that The Godfather, I think, shot so high on our chart is because it is a film that stands the test of time. I wasn’t born when that film came out, but it’s a film that I can very easily connect to whenever I watch it. Um I w I would think that a person who watches The Godfather uh any time is going to find a connection to it. But, you know, at the same time I also do think, and we’ve talked about this with a number of films that we’ve watched. uh and talked about on the show. Um a lot of it boils down to when you see it. Um, you know, a film like Joe vs the volcano that we both love. may be only because we happen to see it at a key point in our lives where it just really connected, uh, you know, for us. Whereas uh now if somebody just picked that up and watched it, it might be something that they didn’t think held up. So You know, there’s that line, I think. You know, it’s interesting. The

Pete Wright
the more I’ve been thinking about it after this conversation, uh or after these conversations that you and I have had about, you know, what does it mean to have a movie hold up. I think one of the elements is that the cultural stylings and sort of the cultural um the elements of the film You have to be able to take the story of the film and remove it from those cultural sort of uh elements and see if it’s still a good story. Yes. And that’s that for me is the Coming to America Godfather comparison. Like you could take the Godfather and put it in a different time and space. uh with the same story and the same characters, uh but put it in, you know, 21-26 and it’s a suddenly a future mob movie. And I contend it would still hold up. Like it’s a great story, first and foremost. It’s a story about family, it’s a story about I think there is so much 80s culture in coming to America. that it that helps that movie to exist in that time and space, that if you take that out of that time and space, it doesn’t hold up because it needs that culture to breathe. It’s like unplugging it. from the breathing machine, you know? It can’t leave that time and stand on its own as a great story. What do you think? A fair start?

Andy Nelson
I do think so. I think that definitely uh is something that uh can fit. It really boils down to just having a solid story. And I mean one of the weakest things about coming to America for me was the ending. It just really kind of fell apart at the end with uh the way that everything resolved Um it was a very frustrating

Pete Wright
That has nothing to do with the that’s just straight up storytelling, right? I mean that’s just straight up filmmaking. That has nothing to do with the eighties culture stuff.

Andy Nelson
It doesn’t, but I think that’s that’s the element that when you step outside of that eighties culture and you’re watching it today Um now you’re stuck with the story and is that going to be able to hold up?

Pete Wright
So Ocean, thanks for the comment. Uh man. I it’s given me a lot to think about over these last couple days, so I appreciate it. I’m gonna keep testing this theory when we say hold up. Yes. Good idea. I have a feeling we’re we’re we might be talking about it with this film uh that we’re seeing tonight at some point. Uh so there you go, Andy. I think it’s time Let’s do trailers.

Andy Nelson
So my trailer, Pete , is for a film that played at Sundance this past uh January. And is now gonna have a home on Netflix. It’s called The Discovery. Have you heard of this little film? Yeah. Yeah. I love the concept. It’s a really interesting uh kind of a sci-fi story. It’s this It’s a story that is about it’s a kind of a romance sci-fi. It looks like there’s a hint of kind of some thriller uh in there. It’s a love story. um with some of this thriller element thrown in, set a year after a scientist proves that the afterlife exists. And it’s this period of time where all of a sudden uh you know people are just all like like killing themselves because, hey, I can go to heaven. Because it’s real. It’s a real place. And uh the son of this inventor ends up falling in love with this girl who’s got this dark past. Um and uh you know the you don’t get a ton of that out of out of the trailer. I kind of uh read some more stuff about it But um uh but the trailer, man, it’s just got such a great creepy vibe with that warbly record sound of Roy Orbison. singing Only the Lonely. It’s just it’s super creepy and it lends this air of just kind of this horror mystery sort of thing going on here with this sci-fi future where all of a sudden, you know, people, hey, we’re gonna all kill ourselves because we can go straight to heaven or m possibly hell. Who knows? But uh I don’t know. Uh the concept is just so cool. I’m so excited to see this one. Uh it’s got Robert Redford as the scientist who discovers it and his son um Jason Siegel and then Rooney Mara is who he falls in love with. There’s also Riley Keough and uh Jesse Plemons. So it’s a really interesting cast. Um I’m kind of really excited and I am glad it’s going to be on Netflix because it’ll be super easy to see. What’d you think of this one?

Pete Wright
I’m I’m really rooting for this movie for a number of reasons, not the least of which is it’s one of those movies like Primer. that I think uh takes a rule that we all sort of take for granted and then as a thought experiment breaks that rule to see kind of what would happen. And the idea that confirming that the afterlife exists suddenly breaks humanity is fascinating to me. I think it it is a really interesting story. I’m really rooting for Charlie McDowell. I love this guy. Um not the least of which because he directed two of my favorite episodes of Silicon Valley. Uh Miner Sogans Haversack, I think, is one of the funniest episodes that they did on that show, and that was the first one he did. He also did uh the One I Love, uh, which was the that was uh an another kind of a strange uh film with uh Marc Duplass and Ted Danson. and uh Elizabeth Moss. And um so I’m I’m really really interested in it. But the first thought I had, and I hadn’t read up on this film before you sent me the trailer. was wow, Netflix, you are totally cornering the market on weird filmmaking right now. Anyway, I think they are really corning the market on some adventurous dark stuff, and I’m I’m really enthusiastic about it. So

Andy Nelson
Uh no, I think it’s great. Yeah, I’m very much looking forward to it too. And I you know I haven’t seen uh the what was it, the one I love, that movie you were just talking about that uh he had directed. It’s been on my list of films to watch, so I’ve gotta check that one out. Um, but yeah, this is uh gonna be coming out soon, March 31st. It’ll be playing on Netflix. So check it out, everybody. What’s your trailer?

Pete Wright
My trailer, Andy, is the house. I’m alm I’m almost a little bit embarrassed that I picked this one, but I have to tell you, I really laughed at this trailer. I laughed for a number of reasons, mostly because you know when you when you see a movie that Uh you see a comedy and the premise of the comedy is rooted in a fear that you so deeply share in your own life. Um we are getting to that age. as a family where my first child is uh less than four years from going away to college. And uh that is becoming a financial pre-stress. We’re in the pre-stress stage, sort of alpha s alpha stress. uh as we think about kind of what happens next. These years are flying by. And so then I watched this trailer which is all about uh Will Ferrell and Amy Poehler uh sharing their excitement with uh their daughter who gets into college, but of course then they discover they can’t pay for it and it’s about what they do, the lengths to which they will go. to uh figure out how to pay for college. I want this to be like old school. I want this to be so, so funny and I deeply want it to be funnier than the trailer, which was already funny. I don’t want the trailer to be the be all end all of funny in this movie Mostly because Jason Mantzoukas is in it and uh he is one of my very favorite comedians right now. The guy is just bizarre. And uh I really want to see him succeed uh in this film. Uh and uh so uh there you go. Uh written by Andrew J. Cohen, uh co-r uh and Brendan O’Brien, directed by uh Cohen himself. As I said, Will Ferrell, Amy Poehler, Jason Mantzoukas, Ryan Simpkins plays the uh the daughter, Alison Tolman, Andrew Savage, uh, and others. What do you think?

Andy Nelson
Yeah. Here’s the thing. I mean, it’s one of those trailers that I was watching, I’m like, oh, this is exactly what I expected it to be. Everything about it is so like exactly what you’d expect. I mean it’s uh you know a gambling uh den in their basement. It is old school but for peop parents trying to raise a little extra money. So I, you know, I was like, okay, yeah, it’s it’s pretty expected. But I gotta say, the last bit of the trailer had me practically rolling on the floor. But he’s like trying not to gag as he’s threatening the guy after they accidentally chop his uh finger off. Now you go downstairs and tell your friends what we’re gonna do.

Pete Wright
See?

Andy Nelson
Now that could be the end of the funny, but I hope not. That made the whole trailer watching experience worth it. So for that, thank you.

Pete Wright
I’m so glad to hear it. Starts rolling out uh in Brazil June 29th. Uh only have a couple of release dates. June 29th for Singapore, UK, June 30th, US June 30th. Germany, July, Philippines, August 23rd. That’s it so far, but I imagine it’ll it’ll get out there. Yeah. I fought for greed. And gods, this is the first war I’ve seen worth fighting for.

Trailer
We have traveled thousands of miles in search of a weapon more powerful than we have ever known.

Trailer
Why are you here?

Trailer
We came to trade.

Trailer
You lie. You are thieves.

Trailer
What was that? There are many things you have not seen. The Great Wall is the only barrier keeping the world safe.

Pete Wright
The Great Wall, Andy! Zhang Yimou, written by Carlo Bernard, Doug Miro, and other people. Stars Matt Damon, Jing Tian, Pedro Pascal, Willem Dafoe, Andy Lau. What a guy. Zheng Han Yu and others in this story. It is historical fiction. It tells a story of a great wall in a universe far, far away. that was built for one reason to keep out the lizard dragons, uh the hordes that come from the Emerald Mountain. to uh take over China. What did you think of this film, Andy?

Andy Nelson
You know This is i it’s like the strangest film to throw into Zhang Yimou ‘s catalog of films. Um, I it’s just like so not anything I expected to see kind of uh I mean he’s done some of the wuxia films. We’ve talked about Hero and he’s done Uh what’s the other one? House of the Flying Daggers. And he and he makes gorgeous films. Uh and uh I watched another film that he did. um recently. It was a it was a another film that was kind of a half Chinese, half English film that he did with Christian Bale a few years ago called The Flowers of War. um which uh i it’s very much just kind of a historical uh drama s film and it’s interesting that this film, The Great Wall, is being built as his first English language film because this has as much of a balance between English and uh Chinese as the Flowers of War did. I think this is just kind of a bigger film, so they’re pushing it that way. But it’s a totally different type of film. And this one I guess I went into this really not expecting much because the trailers looked pretty ludicrous with, you know, these monsters on the other side of the wall. It just kind of looked like silly nonsense. Um, but I have to say I actually kind of had some fun watching the movie. I have some real issues with it, but at the same time I did find myself enjoying it. So There you go. What’d you think?

Pete Wright
You know, it’s funny that you s sort of introduce your opinion with uh this being a film that is that falls for you outside of what you expected from Zhang Yimou right now. Um because I walked out saying, wow, that’s a Zhang Yimou film, right? If you look at what he has done with the films that we’ve talked about, right? His use of color, his use of camera, his use of movement, his uh incredible sort of affinity with shooting large structures and scale. This film is like the pinnacle of everything we’ve talked about leading up to this. His use of giant casts, if anything I mean the th l like hundreds and thousands of extras that were non-CG, right? Uh i let alone uh all of the masses of CG players. Um this really I think represents sort of the next stop for him making a giant budget film. He is uh you know watching the interview material around this thing uh coming from China. uh is you know, you see Zhang Yimou as a wildly celebrated cultural hero in that country right now. So this is a giant step for him making a movie of this size and this budget. And I think he landed all of his jumps on um, you know, the things that I love the most about his filmmaking style, the visual style. I love the colors. I love the flowing. I love the wackiness of uh some of the stuff that he makes this fantasy army do. I it was just bananas Uh I’m with you, I have a few problems with it, uh, but I had a surprisingly good time at this movie

Andy Nelson
And yeah, I guess what I was saying was I wasn’t expecting this to be a Zhang Yimou film. Like I watched the trailers, it just seemed so uh not what he would be doing. But after watching the film, I’m like, that is exactly what I would expect Zhang Yimou to do with this. It really did fit with the color and the design and the scope. and just the way everything uh falls into place. So I really did enjoy it, but um yeah, there are there definitely are A few little issues. My biggest issue the film sets up this whole idea how there are real stories about why this seventeen hundred mile wall was built in China, and there are legends about why this wall was built. This is one of the legends. I loved that setup. It’s like, you know, we’re gonna have fun with this. Don’t expect anything real here. This is just uh a fantasy about a story that people have made up about why the Great Wall is here.

Pete Wright
It’s like they buy filmmaking credibility with the audience by doing that.

Andy Nelson
I loved that. Because the trailers, to your point, were bad. They were terrible, terrible trailers. That sets it up nicely. But even with that, I still had a hard time buying the legend about, okay, this meteor crashed into the uh this mountain And it tur made the mountain green for some reason. But then they build the 1700 mile wall to protect them from these dragons that come out from only this one mountain. that they can see right up a valley, so they can see everything coming out of it and coming toward them. It’s like, why did they have to build this huge wall if this is the only spot that these creatures seem to attack the wall? That was like the one thing that I was just like, well I don’t really it doesn’t give me a reason to believe that they had to build a s this wall across half the country just to defend from this one mountain. Why didn’t they build a wall around the mountain?

Pete Wright
Okay. I just got finished saying that the setup in the beginning buys credibility and the central point the central anchor about which you need to extend this credibility, you have problems with.

Andy Nelson
I know. It’s It’s a fantasy. I get it I just I wish that the dragons were attacking other spots of the wall too. They only attacked this one spot It’s like okay, at the beginning we set this up where it’s like it’s like Lord of the Rings or Return of the King. They’ve got the smokestacks on the mountains, you know, telling people that they’re coming. Here we’ve got, oh the smoke’s coming down the chain of all the different towers along the Great Wall. But like I didn’t understand why, because it’s like, but the mountains right there up the valley. Why are they coming? Like it some of that was nonsensical. But you know

Pete Wright
It is a big dragon. I would I would submit that we don’t know. I mean, there is a chance that there were other like giant sort of onyx tunnels of rage coming down from the mountain that we couldn’t see.

Andy Nelson
That’s possible. And they d they tell us that these dragons are getting smarter. They could be spreading out and attacking at different points. It’s just never it’s

Pete Wright
the dragons by the by the climax of the movie, by the end of the movie There are more dragons than we had seen prior.

Andy Nelson
Yes, and they are clearly smart because they did find a way to tunnel under the m under the wall to get to uh the capital.

Pete Wright
Very smart. Although to your point, that tunnel was not very big. To my point, there must be other tunnels.

Andy Nelson
I love this. This is just like just a bananas conversation about a bananas film.

Pete Wright
But let me I gotta step back. So I I I’ve been thinking about ’cause I saw it on Friday and so I’ve had but we’re as we’re recording this, it’s it’s now Monday and so I’ve had a couple of days to think about it. You just saw it yesterday, is that right? Correct. Okay. And so I don’t know. I maybe I’ve been stewing on it for too long, uh longer than the film deserves. But uh it these interviews that I’ve been watching with these, with particularly the Chinese actors, Andy Lau you know, says uh has said that you know tau ta which is what they call these monsters, it is i a symbol of greed, right? And so when you see these waves of Taotie, these monsters hammering against the great wall, it’s it is it is fighting back the greed with the will and the wall of humanity, right? And so it becomes much more uh of a um uh of a story of kind of cultural imposition and I think that makes the movie even better when you look at it through the lens of metaphor. Yeah.

Andy Nelson
What do you think? Do you buy it? I think it’s an interesting way to look at it. I uh you know, I struggle with thinking that there was a lot of metaphor here, but again, it’s like uh Zhang Yimou. I really did feel like the whole concept really comes from Commander Lin and this idea of, you know, the Chinese people are a people who work together. It’s all about that, you know, that one land, you know, that idea that we talked about with Hero. It’s like these are this is uh people who group together to fight together to be together as a one. And to that end, maybe you’re right.

Pete Wright
Well, and greed becomes its own form of cultural imperialism, right, infecting uh and imposing itself on the will of um the sort of honest working class, right? The people who who work together share the load the communal aspects and politics. And I think it’s it tells an interesting story. So I find it actually more interesting thinking about that. uh and coupled with Yimou ‘s uh incredible visuals. I i you know I struggled a little bit because at some point I wanted to compare this to the fifth element on the Great Wall. Um at what point would the visuals have been overboard for you? Because I know you weren’t as crazy about that as I was. the flamboyance of the army get under your skin?

Andy Nelson
No. I loved all of that. I thought it was just it was beautiful. I mean that really showed a lot of what Zhang Yimou brought. to this, right? I mean it really was about um just this these different groups within the army that all were kind of trained with a very specific purpose. And they all it’s like color coding, so it was it was easy to easy to get. Okay. So the soldiers in the black are the foot soldiers. The soldiers in blue Or the I don’t remember what they call them, the crane the crane troop or whatever, the skydivers. Yeah, the crane bungees, right? Uh and they uh The yellow ones were the archers and they all had their own little color coding. And I loved that

Pete Wright
It was like my first military. You cannot get lost.

Andy Nelson
Exactly.

Pete Wright
Oh, you’re purple? You know exactly where you’re going.

Andy Nelson
Right, exactly. It was fantastic. Yeah. I was that to that end, I was disappointed that the guy who uh kept getting picked on, didn’t get his colors taken away when he had to go work in the kitchen, you know? It’s like no you’re the kitchen color. You’re dirt you’re dirty brown now.

Pete Wright
I know, but what’s so great is that he had to actually wear his colors in the kitchen and his helmet. Like completely do all the kitchen stuff for the entire army as far as I could tell. Like there was nobody else in the kitchen with him. Right, it’s just him. So on the script and back to this point about the trailer, because we both kind of poo-pooed the trailer a little bit. And I think the risk of the trailer was the way they handled Matt Damon. And maybe that was because you know, we were watching a uh US domestic release. I don’t know. I haven’t watched all of the international trailers yet, but um you know, part of it was what kind of movie is this gonna be? I think the script, the uh screenplay by Carlo Bernard, Doug Miro, and Tony Gilroy, uh story by Max Brooks, uh, Edward Zwick and Marshall Hershkovitz Uh I actually think the story makes much more sense than the trailer deserved.

Andy Nelson
I think that the story makes total sense. I mean it was a very easy-to-understand story. I th you know I don’t know. I wonder if they tried to find a way to sell the trailer or to just to sell the concept to uh to dumb Americans so that pe you know people could understand it in a lowest common denominator sort of thing. But uh it I don’t know, it just ended up feeling um like it didn’t sell the story as well as it uh as it should have. You know, it made it much more focused on kind of the mystery of what’s out there and all that. And, you know, it hit it really did try to emphasize some of that kind of the uh the you know the buddy buddy adventure sort of story between uh Matt Damon’s character and uh his buddy Tovar, uh paid by played by uh oh is it Pedro Pascal. That got played up in the trailer quite a bit. And uh you know to a certain extent I think that was kind of one of the weaker elements of the film. You know, but I mean I still enjoyed their chemistry, I guess, but I just I felt like I wanted a little more of the story in the trailers. But

Pete Wright
Yeah, and the and the story was actually more interesting. I mean the whole uh conceit that this army this that is, you know, fighting off the Taotie is the sole m you know possessor of gunpowder and that’s what gets our uh intrepid duo to the Great Wall in the first place. You know, they’re running from the Mongol hordes and they end up trapped at the base of this uh of one of the bastions of the Great Wall Uh I think it was a that was a fine intro for me. Like it took me into the story well, and that was the thing I was most concerned about was they’re not going to be able to introduce this story. They’re not going to be able to shoehorn Matt Damon into this story. in a way that makes sense at all. And I think they actually did that.

Andy Nelson
They shoeho shoehorned him in well. Is that what you’re saying?

Pete Wright
I am. I actually I’m gonna stick with that.

Andy Nelson
I think they Well here’s the thing, I mean ’cause ’cause there has been controversy from just the trailer, which we all know how ridiculous it is to start judging something based on a trailer, let alone even a teaser, and actually the criticism really kicked off. with the teaser um when it first came out about uh oh they’re whitewashing history again and uh matt damon kind of took him to task um because these people were like Uh, I think it was at a press conference back at the New York Comic Con uh right after the first teaser came out about how the film was being labeled as offensive for the white savior stereotyping. And he’s just like You know, it was you know, wait until you see the movie. You guys are judging this uh based on this teaser and you don’t have a sense of what the story is. And uh Pedro Pascal kind of joked, he’s like, yeah, yeah, you know, we’re all guilty of whitewashing. We all know only the Chinese were the ones who defended the wall against the monsters. Uh so it’s like uh it’s it’s this kind of this silliness of the whole idea of the whitewashing um at least judging something as being whitewashing when you haven’t even seen it. And I think when you watch the film, it’s like, you know, here is this guy. I mean, okay, sure. He’s the one who really kind of has the character arc over the course of the story, right? He starts as this kind of he and his buddy, they’re thieves, they’re they’re they build themselves as traitors, but really they’re trying to find this black powder so they can kind of steal it and uh take it back and sell it for yeah they’re totally mercenaries yeah and he’s like he says he’s fought for many flags right he goes through the list He doesn’t care who he’s fighting for as long as he’s getting money out of it. I mean, that’s really what he’s all about. But something changes within him here as he starts working with Commander Lynn And she kind of teaches him this whole concept of trust. And he says, I don’t trust anybody except myself. But we see that change over the course of the film and they start working with each other. So he gets that character arc and to a certain extent that kind of makes him our protagonist. Uh but what I what I think is important is that it’s not just his film. It really is a film of teamwork and you have all of this group working together and he and Commander Lin work together at the end to help bring the uh the queen down. Um he’s got a couple tries, it doesn’t work, and then the two of them together they devise a plan where they will um you know, come up with something to help destroy her. And I thought that was great. I thought that was nice seeing that, you know, here here he is, Matt Damon, this big American actor in this uh this multicultural Zhang Yimou film. potentially uh taking it over as the white hero, but we here we are, you know, getting to see him working with the people in the story and uh you know this commander who you know is also a woman as they work together to actually defeat the uh these dragons. And I thought that was great. And so I think it is something that uh is unfair to judge it being uh just a whitewashing of this story. I think it’s If anything, to me, it ended up speaking to the kind of the multicultural nature of how films are really going to start being, or maybe should start being, as um uh the distributors really start trying to tap into these big markets like the Chinese market, which is just a huge, huge uh market right now. There’s a lot of funding coming out of there. We’ve already heard all the stories about how there are scenes shot for all these Marvel films that are only ever seen in the Chinese markets that we’ll never get to see unless we go over there to watch it. I think it’s a hugely critical um element of these of this new storytelling as all of this global money starts coming together and gluing these films together. And if you watch the credits of this film, I mean it’s not just Chinese um people and uh filmmakers and storytellers. and Americans. I mean, there were people um in effects shops in India and France and uh and in Asia, like all over the world. It really was a multicultural film. And so to that end I thought they did a great job of bringing it all together.

Pete Wright
I think we may be giving it a hard time because of the size of Matt Damon’s face on the poster. face. Yes, it is. But you know, how many times have you said, I know I have, where I watch a great film, a great foreign film, a great Chinese film, and I think, man, what would this person do? uh if they had a Hollywood budget. Well, now we’re gonna start seeing that, right? We’re seeing that more and more and more. We’re seeing that certainly on display in this film. This is about as um you know, much a testament to the future of production uh of these big budget films as I think we’ve s yet seen uh and uh and actually maintains I think uh Yimou ‘s uh artistry. That’s the thing I think that I’m I’m most impressed by with this film. That I walked away really seeing Zhang Yimou in this film and I’m not sure I can say uh that about the uh maybe with civ with uh not Civil War, but i Winter Soldier, um uh those uh the Russo films had kind of a stamp on them. Uh but the Marvel movies that are big kind of multicultural productions end up being Marvel movies, right? They t go to great pains to sort of disguise the um uh artistry beyond the mechanics And this film, I felt like I was in a Zhang Yimou film. I felt like I was seeing what this guy wanted to put on screen and uh every bit as much as we saw it in Hero and as we saw it in uh Raise the Red Lantern. And Ju Dou.

Andy Nelson
Yeah, I definitely agree. It really does have his stamp. And I mean he is a a filmmaker with an incredible, incredibly strong stamp. I mean, we’ve talked about the costumes and how gorgeous they were, but man, that tower, when they go into the tower that’s all the stained glass windows all the way up, and you just have like that rainbow of light Cutting across the screen is that I mean that was one of the most stunning things to look at. And I mean I went and saw IMAX 3D uh because why not? It was Zhang Yimou. I you know, I wanted to see him on as big a screen as possible. And that was just, I mean, it was mind-bogglingly beautiful. And to and that, you know, that really struck me as this is definitely a Zhang Yimou moment here. when we get this tower just laced with the most beautiful um light coming in from uh from its uh stained glass. It was just stunning. So Well, there you go.

Pete Wright
And the pair with that. I mean, the trip they take to that tower, the rainbow tunnel where the the m Tau Te start reaching through the light in the ceiling and pulling people up. And then they go I mean, talk about an egg what a perfect example of his ability to handle length and height, right? I mean it’s something we have we’ve seen him do uh so well in all of the recent films that we have watched and this movie they just i it added such a uh richness and resonance on this giant screen. Uh I’m I was really impressed.

Andy Nelson
Actually one one last note that I wanted to say about that I think is definitely worth talking about in context of um this kind of shift that potentially that we’ll be making. Um I really did like that it wasn’t just everybody speaking in English. The fact that there was logic behind the language all through the film. just totally sold me on it. I mean there was a lot of Chinese being spoken with subtitles. There was a lot of English. Some of the Chinese characters spoke English and there was a reason for it. I really respected that they found a way to kind of tie all that together. And uh that, you know, sometimes you see these films that take place, I mean this very easily could have been done with everybody speaking English just with accents. And they didn’t do that, and I give them a lot of kudos for that.

Pete Wright
You know, I actually thought about that. There’s a place when there is a part in the film where they’re eating dinner and they’re bringing they bring, you know, Matt Damon and um um Pedro out and they uh there’s a part where they’re all speaking Chinese and you hear and Damon says, What’d he say? And I thought, man, now I feel like I’m there. Yeah. Like that’s what it would be like. Like I would be saying that all the time. And uh um it I totally agree with you. I think it’s perfect. Uh let’s let’s move into first shot, last

Andy Nelson
shot. Okay, the first shot of the film from the opening logos of the uh of the distribution companies, we have the logo for legendary pictures. over a globe and then we drop down from that globe onto China and we see the Great Wall. And we get a few other shots um followed uh following of the wall paired with some on-screen text about the true stories why the wall was created as well as the legends.

Pete Wright
And the last shot, uh now we are moving away from the wall. William and Tovar ride away with their escort, uh General Lynn. is uh standing alone on the wildly curving wall, watching them ride into the distance.

Andy Nelson
Yeah, they sure didn’t uh they sure didn’t make this a straight wall. It was really It’s like, man, where which way is this wall going?

Pete Wright
Yeah. I think the only the you know the story for me is really this is the this is the intro and outro to a fable and I think it works well on that front. You know, we kind of move in, you almost feel the pages opening to a book Uh and as they ride away at the end of the film, uh you feel the story sort of come to an end.

Andy Nelson
Yeah, I definitely agree with that. It it I mean, it’s called The Great Wall. This is a story about um what is behind the wall that we have to defend ourselves from and the people defending it. And so we get that. And I should have said at the very first shot, you know, we get these various shots of the wall. And the very last shot we get before the title, it’s a close-up of the wall as something from the other side like hits the wall and the wall kind of cracks and kind of starts to crumble as then the camera flies in through the crack and we get the title. So Uh kind of a just a sense of, you know, where our story is and the legends about it. So

Pete Wright
well and that’s a really good point. Uh one of the things I wanted to say early on, I totally spaced, was that they get us into a major battle really fast. in this film, right? I mean, they get Matt Damon and uh Pedro to the wall fairly quickly and then We see the hordes. Like they don’t there is no suspense about what these things look like or what they’re going to do or how they communicate. They educate us onto the sort of world of the Taotie, uh, very, very quickly and efficiently for a for a film like this. Let’s go into the cast, casting by John Papsidera and Victoria Thomas. Uh and they uh they landed mister Matt Damon as William Garon. What’d you think of Matt, the wandering Scott? Ish.

Andy Nelson
The wandering something. You know, I enjoyed him in the film. I thought he carried the character well. I think If anything, i you know, I was a little frustrated initially with his uh with dialect. I could never quite pinpoint what it was, and I couldn’t it also had kind of a stilted uh read to it. And I wasn’t sure if that’s because of the way that the script was written and translated or whatever it was, or if that’s just kind of his choice as an actor to kind of play it that way. Um, but I got used to it. And as the film wore on, I was like, okay, I’m kind of used to this way that he’s speaking all the time. It was it was very strange, but In the end it didn’t bother me, but it did take some getting used to.

Pete Wright
But I this is the part I had sort of the most trouble with, I think, in the film. And I am a huge fan of Matt Damon. The challenge that I have with his accent is it didn’t it never really landed. Yeah. You know, it never really stuck uh from sequence to sequence. It was heaviest in the very beginning of the film and it was always subtle. And but i in the beginning of the film, I actually s liked it. I found myself sort of thinking about it. I mean it comes off as sort of a thick-necked kind of uh like it’s it’s coming from deep in his in his chest, you know, is i he’s he’s really put it low in his throat, and I think it sounded great, and it never really stuck throughout the uh course of the film. It would weave in and out of his sequences, and that was frustrating. And I found it distracting. Uh in otherwise, uh, I think the performance was fine. I bought him as the archer. I thought he was uh he I’ve always thought you know Matt Damon is a fantastic physical actor. And uh he is, uh we’ve talked about before, he’s enormously charismatic on screen. And it was better than the Last Born movie. So, you know, I call it a win.

Andy Nelson
Yes, I would say so. That’s a good point. That was a pretty bad film. It’s an interesting accent. Um I’m curious to see how it holds up over time.

Pete Wright
Yeah, talk about holding up. If you don’t have the wall, Andy, if you take Matt Damon out of the wall, will the accent hold up. Jing Tian is commander of uh Lin Mei of the Crane Troop Talk a little bit about what her job

Andy Nelson
was

Pete Wright
in the film.

Andy Nelson
Will you can you describe it? Well, her job, she’s the commander of the uh what are they called again? The crane troop. The crane troop. Um they uh they dress in blue and they and they uh put uh strap themselves into uh basically like rope bungee cords. And they want you to imagine going fly fishing. Right. They hurl themselves off the wall and slash at the dragons only to get yanked back up again. Hopefully not eaten while they’re down at the bottom. Um crazy.

Pete Wright
It was so stupid and so beautiful. Like I am in such favor of this element of the film, even though I heartily acknowledge it is ridiculous. Oh

Andy Nelson
it is ridiculous. Well and it’s funny because I mean they these guys have so many variations on ways to attack these dragons. They have to be really careful which ones they use at the same time. Because I mean thank goodness they didn’t, you know, use the little knife The giant knives that they have the scissors on the sides of the walls that like cut the dragons in half when the women were out there on their ropes, because that would have just been a disaster. So obviously they’ve got some Uh very specific rules about what’s going on at the same time.

Pete Wright
Always make sure the redshirts are talking to the blue shirts, Andy. Exactly. That’s the that’s the point. I uh I thought she was terrific. She is Uh I thought the whole cadre of um of women in this role, and they’re all they’re all women, incredibly acrobatic women, and apparently they were recruited from the um uh Shaolin Temple um according to Damon in one of his interviews, a lot of these incredibly physical sort of um performances came straight out of the temple and uh they were gorgeous to watch on screen. It was crazy. I thought she was great. I thought her English was great. I thought she was a great she served well as sort of a strong uh commander. I actually I mean I bought it And she is very petite. I think this would have been a really easy role to not be able to kind of sink your teeth into as an audience member. And I thought she did a fantastic job.

Andy Nelson
Oh yeah. I loved her. I thought she was a great leader too. I liked that aspect that she really kind of takes over and uh you know from commander and after the general gets killed kind of steps up and starts leading. Um she was a perfect choice. I thought she had the sensibilities and the conversations that she had with uh William over the course of the film about trust and about working together and all of that. I thought that was a nice pairing and how they were, you know, they were the same type. No, they weren’t the same type. All of that sort of stuff. Really interesting, and I liked that uh character balance between these two. I thought she was a great choice for this. And I’m excited to see her in uh in Kong Skull Island coming out soon.

Pete Wright
Uh Pedro Pascal

Andy Nelson
uh is plays the uh Pedro Tovar. He’s the buddy. I haven’t seen him in uh I don’t think I’ve seen anything that he’s been in Um, I mean he’s been doing a lot of TV. He’s been kind of all over the place. And he was with uh Matt Damon back in the adjustment bureau. Um um but I yeah, I mean, uh man, he’s one of those guys who’s kind of just escaped my uh my field of view. Um but uh yeah narcos, I mean that’s definitely a big one for him. Um so I enjoyed him in this. I you know as somebody who has uh I’m kind of familiar with him as an actor, but I just hadn’t seen him in anything. I enjoyed him as a as a character in this. I wish that I liked the relationship between him and William a little better. I but I still enjoyed him

Pete Wright
I uh I’m big fan of Oberon Martell on Game of Thrones, and uh I think he’s fantastic.

Andy Nelson
Ooh, ooh, tough. I need to watch I haven’t quite cut up to that bit. So I’m I’m looking forward to that. That’s gonna be uh the next round of Game of Thrones for me. So I’m looking forward to it.

Pete Wright
Yeah, you got some catch it up to do. It is it’s worth it. He is he’s worth catching. And he’s very I mean in this film he actually looks really really like a physical presence and it’s In Game of Thrones, it’s the opposite. Like he is wiry and lithe and strong, but not big. And it’s important that he’s not big because it, you know, his seven episodes on the show lead up to something where he needs to look. uh y like a uh shadow uh against uh mountain, so to speak. Oh Andy, I can’t believe we can’t talk about this I’ve read the book. I’ve read the book.

Andy Nelson
I know what I know what I’ve done.

Pete Wright
Oh, right now

Andy Nelson
I guess. All right.

Pete Wright
Anyway, he’s great. I am right with you, and that is one of the central kind of problems I have with the film, uh, beyond Williams’ accent never really sticking is that their friendship, um, i it and I know it’s not really a friendship, it’s a partnership, it’s a thing that kind of weaves in and out of relevance to the film, uh, and to their journey together. And it is the other thing in the film that never really locks for me. I’m I I either go from wondering w what the next plot point is that relates to them as a duo to not caring at all and forgetting that he was in the film. Like there’s a period where he’s just gone for a while.

Andy Nelson
And I didn’t notice. It’s that’s the biggest problem. And um I I mean I think they set it up in an interesting way where it This is a guy who they’re kind of friends, but at the same time, he’s also willing to just ditch his friend to get off g make off with the uh black powder. Along with what they’re doing.

Pete Wright
Well, and they’re friends by necessity, right?

Andy Nelson
Because they’re the two that lived in the group.

Pete Wright
Like there’s no other reason for them to be hanging out.

Andy Nelson
Exactly. But then uh then we get to the end, and I think this is one one of my biggest frustrations with the film is like They go writing off together. It’s like I just I never bought that friendship enough for Matt Damon to make the choice to go riding off with Tovar. it seemed to me that if any choice was going to be made, he would make the choice to stay and fight. And uh, you know, maybe maybe Tovar would leave, maybe Tovar would stay. But for me it was like William was in a place where he’s like, you know, I’m gonna stay and I’m gonna fight and I’m gonna be a part of this uh this uh community now. That to me would have made a more logical ending. And it just like it seemed like they were trying to satisfy some like buddy comedy sort of ending by having the two of them write off together. So that was for me the biggest one of the biggest moments of frustration for me.

Pete Wright
I agree with you. And uh y they I to your point, I think they could have gone with the seven samurai ending and it would have been great. Separate separate the duo uh makes their relationship in hindsight that much stronger. Anyhow, uh Willem Dafoe, I was actually surprised to see Willem Dafoe in this film. I don’t think I caught that he was even in it in the trailer.

Andy Nelson
Well, he’s pretty clearly in the trailer, but you probably just were so taken by the dragons and it and everything else that you forgot. And Matt Damon’s giant head. And Matt Damon’s giant head. Uh, but you know, I mean he’s very Willem Dafoe, you know. Uh yeah, I think he was uh fine. I think I had more of a sense that uh he was more of a positive character from the trailer. And it was actually uh it was kind of a relief to see that he really wasn’t. He was just a scoundrel.

Pete Wright
Uh more interesting to me was Andy Lau as Wang, strategist and war counselor. for the Nameless Order. Uh I actually really I mean I’ve always loved Andy Lau, uh, but uh it’s really cool to see him in such a a role of a stoic

Andy Nelson
Yeah, I mean he was uh I’m trying to remember in Infernal Affairs, which cop was he again? Was or was he the bad guy posing as the cop or was he the cop posing as the bad guy?

Pete Wright
I see when you put it that way, who’s to know?

Andy Nelson
I think he was the cop posing as the bad guy. I think he was. He was the hero character. Yes, he’s the one who gets killed by the uh the bad guy posing as a cop. Um I uh I uh really enjoyed him in that film. I enjoy him. I mean he’s just it’s just such a great presence to watch. And I think he’s great here. I mean he’d he’d worked with um uh Yimou on a couple other films, House of Flying Daggers. Uh I it might have just been that film. And then we talked about uh when we’re talking about Gong Li, how she was in the Chinese uh adaptation of what women want. He was the guy in that film with her. So uh there you go. Andy Lau and Gong Li. It seems like a great pairing.

Pete Wright
So there are I mean this cast, those are the sort of the big five. Uh this cast is full of really strong performances from a bunch of people that we haven’t seen enough movies of, um, but I imagine we’re gonna see some of them again. So Um in that regard, in terms of the mechanics of this military, uh these uh this was this was a well-cast film. Uh let’s talk a little bit about getting it made briefly.

Andy Nelson
Yeah, I mean this was uh a film that uh came out of Legendary Pictures. Um uh the producing team kind of put it together. It’s an interesting I mean we mentioned the writers, but we didn’t really talk much about it. As far as the fact that uh Max Brooks, Edward Zwick, Marshall Herskovitz were the people who came up with the story, and then uh Carlo Bernard, Doug Miro, and Tony Gilroy wrote the screenplay. None of them Chinese. Um I thought that was very interesting that uh that was kind of the direction of this, which to a certain extent made it feel very much like Zhang Yimou was um kind of a director for hire and reading about it and really kind of looking at what they were really pushing for here. I mean uh Legendary Pictures has a uh Chinese joint venture, Legendary East. And what that division is really trying to do is focus on some big budget um Sino US co-productions with subjects that are based on the Chinese history, mythology, culture, all that sort of stuff. And so this is kind of a lead into that and they’re really kind of banking on this um being successful and it’s it’s kind of a big gamble and um I think it’s gonna succeed so far it looks like it’s succeeding um over there. I don’t know if it’s gonna succeed as well over here. You know, Zhang Yimou, I mean here he is, this incredible filmmaker. I mean he’s done a lot of really great stuff Um, but he hasn’t had a hit. I mean, we didn’t really talk about this, but Hero is a huge hit for him. Um House of Flying Daggers came out right after that. That was another huge hit. Um everything else between has just not done as well. I mean he’s had some films that have been really uh successful as far as critics are concerned. But none of them have made quite as much money as some of those other big films. And so this is really something that he’s like, you know, he could use this big hit right now. Um and I think what happened is these guys were really trying to find a way to get all of these pieces to line up in such a way as to create this big uh action spectacle bridging uh the Chinese community and the American community and uh you know cross their fingers and hope it works. Um Uh we’ll see. This is going to be a time will tell sort of thing because it’s so fresh in theaters right now.

Pete Wright
The cinematography was uh performed by Stuart Dryburgh and Zhao Xiaoding. Zhao Xiaoding uh is behind actually House of Flying Daggers, and you know, maybe that is that shows just sort of how uh adept uh he is at working with Zhang Yimou. Um Stuart Dryburgh is behind Secret Life of Walter Middy. I absolutely adore the camera in that movie. How do they split the work? on a film like this.

Andy Nelson
You know, I don’t know. I need to um I didn’t look at um uh the American uh cinematographer magazine often has some really great articles with cinematographers, uh, you know, interviews and stuff like that. I didn’t have a chance to look at their magazine to see if they had anything about this particular film talking about how stuff was split up, but um I was curious about that too, because I saw that it had two uh cinematographers credited and they each had their own screen, so I wasn’t sure if they uh i if they weren’t working together, but they both had very specific elements, uh, you know, I wasn’t quite sure. So it’s it’s one of those weird things that I’d love to know a little bit more about. the uh the how that’s structured.

Pete Wright
Yeah, it’s interesting too when you look at some of the work that they’ve that each of these uh folks have done. I mean, they actually, you know, when I compare them to the work of um Zhen Yi Mu, they have a style that very much fits within w his vision, right? I mean, they are very strong uh s that have a very strong sort of visual style. Uh and even movies that we ultimately did not like at all. had a very visual style. Uh Stuart Dryburgh’s Behind Black Hat for e example. And so um I think that’s uh at least worth considering. I mean maybe this was uh I would love to hear more about the partnership between these three people.

Andy Nelson
Yeah, I’m curious. I mean maybe one uh dealt more with the action uh side of things, one more dealt with more of the uh the smaller moments, something like that. I’m not exactly sure, but it does uh pique my curiosity. Yeah. You know, speaking of the cinematography, I did just want to say I really enjoyed the uh the bit in the fog. I thought that was uh really beautiful. Um it you know, speaking of the color that Zhang Yimou always has, um, when we’re shooting in fog, you don’t get that. It’s just kind of this blanket of white over everything. And it really kind of uh obscures so much. But I loved the way they dealt with it. And I love the way they dealt with the whistles in to create the sounds and everything. But uh just the look of it and when they when uh William slides down on the chain and he’s down there trying to get that uh that dragon dragged in and you just it’s it’s just such an obscured world and I thought the cinematography in that particular scene just that really stuck out for me.

Pete Wright
Yeah, it was really haunting. The other one for me uh was the release of the lanterns, uh which I thought worked on a in on a number of levels first. It was a beautiful ceremonial thing, you know? I mean, it was the death of their leader and that every soldier on the wall released one of these um floating uh candles into the sky, the thousands of them kind of um perforating that night sky in the path of the wall I thought was just gorgeous. But also Speaking of the narrative that the ultimate sort of climax takes place from one of these balloons, uh I didn’t see that coming in terms of, you know, we’re literally hanging a lantern on this. uh it n that the final element is a giant, you know, floating balloon I thought was a nice touch.

Andy Nelson
Absolutely.

Pete Wright
John Meyer is uh behind production design, uh which uh was Uh I th fantastic.

Andy Nelson
Well, and just speaking to the balloons that you were just talking about, I mean they were pretty stellar to see uh these giant floating balloons. And what was so great about it is that they weren’t uh completely effective and they weren’t tested and you had a lot of deaths from them. But they did it anyway. But uh that was all a part of the brilliant production design. You know, they didn’t have baskets or anything. It was just these platforms laced with um extra uh black powder so they could uh you know have weapons and keep the balloons afloat. So I loved the design element of it that also went into it and uh why so many of them ended up burning and exploding. Uh it’s just absolutely horrible. But I think, you know, production design uh just beautiful on a film like this, and you know, for a film that’s called The Great Wall, it could very very easily just have become us you know we’re we’re surrounded by gray bricks all the time. Uh but in Zhang Yimou’s world when he’s working with um his production designer, they do a lot of great things. And then looking at the costumes that um uh I was at MyS C Rubio does. I mean, i this has to get nominated for best uh costume uh come next year and I certainly uh would at this point say that it’s gonna win because I mean these costumes are just amazing. I just the ornateness of them. I mean just absolutely beautiful.

Pete Wright
Yeah, really stunning. The thing I’ve been thinking about since I saw the movie that I really wanted to close the loop on this with you was the CG arrows And now we have CG arrows, we have CG cannonballs, fireballs, spiked fireballs, flaming fire cannonballs, we have CG uh narcotic laced uh anchors flying through the air. How did the CG projectiles hold up for you, particularly in the IMAX 3D? viewing experience.

Andy Nelson
I you know I thought about that when I was seeing them and they were all slow-mo and everything. I it’s like I really it’s like Zhang was doing it just for me. Check it out. Look what the progress I

Pete Wright
made. Yeah, look at look at my arrows. I’m gonna put you in the arrows, then I’m gonna put you in the flame trail of the cannonballs, and I’m gonna put you in the uh on the chain with the narcotic anchor, and you’re gonna love every minute of it, Annie Nelson.

Andy Nelson
Slow-mo, absolutely. He did it just for me and I actually really enjoyed it. And I even really enjoyed the dragons. I saw some test uh footage of the dragons beforehand. I was like, oh these are gonna be pretty ridiculous. It’s gonna look terrible But they actually had a really unique look. And I mean they were weird enough. Like they have their eyes and their shoulders. It just was kind of nonsense. But at the same time, I’m like, you know what? But It makes it different enough for me. So when I’m watching, it kind of throws me off a little bit. And uh and I appreciated that because it actually um uh they had something different about them. And so in context of all of that, I thought they did a really unique thing with these creatures. And not to mention the really cool communication uh method that they have, kind of that Uh you know, I don’t know, it’s not quite telecommunication, but you know, whatever the little radio communication that they’re doing. I thought it was really cool.

Pete Wright
Christian Schreuer is behind the um it was the conceptual creature designer of the film and I thought it was really great. Uh when you look at the at the creatures when they’re not moving, you see that they have built into them the um uh many of the beautiful sort of Chinese uh m sort of art treatments, right? The s symbolic treatments. You have the kind of maze on the heads of the m the kind of troops and the designs that are actually built in to the skulls and the shapes of the heads, which I thought was a great throwback to Chinese art of the period. You know, I mean I think it when you go to these temples and you see these sort of gargoyle creatures. They all look like that. They’ve been recreated uh as sort of um um maquettes or homage to um you know what an artist rendering of these animals and this is an animal a rendering of an animal uh based on the art, which I thought was delightfully recursive.

Andy Nelson
I loved that too. Yeah, it was such a unique design for the creatures. Um and Weta I think did a lot of the actual uh design work on the creatures. Andrew Baker and the whole Weta team I really kind of just love them. I liked the little hierarchy that they had, you know, the masses of the uh the soldier dragons. And then you had the kind of the giant muscly ones with the uh the um frill, like the frill neck, uh lizard almost sorts of things. that would protect the queen and then the queen in the middle of all that. It was such a such an interesting design. And again, we always go back to world building. This was a really interesting uh you know a lot of details put into this and certainly something that Zhang Yimou has done very consistently in all of his films.

Pete Wright
Editing Mary Joe Markey and Craig Wood. Um I thought it was well cut and well paced.

Andy Nelson
I didn’t really have any problems with it. Yeah, it moved it moved nicely. It wasn’t too long, it wasn’t too short, it just uh moved nicely. I mean they’ve been doing quite a bit of uh big projects like, oh you know, Star Trek into Darkness, Star Wars The Force Awakens. Um so I think that they have a good sense of cutting films in a way that’s going to move them along. You know, geez. I mean looking at that was uh that was Mary Joe Markey but then looking at Craig Wood it’s things like Guardians of the Galaxy and Pirates of the Caribbean Um so yeah, they definitely are uh a pair that know how to cut action films together.

Pete Wright
And finally, your favorite, Ramin Djawadi, did the music.

Andy Nelson
Yeah, you know, he’s he’s a composer that I find so interesting. And sometimes um I don’t think much of his music, but uh every now and then he does some really interesting stuff. I love his uh work on Game of Thrones. And um I just think he ha does some really nice stuff here. It actually seems to fit nicely. It has some of the Tan Dun sort of uh the tones and everything that we got before a lot of the pounding drums um but some choral stuff I mean it just it was a really effective score. I really liked it. What’d you think?

Pete Wright
Oh, I thought it was fantastic. And I, you know, you look at the last four major properties that he’s been involved in. I’m a fan of every bit of the scores that he’s done for those. The strain. Westworld Game of Thrones. And you know what? I haven’t even heard any of it yet, but he’s on Prison Break, the sequel uh which is coming out. I was I actually watched every bit of that show when it was when it was still on. So uh I actually really like it. He’s he is uh I think he’s an incredibly talented uh composer and this film was no exception. Strong theme, something I found myself um I found myself sort of wailing as I left the theater.

Andy Nelson
Yeah.

Pete Wright
The numbers are interesting, and I’m curious in this, when you look at how it’s done just in this last opening weekend in the US, it’s been open for a long time, right, in China. When you see this, or I guess in other places around the world, when you see this sort of a film, how do you set expectations for what you want opening weekend to look like? in a film that has been so stunningly successful elsewhere already.

Andy Nelson
Well, like I was saying, I think that the producers at Legendary are really trying to find a way to uh make some crossover films that are going to be really successful in China, but will also be really successful over here. That’s I think the goal that they’re working toward. Are they going to g hit that with this film? I don’t know. I think that the trailers were uh so poorly done um that I mean, honestly the film looked laughable um when I saw the trailers. It just looked like just complete nonsense. Um, watching the film though, I found it to be so much more enjoyable, and I just don’t know if many people are gonna give it the chance to actually go and enjoy it. Um it did cost uh this huge action spectacular ended up costing from what I found about $150 million to make. It’s it’s Zhang Yimou ‘s most expensive film to date and it’s the biggest Hollywood China co-production ever. Like you said, it did open in China back in mid-December, December 15th, 2016. It’s had a very slow expansion around the world before finally opening here in the U. S. Uh just uh for us recording just this past uh Friday, February 17th. 2017 opposite fist fight and a cure for wellness. It did open really strong in China where its box office receipts accounted for about 80% of the foreign gross. Since the movie just opened here, we’ll have to just keep updating our spreadsheet with info after its theatrical run ends. But for now, it looks like it’s had a fairly weak opening at the box office, unfortunately, with only about 22 million. Coming in at number three behind Lego Batman and Fifty Shades Darker. Um we’re, like I said, recording it right after opening weekend. So that’s all we have for now. But uh if you just look at this information Even without factoring in the rest of its domestic run, it at least has made its money back. So uh I don’t know what they spend on Princeton advertising. Um that may be hurting it, but For now, I’d say, you know what, they’re they’re making their money back at least maybe it’s going to give them a chance to try it out again and see if they can find one that’s going to create a better uh financial uh profit on both sides of the globe.

Pete Wright
I can’t believe your tone and your voice is you’re it’s it’s like you’re in Andy Buzzkill mode And the movie’s like uh over 200 million worldwide right now. And it like that we are even having a conversation where that kind of box office receipt is at all depressing, is stunning to me.

Andy Nelson
Well, and i it’s funny, I just I just read through that and I didn’t actually say how much it has made overseas, which is kind of funny. I skipped all of that. I just said that, you know, it’s made for about eighty percent of its foreign gross. over in uh over in China. But yeah, I mean, it has made uh almost uh it’s it’s about two hundred forty five million internationally. Uh so yeah, I mean you’re right. I am just saying in context of those people who are really kind of banking on it succeeding on both sides. Um, I think they’re doing really well over on that side of the globe. I think that it’s they’re struggling over on this side. So if you just look at the domestic box office I think that it’s a disappointment. But you’re right. When you look at the international uh figures, when a film is, you know, on uh at least at this point, it’s made uh you know about two hundred sixty seven million dollars worldwide. It’s a success. So uh yeah, I it’s one of those, you know, there’s uh there’s good and bad, I think.

Pete Wright
There is, there’s good and bad. Just like There is good and bad over at Flickchart. com. I think it’s time for us to rank it. Oh, let’s do it. Head over to Flickchart. com slash The Next Reel. That’s where you’re gonna find our profile. You can also just swipe over to the show notes in your podcast app of choice. And as we record this, Overcast 3 was released. That is my podcast app of choice. So uh plug to Overcast 3. It’s really delightful. And so you swipe over to the show notes, you can tap on Flickchart, and uh and you can see uh it ‘ll take you right to this movie through the magic of internet. And you can add it to your collection. And then let’s see how well it stacks up. I’m really curious about this.

Andy Nelson
Well, uh, we’ll see how it goes. It’s gonna be a tough start because we first up we have the Great Wall versus Joe versus the volcano. Going back to our conversation about holding up over time, I’m still picking Joe versus the Volcano.

Pete Wright
I will too. I feel bad about it. I think uh but I’d watch Joe first. Hands down, absolutely.

Andy Nelson
The Great Wall or the Host Bungo. Yeah, I really yeah, I guess I will too. I mean I’m surprised you will though.

Pete Wright
Yeah, no, I had a good time at this movie. I feel like I may be uh or in this case we may be an island. Uh it doesn’t look like it’s getting all that great oppress and uh I’m I’m disappointed about that because I think it’s an entertaining romp. But I did like it and I think that’s that’s reflective of my choices here.

Andy Nelson
Absolutely. The Great Wall or what’s up Doc Oh, and the Great Wall. Yeah, I’m gonna say the Great Wall. The Great Wall or the Knight of the Hunter? Uh I’m going with the Knight of the Hunter. Me too. The Great Wall or Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. I’m going with Indy. I think I’m going with Indy as well. Even though that’s oft maligned. I’m still picking it. Yeah. Uh the Great Wall or Outland. I’m going with Outland, please. I might go with the Great Wall here. Like how strong. It’s awfully awfully uh fun to watch. A lot of really interesting visuals. I think I’m going to enjoy watching any of the fight sequences of the Great Wall um over and over and over again. And I mean I certainly enjoyed Outland. I’m really glad to have discovered that film because I had not seen it before. But um but I think that The Great Wall is just going to be a more um Uh something I can return to more often just to enjoy the visual feast of it.

Pete Wright
But you know, Andy, Sean Connery’s accent doesn’t waver. Not even a not even a little bit. True. And he’s really from Scotland.

Andy Nelson
Well, for that I feel like I should give it to you. I think you should. I will. All right. How’s that? The Great Waller field of dreams. Totally field of dreams for me.

Pete Wright
Andy, uh, I’m all about reciprocity today. You can have it. Old two by four gets the nod. Two by four over helms deep with dragons.

Andy Nelson
Oh, here are we yeah, there you go. Alright, here we got some Andy Lau uh face-off here. The Great Wall or Infernal Affairs. Oh dear. I had some issues with the uh the uh the shrink character in Infernal Affairs, but I still think I’m gonna pick that film.

Pete Wright
I’m uh yeah, I’m gonna pick that film.

Andy Nelson
Uh The Great Wall or the original The Magnificent Seven. The original Magnificent Seven, please I may go the Great Wall, but I’m pretty wishy-washy about this decision. Are you pretty strong on Magnificent

Andy Nelson
Seven?

Andy Nelson
I would I would I would go with Magnificent 7 just for the music. I’d probably go with the Great Wall just for the fight scenes. I’m a little torn. I mean Magnificent 7 has I you know, some of the characters I don’t like as much. I certainly would pick Seven Samurai over Great Wall, but here I’m a little I’m kind of leaning toward Great Wall just for the funness of it.

Pete Wright
Okay, now remind me, what are the characters that you don’t like in Magnificent Seven?

Andy Nelson
Uh the young one, the kind of the German uh actor who plays the young one who does the little bull fight thing and Uh you know, and stays behind to be with a girl and you know, kind of the positive happy ending and stuff. Uh that sort of stuff I just didn’t, you know, it wasn’t as crazy about.

Pete Wright
Yeah, they do the same thing in this movie. I know. Positive happy ending and what I think.

Andy Nelson
I know they do, but you don’t have women jumping off of the wall.

Pete Wright
Ah, you’re right. Bait, the bait patrol. Yes. I’ll give it to you for that. You go, Shaolin

Andy Nelson
ladies. Alright, well that puts the Great Wall at 181 on our chart. Probably the lowest of our series, but it still is an awfully fun one and it’s uh in good company. So there you go.

Pete Wright
It is fun. It’s silly. I mean it there is a lot of silly if you go into it too seriously, I think I enjoy it. I enjoy what it represents. Again, if you look at it as metaphor, I have a good time with it. I think I like it more after spending so much time talking about Zhang Yimou. Uh I really wonder if this film would represent quite as well had we seen it cold.

Andy Nelson
That’s a uh that’s a good point. If somebody who ha has never seen a Zhang Yimou film goes into this cold and watches it, are they going to uh think that it holds up?

Pete Wright
So yeah. So what you need to do is go watch Ju Dou. and uh the uh other one. Raise the Red Lantern and hero hero and then listen to all of us all conversations on them. So there your investment you’re about it to nine, ten hours I mean to eleven hours. And then you can go see this movie. So homework and uh then we’ll see what see what you think.

Andy Nelson
You know they’ve already watched it and they’ve listened to this by the time

Pete Wright
Have you gotten to this point, Pete? See, you didn’t even know it, but you’ve already failed, listener, dear listener. You have failed yourself Andy, uh, what does this do for your Letterboxd rating ranking over at uh Letterboxd. com slash the next row? I am giving this one a three and a half. Is there any Andy love involved in that?

Andy Nelson
No, I think that uh I think that’s got plenty of Andy Love already. Already

Pete Wright
got the stink the stink of Andy Love is all over this movie. I will give you I was coming in at three stars. I thought it was just kind of a middle of the road better than two and a half, but uh I’m gonna I will agree with you for Oh, look at that. There you go. Look at that. Now we’ve got some uh schedule shakeup Going on right now, right? But where does where do we go after this series now that we’ve wrapped up our Zhang Yimou series

Andy Nelson
Well, we are going to be uh before we get into our Hughes Brothers uh series, which is our next series, we actually have our next Listener’s Choice episode, which is going to be uh with uh at feg feet from our uh our pony prize winner uh from uh from twenty sixteen. So this will be an exciting one and we’re going to be talking about The immigrants. Not the immigrants, the emigrants.

Pete Wright
I’ve I have written that wrong almost every time. That’s not the six and a half hour one, right?

Andy Nelson
It is uh it is if you watch the second film in the series with it We’re only watching the first of the two films. I think I think Finn uh wanted us to watch both of them, but I think For our sake, I think we just picked the one and then maybe we’ll watch the second one as a as a you know one-off down the road.

Pete Wright
Okay. All right, fair enough. Uh well between now and then it sounds like I better rest up, Andy, so I’m I’m gonna go to bed.

Andy Nelson
Well, there’s a lot of dead dragons out there, so I’m gonna get the grill going. Time for a feast of Taotie Steaks.

Pete Wright
Amazon giveth, Andy. As Amazon always doeth. Uh what what star rating is a new film, so there aren’t as many Amazon reviews to choose from. So what star rating did you end up with? I ended up with a five A five, Andy.

Andy Nelson
Well, I, you know, well, one, the only one star is incredibly long, so I figured I’d skip it. And two, I was just like, you know, it might be fun to see somebody who’s really enjoyed this film and just hear from them.

Pete Wright
All right. Uh well, mine ‘s mine ‘s short and I’m gonna get it out of the way. Do you mind? Go for it Alright, so mine is a three-star, and it’s uh titled Another quote Kill the Alien Queen movie to save the world. Oh no, not another Kill the Queen movie. First it was Ender’s game, then the remake of Independence Day, and now this. This is the third recent movie where the plot is to kill the queen of alien creatures. Views more like a video game made into a movie. The third, Andy. The third

Andy Nelson
Kill the Queen. That’s if you don’t count the uh like all the Kill the Queen movies. Yeah,

Pete Wright
it seems like there’s keeping a lot. The first Independence Day. Technically did say recent movies. I buy that. But I may maybe there’s a collection of Kill the Queen movies that we need to put together.

Andy Nelson
Alice in Wonderland. I’ve got a five-star by Suzy Q who says, Don’t be fooled, you will enjoy this movie. I went in with an open mind. All I wanted for the movie to do is keep me entertained. It is fantasy. So that should be the end of the discussion of monsters. You won’t care why they are fighting. Just remember the critics missed the point.

Pete Wright
Oh.

Andy Nelson
So there you go. Somebody who loves it. They want the monster. So there you go.

Pete Wright
It is. It’s a monster movie. Don’t go in thinking this is a historical drama. Don’t go in thinking this is uh Matt Damon

Andy Nelson
vehicle. This is this is a monster movie and if you’re okay with that you might have fun. How about that? I like it. Thanks, Amazon.

The Next Reel. A show about movies and how they connect.