Usually, when I sit down to write a review, I've seen the movie at least twice. The first time for pleasure, the second time for analysis. "The Great Wall" I only looked at it once, not for pleasure, there wasn't. The analysis is a reflection of the angry annoyance I experience from this type of movie. I watched it because the director is a name I respect, and because I keep in touch with the cinema. And cinema is not just the good cinema. The draft is ready when you sink in the sea, hang a disposable pack, have a jellyfish, and some shit is reported alongside you. In such waters, the films are currently being polluted. "The Great Wall" is the most expensive Chinese film ever made. It costs $ 150 million. Director Zhang Imiou says he has directed it to open the way for young Chinese filmmakers to Hollywood. I guess his ambition is to show that the Chinese can give Hollywood a cultural diversity. The problem, however, is that if it was Imoiu's justification to get hold of the money machine, then it is a failure; the film is entirely American - like atmosphere, pace and history. Which makes his Chinese director and all Chinese actors internally mercenaries. At home, I have the book "1001 movies you must watch", as the title suggests, a collection of important 20th and 21st century movies. Inside, there are 2 films written by Zhang Yimu, "Red Sorghum" and "Take the Red Lantern". Miss "Hero", who is also his most famous film. "The Great Wall" was directed by a cadre director, behind whose back there are several highly rated by critics and audiences.
Alas, the film is a breathless series of battle scenes. Matt Damon's character arrives in China with his Amigo, who is so as Sancho Pansa that when you look at him you smell of sausage (in the role of Pedro Pascal of Narcos). The two in China are sent to look for gunpowder. (The action is evolving in the Middle Ages, the best time for brainless movies and non-computer games.) Our characters in the first 10 minutes encounter a monster, kill it, grab it, get into one of the fortifications of the Great Wall, where the Nameless Order (its name is to be a nameless, a red point of ideology), and the fight begins. The first battle scene is visually impressive. The Nine Order Chinese fight as ballers dance - gracefully and in tact, - some are loading weapons, others are dancing on drums, others firing with bows, fourth (women dressed in magnificent blue suits) diving straight down the wall hanging for ropes equipped with long spears to pierce the monsters. A detailed scene shot is great. From then on, the film is superfluous. It could only be left with the first scene showing the absolute sacrifice of every Chinese soldier who groped all his blood for his native Empire. On the other hand, the Euro-centric attitude is that the warrior is the best soldier when he is alone (an idea portrayed by Matt Damon). All this is clear in the first 15 minutes and the film to the end does not offer anything deeper as a conclusion. If they cut most of the film, one could save 100 million to make a movie like "Manchester by the sea".
"The Great Wall" is an inspired narrative story for children. Neither the monsters are terrifying, nor the mythology around them is tangled and intriguing. Heroes are a matrix product - the hatchling, the selfish, the sacrificial. The film does not surprise anywhere. I only remember one thing - there is no kiss between the fighting Chinese beauty and the fat Matt Damon. She managed to resist it even after washing her hair, and he dropped it to continue wandering around the wide world with Sancho Pansa. Shock! Blockbuster is a military term that means putting bombs in the air that make rubble and dust complex buildings, whole neighborhoods. Blockbuster animates everything from its path, disappears, flattens it. It works the same way for the audience. He fascinates it with vision, cradles the technology, and turns the movie experience into a blatant glorification of the Image, the Graphics, the empty, colorful box filled with serenity and oblivion. Blockbusters (which is undoubtedly both a budget and a "Great Wall" quality) aim at seeing, not watching. They superimpose image after image, combined with constantly flowing music, dialogue, no empty strokes, pauses, silence; the greatest modern fear is that it would not be accidental for the viewer to get bored and decide to do something else. Blockbuster does not give you time, it steals the most of you, claiming it is a modern and technologically perfect form of entertainment that is worthy of respect for the talent of its team, audience and mass. My biggest problem with the film is the director's moral decision to direct it at all. You should have principles; if you made a movie like a "Hero" - gentle, poetic, deep and memorable - you do not get down to the level of flat worms that make movies like the Great Wall. Otherwise, on your deathbed, you are doomed to apologize to the gods of all religions. Why do you apologize for making another filth, creating another noise along the chain, throwing another line on the street. That's why he has a very good word - adulterant. Adulterant is any substance they put in food, drink, or drugs to replace the essential substance to "deceive" the consumer that he consumes something authentic while actually offering him foul and chaff. Interestingly, the root seems to be the same as in the adultery word.
In one video channel there was an analysis dedicated to the music in Marvel's films. Tony Zu (the man behind the channel ) stops people in the streets and begs them to blow up the soundtracks of famous film universes like Harry Potter, Star Wars, Indiana Jones. Everybody humming, everyone knows the melodies. Then he begs them to take music from Marvel's movie. And they all get stuck, no one thinks anything. Tony Zu explains this in the following way: In Marvel's films (and the same can be said for most blockbusters), the music is used only as background. The music is usually such as to express exactly the same emotionally expressed scene at the given moment - if something sad happens, the music is minor if something fun is happening - the music is solemn, and so on. One of the most important elements of the cinema story - the soundtrack - has the role of just some add-on. "The Great Wall" is the background. It is an echo of all the films before it, for which other people have written similar reviews. It's a piece of chewing gum that tastes in 10 minutes, that nasty wafer whose chocolate does not look like anything, it's just more of a movie, one of the many, a child of our modern deception that art serves, to distract you, to our even greater and deeper delusion, that boredom is both possible and unacceptable.