Whether it’s a tower lit inside entirely by different colors of stained glass, Lin’s squadron of bungee-jumping warrior women, or the wall itself - which gets a movie-star entrance when it first appears on camera - Zhang offers dazzling visuals to keep the film from drowning in “Warcraft”-style earth-tone blobs of soldiers-versus-animated-creatures. Whether William will learn to trust others and to sacrifice himself for the greater good rather than rob the Nameless Order of their much-needed weaponry is about as close to a character arc as “The Great Wall” provides, but Zhang offers other delights, from the staggering numbers of extras (if they’re just CG, he’s hidden it well) to some stunning set pieces.
Meanwhile, fellow Westerner Ballard (Willem Dafoe), who’s been a prisoner in the Wall for 25 years, conspires with the men to steal the gunpowder and sneak off into the night.Īlso Read: 'The Great Wall' Builds Solid Thursday Box Office Total of $970K (And since he’s Spanish, he uses a red cape, matador-style, to send a scaly marauder to its demise.) Commander Lin (Tian Jing, “Kong: Skull Island”) gives the outsiders snazzy primary-color armor so they’ll fit in with the rest of the Order (who apparently took fashion notes from the Power Rangers).
#The great wall movie creatures free
William and Tovar are handcuffed, but when the monsters attack, they free themselves and prove they are valiant in battle William is a crack archer, and Tovar is a wise-cracking sidekick. (So this would be the … third time they’ve attacked, then? The movie doesn’t go into much detail on this point.) That claw is of great interest to William and Tovar’s captors, members of the Nameless Order, an enormous army that has waited at the Great Wall for 60 years for the latest onslaught of the alien creatures, who apparently attack in six-decade cycles. See Video: Watch Matt Damon Battle Monsters in 'Great Wall' Trailer There’s a legitimate argument to be made that a white Westerner like Damon sticks out like a sore thumb in what is otherwise a very Chinese story - and he does - but when the plot revolves around the titular structure having been built to keep out creatures that look like the Rick Moranis dog-demon in “Ghostbusters,” historical accuracy has clearly already left the building.ĭamon goes for an Irish accent that sounds more Irish-ish as William, a mercenary who has traveled all the way to China in search of the legendary black powder that has the power “to turn air into fire.” What started out as a sizable expedition is down to William and Tovar (Pedro Pascal, “Narcos”) after a nighttime attack by an unseen being the only evidence the two have is a green claw that William sliced off before their assailant tumbled off a cliff. But if you calibrate your expectations to “monster movie for eight-year-olds,” you may find some fun in this energetic and blissfully brief (a mere 103 minutes!) tale of the Chinese army battling alien beasties in the Song Dynasty era. If you go into “The Great Wall” thinking of it as the new Matt Damon movie, let alone the new Zhang Yimou movie, you’re in for disappointment.