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As the entire horde lays siege to two pagodas, the finale evinces the raw threat of a zombie apocalypse while the resplendent colored glass windows inside the pagodas form a romantic and distinctly Chinese backdrop. Shot with sweeping agility by Stuart Dryburgh (“Alice Through the Looking Glass”) and Zhang regular Zhao Xiaoding, using the Arri Alexa 65 and other state-of-the-art cameras, images of leaping movement appear with extraordinary sharpness in the 3D IMAX format. The mechanical screenplay keeps the battles coming with accelerating size and peril.
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They arrive at a fortress on one segment of the Great Wall and are captured by the Nameless Order, an elite army led by General Shao (Zhang Hanyu) to fight Taotie, ravenous beasts that rise locust-like from the nearby Jade Mountain every 60 years to devour humans and everything else in their wake. The film opens like a spaghetti western in the Gobi Desert, as mercenary soldiers William Garin (Damon) and Pero Tovar (Chilean-born actor Pedro Pascal from “Game of Thrones”) flee the attack of Khitans, and Damon’s character procures the claw of an unknown creature by fluke. While its marriage of Hollywood production values with Asian elements may skew the film toward a more culturally open-minded audience, the generic storytelling and lack of iconic characters will make it a tough sell stateside when Universal releases it on Feb.
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With a reported $150 million budget, the film rolls out in China mid-December with little competition in cinemas, boosted by a massive marketing campaign, which should draw full houses in the first week at least - though “The Great Wall” has a lot to recoup and will be hard-pressed to beat Stephen Chow’s charmingly lo-tech romantic fantasy “The Mermaid,” which still holds the record as China’s top-grossing film with nearly $489 million. In between the cultural cheerleading, there are some highly watchable war and monster spectacles, though none so original or breathtaking as to stop one from associating them with the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy or its imitators. Those who ranted against the project as another case of Hollywood “whitewashing” in which Matt Damon saves China from dragons may have to bite their tongue, for his character, a mercenary soldier who stumbles into an elite corps fighting mythical beasts, spends the course of the film being humbled, out-smarted, and re-educated in Chinese virtues of bravery, selflessness, discipline, and invention. Commanding China’s most expensive production, with probably the biggest input from Hollywood talent ever, blockbuster Chinese director Zhang Yimou capably gives period fantasy-action “ The Great Wall” the look and feel of a Hollywood blockbuster, but his signature visual dazzle, his gift for depicting delicate relationships and throbbing passions are trampled by dead-serious epic aspirations.