The Great Wall (2016) - Review by Jacob Grisold

History of the film

The Great Wall was a 2016 film directed by Zhang Yimou that had a very interesting production history as it was one of the first major films to be co-created by both Hollywood and Chinese film companies, Universal studios and China Film Group. This film also holds to the title of the most expensive film to ever be shot 100% in China having up to a $150 million budget; This film was set up as a major combination of Chinese and American film power. Immediately out of the gate after casting however, the movie faced a lot of backlash due to the casting of Matt Damon as the lead character of the movie, as well as William Dafoe playing a major role, laid rise to claims of white washing and introducing a white savour narrative into the film. Despite these claims the movie did cast a large amount of major Asian actors as well such as Jing Tian, Andy Lau, Lu Han and many others. With the many challenges the movie faced it was not critically or commercially well received making only $45 million in the American-Canadian box office (The largest box office at the time) but interestingly was able to make $170 million in the Chinese box office, which still isn’t an amazing return but shows that the Chinese people were much more excited for this movie then western audiences.

Historical Analyses

The History that is presented within the film is very interesting a since this is an American and Chinese production one would expect the history of the film to be fairly accurate to reality as Chinese film companies would have a better understanding of Chinese history than Americans, but there are tons of historical inaccuracies that arise within the film. One major change is the use for the Great Wall, in reality the Wall was built as protection against Mongol invaders and other nomadic enemies to the north, in the movie the wall was built as protection from monsters that arrived from a crashed meteorite, obviously drastically changing the purpose of the wall; Th wall is still for defense just defence from something much different. Another major inaccuracy that is within the film is the inclusion of the women on the battle field, in the Song dynasty the status of women was to be subservient to her husband, she would not be out jumping off the great wall fighting monsters. The film shows that it has an understanding of the history it is portraying, but for either the films aesthetic or meddling from production companies the film ended up presenting very little historical truth.