Since last time he chose the film we saw The Girl on the Train, I thought it would be fair and interesting to give that privilege back to a friend of mine while out at the cinema, and he chose The Great Wall, a choice I personally was quite happy with. And to get this out of the way, no, people saying this film is whitewashed are wrong, and idiots. Let's go.
The film doesn't start off great in all honesty, with an introduction to the mercenary gang after the black powder, which gets messy with an encounter with a Tao Tei, before a strikingly cheesy introduction to the Wall and the Nameless Order. We were at first very disappointed, but very rarely have I seen a film start off so weak and then do a complete 180 in such a small amount of time, and all of the negativity and most of the pedantics stopped after the first siege. I'm not kidding when I say the opening siege in this film is awesome; the visual effects are nothing mind blowing, but they do a good job of conveying scale, which is helpful when thousands of Tao Tei swarm the Wall, and there's arrows and flaming boulders flying all over the place, it's violent, loud and bloody, it's a lot of fun. When the siege is done, and things have the chance to calm down a bit, you do, somewhat unfortunately, get a bit of character development. William is one of the main guys, a mercenary looking for black powder, and while he gets the job done in the role he fills, his character ark is completely predictable, going from a mercenary out for money to a heroic figure in the Nameless Order, while his less important fellow merc Tovar is actually a tiny bit more interesting, torn between staying and helping his friend and getting away and getting rich, and while Ballard is at first not what I expected, he certainly follows a predictable path, while not being as likable as William or Tovar, who have a good sense of friendship between them. And they're the three characters in the film who aren't Chinese, blowing any argument of whitewashing out of the water; the rest of the film consists of Chinese generals, commanders, and strategists, and are by far the film's most interesting element. The Nameless Order is a really cool army, with their forces split into different troops designated by colour and armour, and it's a cool aesthetic, and seeing the various troops doing what they do is cool. Asides from the cool armour, this film is very nice to look at; again the CG isn't the very best CG you'll ever see, but it's very, very far from the worst, and the more serene landscape shots of ancient China are downright stunning, the setting of ancient China is admittedly something I have a soft spot for, so I really enjoyed the aesthetic of this film. The three biggest figures in the Nameless Order are General Shao, who's a cool general with the coolest armour, Commander Lin, who's a commander of one of the Troops, and Wang, whose name I remembered because I'm immature. What the film does lack in way of characters is a proper villain, the film's antagonist is a swarm of freaky looking lizard monsters called the Tao Tei, and they're kind of cool, but not hugely remarkable, sadly, in a film with stunning scenery and a stunning setting, where everyone has cool looking coloured armour, lizard dogs aren't really the most eye catching of things. And the closest thing to an individual bad guy the film has, the Tao Tei Queen, does literally nothing; really I think she's just there for the convenient ending.
Definitely the film's greatest weakness is it's lack of meat and substance; the film's characters are either just there to facilitate the story, or there to get your attention with not very interesting scenes of development. The film does get one element of character development right, in the friendship between Tovar and William, because you get the sense there is one, they crack jokes to each other, and can sometimes actually be pretty funny, and it is interesting to see the two of them learn what they really want out of life, and seeing that starting to come between them. Again though, the journey William goes on is just not interesting enough, his transition from merc to hero is completely by the numbers, and without Tovar's banter, I doubt he'd be all that more gripping. The friendship between him and Lin is done well enough, but again, nothing remarkable, I'm just glad they didn't go all out with the by the numbers character journeys, and have the two of them kiss at the end, spoiler alert, they don't. There's a soldier in the Order that William saves from a Tao Tei early on, and yet again, the film wants you to care about him, but doesn't give you a good enough reason, other than him being a runt who is seen by his fellow soldiers as a coward. Even two of the bigger characters of the film never give you a real reason to care about their lives, and when one of them dies, earlier than I was expecting, and they hold a huge ceremony for them on the Wall, it was cool, but their death didn't have the weight that was clearly intended. The Tao Tei are similarly weak, again the Queen serves practically no purpose other than to facilitate the ending, which just strikes me as really convenient, as their unbeatable problem suddenly has as a simple solution, it's feels a bit lazy. Being honest though, I still see this film in a very interesting way, because while I know of and can appreciate this film's many weaknesses, there's just something I love about it, and that's the action. The first siege is awesome, and easily the best siege in the film, but the various action scenes are just enjoyable, seeing William and Tovar fighting blind in thick fog, listening for Tao Tei stuck with noise making arrows is cool, seeing them swarming the Wall, World War Z style, and ripping shit into the Nameless Order, while the Order is ripping shit back into them is cool, seeing the final battle as William and Lin try to kill the Queen is cool. When things start going down in this film, I can't deny I had a lot of fun, enough to at least temporarily ignore the weak characters. All in all, The Great Wall is no masterpiece; its characters are cardboard, their development isn't very good, and the film's lack of the proper villain only makes this more evident. The monsters get the job done but are nothing special, and when the film tries to hit the feels, it just doesn't have the power. But when the film tries to hit the action it has plenty of power, having a few really enjoyable action scenes. Couple that with the film's gorgeous imagery and cool setting and aesthetic, and I'll be honest, I liked this film, The Great Wall is worth a watch, for sure.
And on a finishing note, The Great Wall has American money in it as well as Chinese; hence the film kind of needs to be marketable to an American audience, which is why Matt Damon, a well known American actor is in it. I'm sure I'll be saying something similar when I see Ghost in the Shell, but the simple fact is when American money is involved, it's important to make a product that's marketable to an American audience, since the investors still want to see a return on their investment. The race of the persons cast has nothing to do with it, so to who it concerns, your whitewashing argument is not relevant, stop trying to make up problems and start enjoying the films.
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