Matt Damon: The Great Wall Trailer

[MIKA27]

The Great Wall Trailer

This looks and sounds like all kinds of madness.

The trailer emphasises its grand scale and the weirdness of Matt Damon being the star of this movie, surrounded by Chinese actors and in a thoroughly lavish Chinese setting.

In fact, save for Damon and a handful of brief shots of Pedro Pascal’s character, the cast is overwhelmingly Asian, and yet the trailer makes it clear that Damon is the main star, despite the Chinese talent involved. It’s quite an unfortunate look given the recent conversations about Asian roles in Hollywood filmmaking.

And yes, it also has the absurdity of being a grand fantasy action movie set a thousand years in the past, with supernatural monsters assaulting the Great Wall of China. It kinda sounds like the Helm’s Deep sequence from The Two Towers, but amped up to 11 and turned into the most expensive blockbuster ever made in China.

We don’t know much else about the movie — Yimou’s interview with EW mainly discussed the challenges of a Chinese director making an English-language Hollywood blockbuster — but it certainly feels like it not only came out of nowhere for a film out so soon, but also like it could be a wild ride. Definitely one to keep an eye out on.