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The Chinese trailer mixes in images of local actors early on, and a teaser poster from Zhang Yimou’s Weibo account also positions Damon in equal proportion to his co-stars. The film’s synopsis on the official website also puts the American actor front and center: “Matt Damon leads humanity’s greatest fight for survival in ‘The Great Wall’ from Legendary and Universal Pictures.”īy contrast, China is much more interested in the screen debut of Chinese boy-band idol Wang Junkai, who appears alongside fellow boy-band-member-turned-actor Luhan and popular star Andy Lau. In the US, Damon’s face occupies most of the poster, with the titular wall merely a detail over his shoulder. Early marketing in the two countries has been markedly different. However, while the US perceives the film is about Matt Damon saving China, people in China think he’s just one character out of many. “They don’t have this feeling of representation which people of minority backgrounds would feel in the United States.”Īdded Wang Xiaoyi, film editor for the Chinese-language Time Out Beijing, “So out of five heroes, there’s one who’s not Chinese.” Why the collective shrug? “In China, Chinese are the majority,” said Sally Ye, a Chinese-American producer who has worked in China for more than a decade. Even of those, most are focused on director Zhang Yimou’s defense of the film, rather than Wu’s criticism of it. Many posts are simply articles explaining the American controversy for Chinese readers. On Weibo, essentially China’s Twitter (the social media service is banned there), searches relating to “The Great Wall” and whitewashing in Chinese turn up only a few dozen responses at most. There, the prevailing sentiment over the trespass on their national identity might best be described as a Whatevs. The Great Wall opens in 3D on February 17, 2017.China had another take. Written by Carlo Bernard, Doug Miro, and Tony Gilroy, the film also stars Jing Tian, Pedro Pascal, Willem Dafoe, Hanyu Zhang, Eddie Peng, Lu Han, Kenny Lin, Junkai Wang, Zheng Kai, Cheney Chen, Xuan Huang, and Andy Lau. No doubt the film was made with Chinese box office prospects in mind, so this will be a curious one to keep an eye on next year. Story-wise, though, it remains to be seen if this will all come off as silly, or if the danger is visceral. Legendary made a swell call in enlisting Yimou to direct and giving him a Hollywood blockbuster budget to work with, and this appears to be a fantastic blend of Chinese and Hollywood filmmaking sensibilities. Visually, this thing looks pretty spectacular.
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Set 1,000 years in the past, an elite force makes a valiant stand for humanity atop the titular wall, which is constructed to keep out a beast of monstrous proportions. Directed by Hero and House of Flying Daggers director Zhang Yimou, the film stars Matt Damon and tells the “true” story behind why the titular Great Wall of China was built in the first place.
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Fresh off the first images debut earlier this morning, Universal Pictures and Legendary have unveiled the first trailer for The Great Wall.