Zhang Yimou is like George Lucas. Give him the best technology can offer and he screws up his own movie.
Look at his previous work with Hero, House Of The Flying Daggers, or Curse Of The Golden Flower. And then look at The Great Wall. What a stark difference in the quality of storytelling. This has become another cheesy CGI flick that was just a waste of money to make.
Why have Matt Damon speak with an accent? It was so bad that I almost couldn't tell if it was Scottish or Irish. The accent was present only in the beginning and the end of the movie. In the middle, it was just a feeble attempt at it.
Speaking of accent, I cannot remember if I had ever heard Andy Lau spoke Mandarin without dubbing. This was horrible. How many years has he been in the business and he still does not have a proper Mandarin pronunciation. His attempt at English was commendable, even though that clearly was dubbed over and we only saw him act with English twice.
The story was the weakest part when it should have been the strongest. The monsters came and go to fit in with the story progression. The individual army factions were conveniently created to feel like it was from a game, or to make them look like Power Rangers - I can't decide which one.
The worst thing was the Crane, or the blue armour, or the female warriors. I have to question if their suicidal move of a makeshift bungee jumping technique was the best form of attack against those lizards. Zhang knew it was just for the cool factor too because he only used it once!
Willem Dafoe and Eddie Peng, such great actors in their own right, were reduced to caricatures. Tian Jing continues her streak to be completely miscast as she looked too "clean" in this type of role to be convincing.
Only Pedro Pascal, who was easily a standout amongst all the other cast members, brought personality to his character and provided much needed levity.
The final act where all the action happened were a complete mess as nothing was explained and things just happened amidst all the chaos.
And there was one scene towards the end where a bigger lizard picked up smaller one for inspection which just immediately took me out of the movie because it looked, simply, stupid.
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