Until then, at least this makes a visit to medieval China look awesome. Still, it would have been nice for this film to pull a Psycho and kill off the big Hollywood star in the first 20 minutes, drawing in those audiences with the familiar American face and then smacking them with a truly Chinese adventure story.
Yet it's not fair to blame Zhang for that culture, nor to pillory this relatively unoffensive film for all the accumulated ills of Hollywood if you’re going to boycott a film for under-representing Asian characters it’s probably not sensible to start with the one made in China by a Chinese director. We have 18 questions (and answers) about Matt Damon's Great Wall of China movie New, 10 comments By Bryan Bishop, Jacob Kastrenakes, Russell Brandom, Kwame Opam, and Chris Plante. That's the culture where, if Zhang Yimou wants his film to play big internationally, he has to cast someone bigger than Andy Lau as Strategist Wang, bigger than Jing – or at least more Western.
It's a culture where Jon Cho somehow doesn't star in everything ( ) and where Steven Yuen ( The Walking Dead's Glenn) is somehow to be found auditioning for small roles instead of walking into big ones. It looks worse amid a Hollywood culture of whitewashing Asian characters in particular, something that's caused controversy for Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton and Emma Stone just in the last few years. It's all very well to have William increasingly impressed by the example of the Nameless Order, but shouldn't they be at the centre of their own story? The problem becomes murkier when you consider how much more screentime and focus the Europeans are given. What Is Matt Damon Doing on Top of The Great Wall. So this is not strictly whitewashing: white actors play white characters, and Chinese actors get far more roles. Jing Tian, Pedro Pascal, Willem Dafoe and Andy Lau also star in this sweeping epic.
The Chinese are portrayed as culturally, militarily and strategically far in advance of the interlopers, who have, remember, just travelled halfway around the world to steal their technology. Starring global superstar Matt Damon and directed by one of the most breathtaking visual stylists of our time, Zhang Yimou (Hero, House of Flying Daggers), The Great Wall tells the story of an elite force making a valiant stand for humanity on the worlds most iconic structure. To hear director Zhang talk about it, the European characters are, sure, a necessary ingredient to make a film on this scale and sell it worldwide, but also a narratively convenient vehicle for exposition on a grand scale.