I do not know why so many critics pan The Great Wall. You can watch it free on Tubi now so you can see for yourself. Tian Jing did an amazing job! This movie was about spectacle. In the classic martial arts tradition there were huge acrobatics. I hope to God they used CGI for most of those stunts.
Suspend Reality at the Door
As I stated earlier, this movie is all about being a feast for the eyes. Yes there is a bit of a love story, but not much. Certainly no make-out scenes. The entire premise requires the viewer to suspend reality because China is under attack by ancient green monsters. Only thing defending them is The Great Wall.
Maybe that is what put people off? At least it is what put the professional critics off, or so I believe. I suspect they wanted a remake of The Great Wall from 1962.
The Great Wall is Comfort Food
I suspect The Great Wall will do well on Tubi. It will do well on any free service that charges us bathroom breaks . . . errr . . . commercials . . . to watch. It’s comfort food. William Dafoe brings his usual style and charm. Pedro Pascal delivers a very watchable performance. It has a very high Rewatchable Factor.
Tian Jing is very easy on the eyes. The grace she and the other actresses move with during the battle scenes is almost spellbinding. We Americans take that too much for granted. Much of the population has been desensitized to it given the endless stream of poorly dubbed black and white movies channel 9 used to run on Samurai Sundays. Grace like that takes a decade or more of living in a Dojo. Yes, I know that is the Japanese name for it and she’s Chinese, but I couldn’t find an English translation for 武館.
Summary
This is a great movie to kick back and watch when it is too hot or too bad to go outside. High Rewatchable Factor. There is so much going on during the battle scenes you probably miss half of it anyway. Yeah, if you paid $40 to see this in a theater expecting a remake of the 1962 movie instead of the slaughter of green monsters, you felt screwed. Those of us watching it on streaming got twice the bargain.
If you want to watch another movie with an extremely graceful girl fighting bad guys, check out The Princess.
For more movie rental ideas please see list one and list two.
One thought on “Review – The Great Wall”