I enjoy it thoroughly. Very good action scenes, nice visuals and neat story. The battles were pretty good and you will not get bored. The duration of the movie was superb with no dragged out points
"The Great Wall" is visually pleasing to the eye, but everything else, not so much. It's a dumb blockbuster that misses the potential of being something unique.
Hollywood super star Matt Damon fighting monsters on the Great Wall of China? Sounds interesting coming from Yimou Zhang, right? Well, somehow they missed the mark.
That's the selling point the film is riding on Matt Damon as the star, but even Damon himself couldn't make this watchable. With the terrible accent, poorly written dialogue, and wooden character. Not just from Damon but everyone else in the movie was pretty bland.
I'm quite disappointed with this.
Poor Matt Damon looked like he was dying inside whenever he delivered a line. All dialogue was so bad, it made me feel sorry for everyone involved. The one positive point is that the production is pretty, but still not as enchanting as in other Yimou movies. The plot was bland and some details were just ridiculous, like how they end up in the wall during the first battle because the guard could not find keys to a cell, really?
It was one big eyeroll after the other. I was more entertained by my knitting than the movie, and would not have been able to finish it at all were I not doing something else.
I actually went into this movie with the idea that's it's an historic piece about actual events!
Just imagine my surprise when aliens started showing up. I seriously considered turning it off, but I stayed.
Although this doesn't fit the recent works of either Damon nor Pascal, i enjoyed their batter and lightness. The action is nice and doesn't take itself too seriously, and most important - the characters aren't dumb!
So overall, just tune yourself before watching it, take it easy, and I believe you'll enjoy. Especially if you don't have anything else to watch - but don't clear out your day for this.
For me, watching this the one time only is enough. 7/10.
The Protagonist Warrior, Dlanod Pmurt defends his wall after making tax payers pay for it
I saw this months ago and forgot to jot down any thoughts about it. I remember it being pretty average and also historically irrelevant. You know, in an "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" kind of way. "Hey! There's Abe Lincoln!" "Look! It's the Great Wall!"
The fact that this had monsters in it was a plus since it didn't care at all about history. The CGI monsters were cartoony, but there were some decent action sequences. Matt Damon seemed as weirdly out of place as you could possibly imagine. Most things considered though, I had a good enough time watching this.
A dull film that rushes through a threadbare plot and barely developed characters, the surprise here is such a talented cast is wasted, though Matt Damon seems at pains to admit in interviews he just wanted to work with the director. A shame then that the director's strength in visuals is nowhere near as impressive as his other films - sure the costumes and design are very well done but this is all lost in a mess of poor special effects and editing. If you're questioning plot developments from the opening scene then you know the film hasn't clicked and when the final resolution is straight out of the "How to stop a drone army with a Queen" manual, you know the film has problems. Very disappointing it is mercifully short and watchable only due to Pedro Pascal and Willem Dafoe who seem to be in just as much of a rush to get this over with as the audience.
I don't know if I'd call it a great wall, but it was certainly a pretty good wall.
While the film isn't bad, it is a disappointment from a great director. At times visually beautiful, but the CGI creatures are a letdown. Matt Damon is a good actor but here he is a distraction...as with The Mummy, the film would have benefitted from an unknown actor. A slight story doesn't help, either. However, the film passes the time, and will one day be a staple of Sunday afternoon television.
The ending was like a benchmark for your graphics card...
the movie has its flaws here and there but overall it's an amazing film, totally recomended
Also loved that Captain-America-throwing-shield near the end
I like it.
It was a nice movie.
most films/movies get ruined by trailer that give to much away before you see the film. This film i found was the perfect bridge of that the film was good but not great. However since i did not know what i was going to watch because of the trailer i found to love it greatly as most trailers tell the whole story before you even see a film these days. 8/10 XD a Good Watch
In a word: exuberance. The movie has a touch of sunday-afternoon-action-cliche-triller where bad monsters come to attack the village of the good guys. However, that is positively overwhelmed by the exuberance of the dimension, organization, discipline, and innovation of the Chinese ancient armies and military culture.
The movie is definitely bundled with some fictional action-movie cliches, but it's very amusing and satisfying to watch. You cannot get to the end of the first wave without expressing an honest "uaau". Matt Damon is always Matt Damon but this is also a pretty good stand from the Asian actors.
This movie was strange. It felt like at any moment it would become amazing but it never got there. I think the performances by the cast were good you could see they put effort into their roles I just don't think the plot and writing was quite good enough to make it shine. I did love the costume designs and the premise. I gave it a 9 as I did enjoy it but I felt this was a movie that could easily have been a 10 but just fell over before the finish line.
I watched this solely for Lu Han (Matt Damon was a minor bonus), and I don't regret it one bit. It was amazing and Lu Han's character was absolutely adorable <3
The Great Wall gets off to a solid start but a generic story and disappointing characters bring it down over the course of the runtime. The action sequences are pretty cool and the actors are capable but the overall project feels dull. The film is without stakes almost entirely its just people shooting lizards with bows for 90 minutes. If that's your thing then fill your boots.
When I saw the trailer at first I wasn´t sure if I should watch this. The Great Wall and monsters together sounded a wee bit ridiculous. But I was postively surprised. The story is based on a legend which gives them leniency with the plot. It is entertaining and looks really good. I liked it that the chinese characters actually spoke chinese because I hate it when they give non-english speaking all those silly accents. Personally I thought the monsters looked to sci-fi for a chinese legend. Would have prefered them to look more ancient. Althought on second thought I couldn´t describe what that means ;-) Anyway as I said a movie for some good entertainment.
But please, 12 min end credits ?! Really ?!
This is a movie that made me soooo happy that I decided to jump and fork out some money (way too much actually, I’m on a bread and water diet now) for a nice OLED screen. This movie is a stunning visual adventure.
The two main characters are described as mercenary warriors but the terms thieves and rascals are probably better suited. They do know how to fight though and they get plenty of opportunity to prove it in the menu.
This is another one of those movies that live and die by the visuals. The plot is a basic enough adventure story with some additional twists, like mysterious meteorites and really really nasty monsters, thrown in. It is not bad but not exactly groundbreaking either. The same with the characters. They are perhaps not exactly flat but not really fantastic either. What makes the movie great is the action and the visuals. The story and the characters are just there to prop the visuals up and they are doing a perfectly adequate job of it.
The movie starts off in a rather dry and deserted landscape. The first scenes are actually rather dark and somewhat blurry. Luckily we rather quickly arrive at The Great Wall and the colors explode onto the screen. The Chinese army in their shining colored armor is really visually impressive.
It does not take very long for the action to start and apart from the usual arrow flinging, acrobatic stabbing and slashing the Chinese army starts to deploy their various contraptions for fighting the oncoming swarm of nasty creatures. I found all the things that they had cooked up quite fascinating and contributing nicely to the visuals and the fun.
For example, bungee jumping into a hord of jumping and snapping monsters wanting to take a (huge) bit of you armed with a spear. Is that cool or what? Heck, I want to do that. Well, without the monsters of course … and the bungee part. Okay, I confess, I was just watching the girls. Did I mention that all the bungee jumpers where hot chicks? And if any of you go all feminist and gender crap on me for those remarks you can shove it somewhere. If you think the bungee jumping stuff sounds like I was watching a silly comedy then trust me, it makes sense … kind of … in the context of this movie at least.
Then there are rotating knifes sticking out of slits in the wall, fireball throwing catapults, various applications of gunpowder (that was after all why the two scoundrels where there in the first place) etc. etc. All accompanied by various acrobatics by the different combattants. Each scene was both cool action and a great symphony of elegance and colors.
The one part of the movie that I thought was a bit of a letdown was the parts where the emperor of China appeared. Why portray him as an arrogant, lazy thundering idiot? It is really not funny. The chain of events that he caused could really had been started in a more intelligent way without going down that overused and boring route.
The movie works itself forward to a nice final, desperate, fight to defeat the monster queen and her hord of baddies. It is a nice fight, as visually stunning as the rest of the movie, filled with lots of stunts of all kinds. The huge hords of beasts climbing, jumping and moving in big patterns on command from the queen was really cool.
For me this was one hour and forty minutes of much enjoyment.
Some cool monster designs and some fun fantasy action sequences. There's great visuals, even if the concept is kinda bonkers. I will say this, at least it was far more entertaining than Jason Bourne...
Terrible movie. Bad CGI. Horrible story. Predictable plot.
Waste of time.
should be labelled a chinese movie rather than english.. worth a watch though.
Please just… no… what is the matter with this movie? Someone must have been on all kind of drugs to think of this story… it's just amazingly boring and predictable and horrible…
What kind of creatures are those? Why do they even exist? Why does the west not know of it?
The animations in this movie are so amazingly bad that you think you could make them yourself with some cheap animation software…
The pageantry of the battles sold me, combination of fantasy, action with oriental art themes.
Weird recommendation, but if you ever played any of Dynasty/Samurai Warriors video games, you'll like this movie.
A mix of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, crossed with Starship Troopers. It was alright, not to bad, had lots of action, the cgi was at a good level, the story line was good, the cast.. couldn't complain.. some funny one liners... I loved the costume designs.. the effects were great. worth your time..
Just back from the cinema watching this. A film that doesn't let up from start to finish. Great action, humour and a decent story. Really enjoyed the film and well worth watching - one I'll definitely watch again on the small screen.
I liked it very much, the fight of the Chinese against the bugs, scenery, costumes
Definitely crushing on the General Lin Mei. Overwall, the story was interesting, visuals and action pretty good. Honestly I wished it was more drawn out so that I could enjoy the love tension a bit more but overall the pacing was great.
Good mythical tale of the great wall of china, worth a watch, but nothing special.
I was really excited for this! The oriental costumes were the same quality as in Marco Polo and the music was on point (as expected from Ramin Djawadi). It was visually really nice to watch but I did feel like it was lacking something..
I guess I would've enjoyed it more if hadn't seen the trailer a several times before hand.
They were trying a little too hard with those dramatic dead scenes
Visually stunning monster epic with Matt Damon, but suffers from a rushed plot and predictable hero's journey.
7/10
Good
(Just)
Great visuals and gorgeous
Epic backdrops and the most
Beautiful looking army I've
ever seen.
this movie could have been
Great instead of just good,
it never really goes anywhere
and it definitely started to
drag through the 2nd act,
(felt like a 2H+ movie
instead of it's 1H 43M
runtime).
With that being said
the defence of the wall
was awesome and we had
some good strong lead
characters, all in all it
was just a nice movie with
Good enough monsters
that were a bitch to drop
and a nice lighthearted
happy ending in a bow.
Verdict "Not Bad"
Worth a watch.
6.5/10 Go in to watch this movie with no great expectations - and this becomes the perfect light entertainment for the afternoon or when you are just too tired to watch something serious. Go in to watch this with expecting anything more than that and you will be seriously disappointed as the reviews show. Great action sequences, beautiful, fascinating costumes, never before see counter siege tactics (think the spear bungie killer hotties) on one hand - pretty ordinary, borderline boring story on the other. And Pedro Pascal aka Javier Pena was at least for me totally out of place.
Maybe because I went into it with such low expectations, I actually enjoyed this movie.
A completely stupid premise, a really obvious script, CGI-ed everything all bought together with a couple recognisable main characters made this just a fun stupid movie for me
So don't expect much - and Great Wall will deliver
I refused to watch this for years because I thought it was going to be a white saviour movie starring Matt Damon set in Ancient China and I was not here for it.
I was wrong, there are for more reasons to not watch this. Okay first yes, white saviour, two insane fantasy nonsense that is too far removed from any mythology to really appreciate, and some really crappy plot, with little character development.
Props to the cinematography, the costumes, the visual effects. I mean if you go in with no expectations at all it’s an okay watch. But ultimately there was a reason I didn’t watch this for over five years.
Absolutely hated it. Maybe I would've liked it a bit if I didn't know who directed it beforehand. As crappy as a cross-culture movie can get.
Pretty standard action film with a few logical holes (ropes as bungee cords and the entirety of the blue spear girl division), but if you want some quick mindless action this is a good choice.
This is an odd movie. It’s beautifully made. The colours and costuming are gorgeous. The scale is large like old Hollywood, but the quips are all contemporary. And, yet, it doesn’t quit live up to its scale. I enjoyed it, though. I give this film a hesitant 7(good) out of 10. [Legend?]
"The Great Wall" is visually pleasing to the eye, but everything else, not so much. It's a dumb blockbuster that misses the potential of being something unique.
Hollywood super star Matt Damon fighting monsters on the Great Wall of China? Sounds interesting coming from Yimou Zhang, right? Well, somehow they missed the mark.
That's the selling point the film is riding on Matt Damon as the star, but even Damon himself couldn't make this watchable. With the terrible accent, poorly written dialogue, and wooden character. Not just from Damon but everyone else in the movie was pretty bland.
I'm quite disappointed with this.
I got the chance to see the film again, this time without the muddy 3D. Boy, oh boy, did removing the 3D glasses make this movie better. I guess the glasses darkened the picture, because now, in standard 2D, the colors popped even more this time.
Anyways, I still really enjoyed this film. I got the chance to purchase the art book and read through the production. Matt Damon got really involved with the project, spending over 6 months in China to get this dream made into a reality. Quite an interesting read, I recommend picking it up. Lots of gorgeous artwork in it too.
As for this film, this time, I was actually able to focus on the story and dialogue a little bit more this time. The first viewing I was little bit more focused on the visuals. I admit, the script should've gone through just one more rewrite. That, or the film needed an extra 10 minutes added. Some scenes feel a little too short, and the funeral sequence came a little too early with not enough build-up to it. It kind of feels like the studio forced the filmmakers to trim the movie down to less than 2 hours, which I think is a mistake. I was a little more satisfied with the ending this time, but I still wish it was longer.
That's the only thing I can really complain about this movie: I wish it was a longer. I guess that's a good thing, that I want more of it, but that's also a negative. I think if it was a tad longer and some scenes were a little more fleshed out, this could be a GREAT film, and not just VERY GOOD.
I still really liked it and I think it is underrated. If you still haven't seen it, I recommend checking it out. Be sure to read my original review for more on the film.
Heh heh... bungee-jumping Power Rangers
Worst movie in the history of mankind
It is a really great movie, that is different in good says from most Hollywood movies. Some animations weren't the best, maybe I should have watched it as Blu Ray. Also it felt a bit too short, it seemed like they could have improved the story a little bit at some places, but it was alright. I love this movie :)
"The Great Wall" was really better than expected. Yes, the dialogues are not very intelligent but the story feels kind of original, at least to me. The visual effects are really awesome and overall it's a nice action adventure flick.
took me a while to see this one due to the critics. screw the critics. i had fun.
I want to watch a movie of this kind for over 2 hours .
is lu han not in this?
Shout by MarzouqVIP 9BlockedParent2017-01-08T13:13:25Z
Finally a movie the brings the best of the east with a Hollywood favor. I love Asian movies that are just huge and entertaining with Epic battles and fantastic cinematography.
Matt Damon & Pedro Pascal played their roles perfectly around a fantastic cast of Chinese Actors like Hanyu Zhang and the likes. The mix was great and they pulled it off right, for once it didn't look like a cheap knock of a Hollywood Blockbuster!
Must watch for any fans of this Genre.
Let's hope for a sequel because they did the story justice, an unexpected twist which I enjoyed.