the end of its deal with Warner Bros at the time). But the central concept
has always been the same: a pair of 11th-century European mercenaries
hit the Silk Road on a mission toilch the secrets of gunpowder from
the Chinese, when they stumble on a fantasised, weaponised version of
the Great Wall. Here, they witness a secret Chinese army, The Nameless
Order, tackling an onslaught of voracious, lizard-like demons known as
the Tao Tei, which make aPaciic Rim-like assault on humanity once
every 60 years.
It was a concept that clicked with Beijing-based veteran ilmmaker
Zhang Yimou, who has orchestrated elaborate and visually inventive
action before in martial-arts epicsHeroandHouse Of Flying Daggers, and
marshalled grand-scale spectacle with his direction of the opening and
closing ceremonies for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. When offered the gig
in 2013, he wasn’t deterred by its American origin, or the fact that he can’t
speak English. “I knew this was always going to be a popcorn blockbuster in
the States,” he tellsEmpire(via a translator), “but I saw a lot of potential for
myself to showcase my own abilities, and to showcase the culture of China.”
To Tull, the Great Wall was a rich, exotic myth, a faraway feat of
engineering which fed a vivid childhood imagination. What, we ask, does
it mean to Zhang, who grew up in its shadow?
“It’s a symbol of China’s national spirit,” he says. “It represents the
Chinese people protecting their homeland. It’s also about persistence —
in how we built it, but also about being eager to ight and to withstand
a dificulty. When thinking of these things, it’s inevitable that I want to
bring them into the ilm. I want to infuse the spirit of the Great Wall into
the characters and the main theme of the movie.”
Protection, persistence, eagerness to meet a challenge... all things which
Zhang says also represented the task ofmaking this colossal, crazy movie.
Matt Damon isno stranger to big productions, but he’d
never seen anything likethis. “I kind of felt like I was making a Hollywood
movie in the 1940s,” says the star, speaking from Beijing in early December
where, in a little over a week, the ilm will premiere. “The scale of it was so
massive. We’d go to work and there’d be 500 extras all in battle armour. It
felt like one of those old MGM musicals, or like I was making a movie with
Cecil B. DeMille. It was absolutely overwhelming, in the best possible way.”
With all those extras decked out in brightly coloured armour (gold,
purple, blue, red or black, depending on which corps they’re in), and
teeming around a Great Wall that bristles with ingenious, mechanical
siege weapons, Damon’s not wrong. The footage thatEmpireviews feels like
The Two Towersby way ofCirque du Soleil, with golden-armoured,
spear-wielding female ‘Crane’ warriors taking vertiginous bungee-dives
off the ramparts to stab at the scrabbling creatures below.
And what creatures. Inspired by permanently ravenous, gargoyle-ish
beasts from ancient Chinese mythology and conjured up by ILM, these
CG nasties feel like they’ve been exiled fromAvatar’s Pandora for being
too damn ugly. With heads that are all dagger-toothed mouth and an eye
planted on each shoulder of their sinewy forelegs, the Tao Tei are as
relentless asGame Of Thrones’ White Walkers, and speedier and more
vicious than famished velociraptors.
“I would have done this if it were a tiny little kitchen-sink drama,
but it turned out to be this giant popcorn movie,” says Damon, who was
Zhang’s irst choice for the role of William Garin, the roguish archer
who, along with his swordsman compadre Tovar (Narcos’ Pedro Pascal),
must collaborate with his captors Commander Lin Mei (Tian Jing) and
Strategist Wang (Andy Lau) if this demon menace is to be vanquished.
“The chance to stand next to one of the great visionary directors in theKenny Lin as
Commander Chen.
Above left:Jing Tian
plays Commander Lin
Mae.Above right:
Commander Deng
(Xuan Huang, left) and
General Shao (Hanyu
Zhang, centre) prepare
for the monster
invasion.Right:Junkai
Wang—seatedonthe
throne, obv — as
The Emperor.❯