The film’s troubled end was foreshadowed by its troubled beginning. Zhang’s gifts, alas, aren’t required for something as silly as The Great Wall, an overstuffed and, at times, nonsensical 12th-century monster movie that fails to announce China as a major Hollywood rival or advance concepts of collectivism and individual sacrifice. He’s now known primarily as a director of wuxia films like Hero (a previous “most expensive film” in Chinese history) and House of Flying Daggers, action fantasies where the swooping and swooning of characters in battle are, at times, matched in intensity by the swooping and swooning of characters in emotional extremis. ‘Family Movies’ Among Biggest Fall Box Office Hits A depressing thought considering 2017 is the 30th anniversary of Zhang’s debut film, Red Sorghum, which launched a magnificent run of emotionally opulent dramas including Ju Dou (the first Chinese film ever nominated for a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar) and Raise the Red Lantern. The revered Fifth Generation auteur hasn’t had a sizable international hit since House of Flying Daggers in 2004.

Victim Zhang Yimou?Īnd yet the real victim if The Great Wall ultimately underperforms, the one film lovers should care about, is its Chinese director, Zhang Yimou. There is, in other words, much riding on the performance of The Great Wall, as a web of corporations, production companies, movie theater chains, and financiers in both countries sweat out critical reaction and box office results. Hollywood is willing to help if it ultimately leads to the release of more of its films in the tightly controlled Chinese market, currently the second largest in the world. In this divisive age, when countries are turning inward with a nationalist, xenophobic fervor, it’s comforting to know that the United States and China, their relationship mercurial and wary, can work together and, in the spirit of cooperation and unity, make a terrible movie.Ī co-production between Legendary East (the Chinese arm of Burbank, California-based, Legendary Entertainment) and China Film Group, The Great Wall is reportedly the most expensive film ever shot in China, a nation with aspirations to make films that rival Hollywood in their scope and success.

The great wall movie plot