There’s a running joke that most of Matt Damon‘s filmography has him playing characters who are trying to get home. It’s a joke with some truth to it: from the gritty, war-torn landscape of Saving Private Ryan to being stranded on another planet in The Martian, Damon more often than not plays someone struggling against impossible odds. The Odysseytakes things to a new extreme, thanks to the double-header of being based on an iconic Greek myth and being directed by Christopher Nolan, but there’s another epic starring Damon that’s flown under the radar and is completely free to watch.
That movie is The Great Wall, which debuted in 2016. Directed by legendary filmmaker Zhang Yimou, The Great Wall follows a pair of mercenaries, William Garin (Damon) and Pero Tovar (Pedro Pascal), who learn a startling secret about the Great Wall of China: it was built to keep a race of serpentine monsters called Tao Tei from devouring everything in their path. To combat the Tao Te, Garin and Tovar join forces with a group of elite warriors. The Great Wall is currently available to stream on Tubi, meaning that fans can check out one of the more outlandish movies of Damon’s career.
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‘The Great Wall’ Was Hit With Controversy Prior to Its Release
Matt Damon as William and Pedro Pascal as Tovar in The Great Wall.Image via Universal Pictures
While moviegoers might not remember much of The Great Wall‘s plot, they probably remember that the series was at the center of a brief controversy due to casting Damon in the lead role. Many felt that the movie was dipping into the “white savior” stereotype, but the opposite turned out to be true. Apart from Damon, Pascal, and Willem Dafoe, the majority of the cast is of Chinese descent while the production took place entirely in China. Zhang Yimou would even put a pin on the controversy during an interview, saying that Damon was never meant to be playing a Chinese character.
“In many ways, The Great Wall is the opposite of what is being suggested. For the first time, a film deeply rooted in Chinese culture, with one of the largest Chinese casts ever assembled, is being made at tentpole scale for a world audience. I believe that is a trend that should be embraced by our industry.”
True to his word, Yimou tends to put most of the focus on the “Nameless Order,” the group of warriors that have dedicated their lives to battling the Tao Tei. This lets him deliver some incredible visuals, both in terms of costuming and fight scenes. Lin Mae (Jing Tian), one of the members of the Nameless Order, is a standout thanks to the royal blue armor she’s wearing and the deadly grace with which she moves. Yimou is no stranger to crafting incredible fight scenes, thanks to his work on martial arts classics including Hero and House of Flying Daggers, which means that The Great Wall definitely isn’t lacking in terms of craft.
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Collider Exclusive · Action Hero Quiz Which Action Hero Would Be Your Perfect Partner? Rambo · James Bond · Indiana Jones · John McClane · Ethan Hunt
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Five legends. Five completely different ways of getting out alive — with style, with muscle, with charm, with luck, or with a plan so intricate it probably shouldn’t work. Ten questions will reveal which action hero was built to have your back.
🎖️Rambo
🍸James Bond
🏺Indiana Jones
🔧John McClane
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🎭Ethan Hunt
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01
You’re dropped into a dangerous situation with no warning. What do you need most from a partner? The first few seconds tell you everything about who belongs beside you.
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02
You have to get somewhere dangerous, fast. How do you travel? How you get there is half the mission.
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03
You’re pinned down and outnumbered. What does your ideal partner do? This is when you find out what someone is really made of.
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04
The mission is paused. You have one evening to decompress. What does your partner suggest? Who someone is when the pressure drops is who they actually are.
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05
How do you prefer your partner to communicate mid-mission? Good communication is the difference between partners and a liability.
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06
Your enemy is powerful, well-resourced, and has the upper hand. How should your partner approach them? The approach to the enemy defines the partnership.
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07
Things go badly wrong and you’re captured. What do you trust your partner to do? Who someone is when you need them most is the only thing that matters.
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08
What does your ideal partner bring to the table that you couldn’t replace? A great partner fills the gap you didn’t know you had.
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09
Every partnership has a cost. Which of these can you live with? No one comes without baggage. The question is whether you can carry it together.
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10
It’s the final moment. Everything is on the line. What do you need from your partner right now? The last question is the most honest one.
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Your Partner Has Been Assigned Your Perfect Partner Is…
Your answers have pointed to one action hero above all others. This is the person built to have your back — for better or considerably, spectacularly worse.
Rambo
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Your partner doesn’t talk much, doesn’t need to, and will have assessed every threat in your immediate environment before you’ve finished your first sentence. John Rambo is not a man of plans or politics — he is a force of nature shaped by survival, loyalty, and a capacity for endurance that goes beyond anything training can produce. He will not leave you behind. He has never left anyone behind who deserved to come home. What you get with Rambo is the most capable, most quietly ferocious partner imaginable — one who has been through things that would have broken anyone else, and who chose to keep going anyway. You’ll never need to ask if he has your back. You’ll just know.
James Bond
Your partner will arrive perfectly dressed, perfectly briefed, and with a cover story so convincing it’ll take you a moment to remember what’s actually true. James Bond is the most professionally dangerous person in any room he enters — and the most disarmingly charming, which is the point. He operates in a world of layers, where nothing is what it appears and every advantage is used without apology. You’ll never be bored. You’ll occasionally be furious. But when it matters — when the mission is genuinely on the line and the margin for error has collapsed to nothing — Bond is exactly the partner you want. He has survived things that have no business being survivable. He does it with style. That is not nothing.
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Indiana Jones
Your partner will know the history, the language, the cultural context, and exactly why the thing everyone else is ignoring is actually the most important thing in the room. Indiana Jones is brilliant, reckless, and occasionally impossible — but he is also one of the most resourceful, most genuinely knowledgeable partners you could find yourself beside. He approaches every situation with a scholar’s eye and a brawler’s instinct, which is an unusual combination and a remarkably effective one. He hates snakes and gets personally attached to objects of historical significance, both of which will slow you down at least once. It doesn’t matter. What Indy brings is irreplaceable — and the adventures you’ll have together will be the kind people write books about. Assuming you survive them.
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John McClane
Your partner was not supposed to be here. He does not have the right equipment, the right information, or anything approaching the right odds. He has a sarcastic remark and an absolute refusal to accept that the situation is as bad as it looks. John McClane is the greatest accidental hero in the history of action cinema — a man whose superpower is stubbornness, whose contingency plan is improvisation, and whose capacity to absorb punishment and keep moving would be alarming if it weren’t so useful. He will complain the entire time. He will make it significantly more chaotic than it needed to be. And he will absolutely, unconditionally, without question come through when it counts. Yippee-ki-yay.
Ethan Hunt
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Your partner has already run seventeen scenarios by the time you’ve finished reading the briefing, and the plan he’s settled on involves at least two things that should be physically impossible. Ethan Hunt operates at the absolute edge of human capability — technically, physically, and intellectually — and he brings the same relentless precision to protecting his partners that he brings to dismantling organisations that shouldn’t exist. He is not easy to know and he will never fully tell you everything. But he will carry the weight of the mission so completely, so absolutely, that your job is simply to trust him — and the remarkable thing is that trusting him always turns out to be the right call. The mission will be impossible. He will complete it anyway.
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‘The Great Wall’ Was Part of A Long-Running Hollywood Trend
Another thing that stands out about The Great Wall was that it was released at a time when Hollywood saw China as one of its biggest markets. Legendary Pictures, the production company behind The Great Wall, was even bought out by the Chinese conglomerate Wanda Group in 2016. This meant that movies like The Great Wall and Skyscrapercould be filmed entirely in China, while also having their narratives take place in the country, and often relied on the Chinese box office to turn a profit. Ironically, The Great Wall wasn’t a success in the U.S. or China, with Matt Damon later revealing that his daughter mocked him for starring in it.
The Great Wall might not be on the same level as The Odyssey or The Martian, but it’s far from Matt Damon’s worst movie. If you’re looking for a Saturday night movie or a visually stunning experience, it’s worth a watch.
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Release Date
December 16, 2016
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Runtime
103 minutes
Director
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Zhang Yimou
Writers
Tony Gilroy, Carlo Bernard, Edward Zwick, Doug Miro, Marshall Herskovitz, Max Brooks
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Producers
Alex Gartner, Charles Roven, E. Bennett Walsh, Jon Jashni, Peter Loehr, Thomas Tull, Jillian Share, Zhang Zhao, La Peikang
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