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Hopefully the film itself really will be as balanced as Yimou says! Starring global superstar Matt Damon and directed by one of the most breathtaking visual stylists of our time, Zhang Yimou (Hero, House of Flying Daggers), The Great Wall tells the story of an elite force making a valiant stand for humanity on the world's most iconic structure. The fact that Damon - one of the world's most successful and influential movie stars - has personally struggled to comprehend issues of diversity in Hollywood in the past only adds to the frustration. The Great Wall trailer: Matt Damon in the Chinese epic Guardian. It's simply another stinging example of Hollywood's inane insistence that it can't market a big-budget film around a non-white person. Of course the final cut of the film's trailer was probably not Zhang's call. Damon is in almost every shot, and there's no way to know that the film also features heroes who "don't look like Matt Damon," as Wu mentioned in her tweet.Ĭan we all at least agree that hero-bias & "but it's really hard to finance" are no longer excuses for racism? TRY /mvNet5PrtH
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Damon's omnipresence in the US film industry and huge international hits like the Bourne series make him obvious marketing gold, but if Hollywood declares Chinese actors unmarketable now, it becomes a vicious cycle - they'll never have the necessary exposure to be the top-billed stars.ĭuring the initial backlash Fresh Off the Boat star Constance Wu wrote on Twitter, "we have to stop perpetuating the racist myth that only a white man can save the world." This trailer certainly does give that impression. So what? Well, with an estimated budget between $135 and $160 million, The Great Wall is the most expensive collaboration between US and Chinese cinema to date, and it's likely that every stage of its production and release will set a precedent going forward.
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He's also the only face on the film's poster. While this is certainly reassuring, it doesn't change the fact that Damon is the only member of this team that is prominently featured in the trailer. There are five major heroes in our story and he is one of them - the other four are all Chinese. The arrival of his character in our story is an important plot point. Matt Damon is not playing a role that was originally conceived for a Chinese actor.
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You can read his full statement on Entertainment Weekly, but here's the key portion: Today, Zhang told Entertainment Weekly that Damon is not the central hero of the film and in fact he is only one of a five-person team - the other four are Chinese. Sacrificing all realism to put a white superstar in the leading role of a film is a common crime in Hollywood - see Gods of Egypt, Ghost in the Shell, or Disney's Pan just for recent examples - but Zhang claims that's not what is happening here. Zhang says most of the film's heroes are Chinese Because the film is set 1,000 years ago in China, many viewers wondered why on earth it would have a white protagonist. The trailer featured Matt Damon (and Game of Thrones' Pedro Pascal) going to battle with some screaming monster things atop the Great Wall. The trailer for The Great Wall, starring Matt Damon and directed by Zhang Yimou, dropped yesterday and my first reaction to seeing it: What. Scarlett Johansson plays Major Motoko Kusanagi in the upcoming big screen manga adaptation The Ghost In The Shell, while Tilda Swinton will play the role of Tibetan monk ‘Ancient One’ in Marvel’s Doctor Strange, set for release in November.Zhang Yimou, the legendary director of House of Flying Daggers and Raise the Red Lantern, has responded to the backlash against the trailer for his upcoming monster movie The Great Wall. It’s the latest in a long line of Hollywood films casting white actors in what would traditionally be Asian roles. While Asian actors round out the supporting cast of the joint Chinese-American blockbuster, many of the lead roles are played by American actors, including Damon, Willem Dafoe and Chilean-born Game of Thrones actor Pedro Pascal. We like our colour and our culture and our strengths and our own stories,” she wrote. The structure of the press release suggests that Matt Damon. Your big sister when she stood up for you to those bullies that one time. Can we all at least agree that hero-bias & "but it's really hard to finance" are no longer excuses for racism? TRY /mvNet5PrtHâ Constance Wu July 29, 2016 Starring: Matt Damon, Jing Tian, and Pedro PascalThe Great Wall Official Trailer 1 (2017) - Matt Damon MovieStarring global superstar Matt Damon and directed.