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With exceptions like Damon and supporting actors Willem Dafoe, Pedro Pascal, and Numan Acar, the cast is Chinese. With a budget of $150 million, the 3-D extravaganza is the most expensive film ever produced in China. What is true is that “The Great Wall” is a hybrid, the product of both Hollywood and China. … As the director of over 20 Chinese language films and the Beijing Olympics, I have not and will not cast a film in a way that was untrue to my artistic vision.”
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For the first time, a film deeply rooted in Chinese culture, with one of the largest Chinese casts ever assembled, is being made at tent pole scale for a world audience. “In many ways, ‘The Great Wall’ is the opposite of what is being suggested.
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“The collective struggle and sacrifice of these heroes are the emotional heart of our film,” Zhang said in a statement to the magazine. He pointed out that Damon is only one star in a film that contains several, including Chinese stars Andy Lau, Zhang Hanyu, Jing Tian and pop-singer-turned-actor Lu Han. One of China’s most successful directors, whose work includes “Ju Dou” (1990), “Raise the Red Lantern” (1991), “The Road Home” (1999), “Hero” (2002), “House of Flying Daggers” (2004), “The Flowers of War” (2011) and “Coming Home” (2014), the 65-year-old auteur was clearly taken aback by the ado surrounding a film no one had even seen yet. In response, Zhang turned to Entertainment Weekly. Given that Edward Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz, who share a story credit on “The Great Wall,” previously contributed to the screenplay for 2003’s “The Last Samurai” (which Zwick also directed), an epic adventure in which Tom Cruise fit that very trope, such apprehension was a natural reaction to Damon’s casting.Īctress Constance Wu, star of the sitcom “Fresh Off the Boat,” took to Twitter with her concerns, beginning a lengthy tweet with “We have to stop perpetuating the racist myth that only a white man can save the world. Would “The Great Wall” be another “great white savior” flick in which a white hero comes to the aid of a minority race? In the film, set in the 11th century, William joins native warriors in battling supernatural monsters. But his casting raised a different kind of whitewashing issue. The role of William Garin was never meant to be played by an Asian actor. The situation surrounding Damon’s role in “The Great Wall” is different. Coming hot on the heels of #oscarsowhite, the casting stood out as two more examples of how little Hollywood had changed since Luise Rainier played freed Chinese slave and farm wife O-Lan in “The Good Earth” (1937), for which she was rewarded with an Oscar, and John Wayne played Mongol leader Genghis Khan in “The Conqueror” (1956). The ruckus erupted in the wake of decisions to cast Tilda Swinton as the Ancient One in “Doctor Strange” and Scarlett Johansson as the Major in “Ghost in the Shell,” characters that were originally Asian (and in the case of the Ancient One, male). “A f- bummer,” Matt Damon told a crowd at a New York Comic-Con press conference, his reaction to the “whitewashing” controversy that erupted over his role as an Irish mercenary in his latest film, Zhang Yimou’s fantasy action adventure “The Great Wall.” Photo by Jasin Boland, courtesy of Universal Studios. Comments L-R: Jing Tian as Commander Lin Mae, Matt Damon as William Garin, Andy Lau as Strategist Wang and Cheney Chen as Imperial Guard in Legendary's "The Great Wall," opening at Bay Area theaters on Friday, February 17.