Matt Damon's Most Controversial Movie Is Blowing Up On Netflix
If you think a movie starring Matt Damon, Willem Dafoe, and Pedro Pascal absolutely has to be good based on the cast alone, you might want to check out the 2017 film "The Great Wall" — which is currently crushing it on Netflix.
Damon's most controversial film, which casts him as an Irish mercenary named William Gavin in China during the Middle Ages (the movie takes place during the reign of Emperor Renzong, played by Karry Wang, who ruled from roughly 1022 to 1063), is finding new life on the streaming service nearly eight years after its initial release. So why is it so controversial? Well, by casting Damon in a leading role in a film ostensibly centered around Chinese characters — most of the cast is Chinese, as is its director Zhang Yimou — and with a mostly white and male writing staff behind its story, "The Great Wall" put itself at an immediate disadvantage.
What happens in this movie, exactly? It might surprise you to learn that "The Great Wall" is no simple war movie — it's actually a monster movie. Upon arriving at the Great Wall, William and his fellow mercenary, a Spaniard named Pero Tovar (Pascal) are taken prisoner, at which point they discover that an ancient alien named Tao Tie is terrorizing an army known as the Nameless Order (who must protect China from the aliens that attack every sixty years). Together, William and Pero help destroy multiple monster and ally themselves with the Nameless Order.
Unfortunately, the movie was a box office bomb and performed poorly with critics ... and even Damon isn't complimentary about it in hindsight.
The Great Wall was a critical and commercial flop
Matt Damon has had a long, storied career in Hollywood — and both critically and commercially, "The Great Wall" is definitely one of his biggest bombs. On its $150 million budget, the film grossed just $45.5 million stateside, making it an official flop ... though it ended up earning $334 million worldwide, likely thanks in large part to the Chinese market (where it topped out at $170 million). So how did critics feel about it? Not great!
With a dismal 35% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the critical consensus for "The Great Wall" reads, "For a Yimou Zhang film featuring Matt Damon and Willem Dafoe battling ancient monsters, The Great Wall is neither as exciting nor as entertainingly bonkers as one might hope." Individual critics didn't mince their words either, but most of them went after the story rather than Damon's casting, like Christopher Orr at The Atlantic: "Zhang's moments of visual splendor-a battalion of hot-air balloonists, the queen-monster and her royal guard of fan-frilled monstrosities-are weighed down by a script and performances almost dutiful in their dullness." At Rolling Stone, Peter Travers wanted much more from the movie, writing, "What a bummer that all Chinese master Zhang Yimou and Hollywood star Matt Damon come up with is a B-level creature feature with delusions of grandeur." Alissa Wilkinson at Vox apparently agreed; in her review of "The Great Wall," she wrote, "It is big. It is eye-popping. It is about China. And it is definitely about a legend. It also doesn't have a single thought in its noggin, but it does have armies of toothy monsters." So what do the people involved with "The Great Wall" have to say about the project?
The director of The Great Wall, Zhang Yimou, initially defended the film
After the first trailer for "The Great Wall" — prominently featuring Matt Damon — drew ire due to the fact that a story set in Asia was led by a white actor, director Zhang Yimou spoke out about it (via Entertainment Weekly). The director, an esteemed Chinese filmmaker who, among many other projects, created films like "House of Flying Daggers" and directed both the 2008 and 2022 ceremonies at the Olympics in Beijing, said that Damon's casting didn't take the role away from an Asian actor.
"In many ways The Great Wall is the opposite of what is being suggested," Zhang said in a statement. "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."
After pointing out that the film is not about the actual construction of China's famed Great Wall and that Damon did not "steal" his role in any way, Zhang continued, "The arrival of his character in our story is an important plot point. There are five major heroes in our story and he is one of them — the other four are all Chinese. The collective struggle and sacrifice of these heroes are the emotional heart of our film." Zhang concludes by saying that, based on his past work, he hoped audiences wouldn't judge the film too quickly. Sadly, they did ... and even Damon has misgivings about the whole ordeal.
Even Matt Damon thinks The Great Wall was a mistake
Even Matt Damon thinks "The Great Wall" was a mistake ... and he said one of his daughters pointed that out to him as well.
During an episode of "WTF with Marc Maron" in 2021 (via The Hollywood Reporter), Damon said that he felt as if director Zhang Yimou was trying to adhere to far too many notes from high-ranking Hollywood backers — which, to him, was a bad sign. "I was like, this is exactly how disasters happen," Damon said to Damon at the time. "It doesn't cohere. It doesn't work as a movie."
Still, Damon agrees with Zhang that the movie isn't based in cultural appropriation, nor does it traffick stereotypes, because his character William Gavin was never meant to be Chinese and ends up learning from the soldiers at the Great Wall. Comparing it to films like "Dances With Wolves" and "Avatar," Damon explained, "It's an outsider comes into a new culture, finds value in the culture, brings some skill from the outside that aids them in their fight against whatever and they're all changed forever." (Interestingly, Damon turned down a role in "Avatar.")
One person who really doesn't like "The Great Wall," though, is one of Damon's three daughters, who he says was 15-years-old at the time. "Whenever she talks about the movie, she calls it 'The Wall,'" he laughed. "And I'm like, come on, it's called The Great Wall. And she's like, 'Dad, there's nothing great about that movie.' She's one of the funniest people I know."
Despite Damon's daughter's apparent best wishes, "The Great Wall" is streaming on Netflix now.