The Great Wall

China playing Hollywood, but the stupid Hollywood. The production values are like from Asylum, the only difference is that you can see the huge budget. Thanks to the People's Republic of China for an enriching experience, I watched it on a Huawei monitor, thinking about the Silk Road and mentally summarizing the text of the letter to Ovčáček, in which I packed the Blu-ray for Miloš to enjoy as well. (20.05.2017)

Ein chinesischer Milliardär hat das notwendige Kleingeld zur Verfügung gestellt, Hollywood wiederum seinen größten Star, das Middle Kingdom's einen zuvor großartigen Regisseur sowie ein Weltwunder. Und das Ergebnis? Ein asexueller, kulturell indifferenter sowie dahingewurschtelter Schweinsfisch, welcher die größten Hoffnungen in den ersten zwanzig Minuten weckt. Allerdings ertrinkt das künstlerisch ausgefeiltere Warcraft am Ende dennoch in einer Art läppischer Sauce, die aus lauter nicht zu Ende gekochter Charaktere, narrativer Ungeschicklichkeit und einer zum Schmunzeln zwingenden Ideologie besteht, die verzweifelt versucht, vollends unterschiedliche Publikumsarten zu überzeugen. Ein echter Kritiker bedient sich des Wortes Langeweile nicht. In diesem Falle ist jedoch die Hilflosigkeit und Kastration nahezu physisch spürbar. Also, es tut mir leid, laaangweilig. (05.01.2017)

A Chinese legend dressed up for the masses. A visually polished fairytale in the care of Zhang Yimou often takes your breath away. The massive scale on which the Wall works is augmented by essential mysticism. The wall itself seems much more massive than in real life, much higher, the landscape more desolate (Mordor style), Peking is shiny new and the Forbidden City is… like out of a fairytale. Yimou does not fear the spectrum of colors reflected into the interior from the glass tower, the cliffs by the desert are outlandishly orange, armor densely colored like a wax crayon. The result reminds of a classic video game and no wonder, story-wise most of them come from fairytales. Damon handles the hero’s transformation from criminal swine and murderer well, although a little cumbersome (his pretty boy mug is responsible for that). Pedro Pascal comes across more convincingly. The monsters are fine even though in design terms they could easily have come out of Star Wars. I guess I’m pleased to see that Czech special effects guys who worked on them. The tempo of the movie is super, is really pumped, fast-moving and mainly the action is great. However, the Chinese values of unity and self-sacrifice for the common good are first and foremost (warning, not to be confused with Communist values), so if you have a problem with that, you’d better not watch this. (11.01.2017)

Der Film sieht wie eine Mischung von Vikings und Prince of Persia: Der Sand der Zeit aus; vielleicht ist noch ein wenig von John Carter oder Die drei Musketiere von P. W. Anderson da. Die Geschichte ist schrecklich dumm, Vieles ist digital, jede zweite Aufnahme ist verlangsamt, die Schauspieler*innen sind fast überflüssig… Trotzdem ist es ein ziemlich unterhaltsamer Streifen mit einigen effektvollen Szenen. Sein seltsamer Charakter hat mich an die bezaubernden zweitklassigen Filme erinnert, bei denen die Tricks Ray Harryhausen gemacht hat. Ich möchte nicht so streng sein. (06.06.2017)

Yet again, mighty China showed that it has no shortage of human material, so there was a massive number of extras as usual, but the whole film was made just for effect. You get overwhelmed by epic music and an overabundance of color, but the story is weak. Matt Damon is as convincing in his role as Bill Clinton was when he claimed that Monica had dripped some yogurt on her dress. And if that wasn’t bad enough, evil is represented by aliens in the form of some sort of overgrown chameleons. Lame. (18.06.2017)

Don't expect more from this film than a few nice visual effects, a couple of imaginative fight scenes, and a funny "Oberyn" – Pedro Pascal. In this day and age of advanced film visual technology and graphics, it bothers me when the effects are too computerized and cheap; after all, things can be better. And those dialogues? My god! And what the hell are Matt Damon and Willem Dafoe doing there? I laughed quite a bit at this film, which is definitely not a compliment... (10.01.2017)