The Great Wall

Martial Media, Culture and Other Arts Martial Media and Popular Culture
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‘The Great Wall’ Isn’t Crumbling; Legendary East Pic Postpones Start Date Until Spring
By MIKE FLEMING JR. | Sunday June 10, 2012 @ 6:05pm EDT

EXCLUSIVE: While Legendary Pictures just set Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter star Benjamin Walker on Friday to join Man of Steel‘s Henry Cavill in the Ed Zwick-directed The Great Wall, a decision has just been made to push from a fall start date until next spring.

Rumors have been racing this weekend that The Great Wall might be crumbling but I’m told that is not the case. In fact, casting on the film continues with Zhang Ziyi (pictured) and other Chinese talent is also being courted for the film.

The issue is weather. The film will shoot in locations in China and New Zealand, and logistically it will be easier to do this in the spring than if the picture keeps its fall start date. Insiders tell me the film will happen, even though a domestic distributor hasn’t yet been secured. It is meant to be the first major film to kick off Legendary East, and with every studio looking for opportunities to make films in China, the project certainly seems viable.

Set in 15th century China, The Great Wall is about British warriors who happen upon the hurried construction of the massive wall. As night falls, the warriors realize that the haste in building the wall isn’t just to keep out the Mongols — there is something inhuman and more dangerous. The picture is based on an idea by Legendary CEO Thomas Tull and Max Brooks.

Now, Legendary postponed the Alex Proyas epic Paradise Lost before eventually scrapping the picture over budget, but I’m persuaded the intention is to make The Great Wall happen.

Max Brooks is the son of Mel and the author of World War Z.

2

Andy Lau is everywhere

Andy Lau among idols joining Great Wall

By Kevin Ma

Fri, 13 March 2015, 14:50 PM (HKT)
Production News

The key international cast for ZHANG Yimou 's The Great Wall has been announced.

A co-production between Legendary Pictures LLC, Universal Pictures Inc, China Film Group Corporation and Le Vision Pictures Co Ltd , the Song Dynasty epic is about an elite force composed of European mercenaries and Chinese warriors battling a monster on the Great Wall.

Local media reported that Andy LAU , Eddie PENG , ZHANG Hanyu , JING Tian , Ryan ZHENG , former Korean boy band member Lu Han , LIN Gengxin , Cheney CHEN and idol group TFBoys member WANG Junkai make up the Chinese cast.

The casting was initially confirmed on the Le Vision Pictures’ Weibo microblog, but the post was deleted. However, Lu Han’s office confirmed the idol’s casting on its own official Weibo account.

The Chinese actors will join Matt DAMON, Willem DAFOE and Pedro PASCAL. The film will be shot entirely in English.

With a reported budget over US$100 million, the film is set to begin production in the spring. Universal Pictures has set a 23 Nov 2016 release date in North America. LeVision and China Film Group will release the film in China.

I forgot about this project. Looks like it’s building up some steam now.

3

Feb. 17, 2017

Matt Damon’s ‘The Great Wall’ Pushed to 2017
2:14 PM PST 2/18/2016 by Mia Galuppo


Kevork Djansezian/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images

Zhang Yimou directs the Legendary project.

Universal is pushing The Great Wall to Feb. 17, 2017.

The Matt Damon action-adventure, which was originally slated to hit theaters on Nov. 23, will now rollout over next year’s lucrative Presidents Day weekend. The move comes just days after Ryan Reynolds’ superhero film Deadpool opened to a record-breaking $152.2 million, the biggest opening of all time for the holiday and the biggest ever for an R-rated movie.

The Great Wall will go up against Will Smith’s Bad Boys 3 and the final film in the Maze Runner YA franchise, Maze Runner: The Death Cure.

The Legendary project is directed by House of Flying Daggers helmer Zhang Yimou and tells the story of an elite force making a valiant stand for humanity on the world’s most iconic structure. The pic is the first English-language production for Zhang and the largest film ever shot entirely in China.

The Great Wall also stars Pedro Pascal, Tian Jing, Andy Lau and Willem Dafoe.

Damon’s gotta deliver Jason Bourne to us first. :cool:

4

The Greatest Wall of All

:slight_smile: Click on Video: http://io9.gizmodo.com/donald-trump-in-westeros-makes-a-disturbing-amount-of-s-1760418487

5

It’ll be really ironic…

…if this is the film to breakthrough for China movies, with that title…Does anyone else see the humor in that?

How Matt Damon may kickstart China’s global movie ambitions
By RYAN NAKASHIMA
March 7, 2016 1:16 pm


In this July 2, 2015, file photo, movie director Zhang Yimou, right, speaks next to actor Matt Damon during a news conference of their latest movie “The Great Wall” held at a hotel in Beijing. If all goes according to plan, the film could be China’s first international blockbuster…

LOS ANGELES (AP) — China has a new ally in its campaign to turn itself into a global cultural superpower: Matt Damon. And, behind him, a good chunk of Hollywood as well.

Chinese leaders have long sought international cultural influence, aka “soft power,” commensurate with the nation’s economic might. That’s brought us official Confucian institutes scattered across the world, billions of dollars in development aid and awe-inspiring Olympic ceremonies. But China’s own film industry remains a mere flicker on the global screen.

Which is where Damon comes in. Early next year, the star of “The Martian” will headline “The Great Wall,” a historical epic filmed in China with Chinese and American stars, a famous Chinese director, a cast and crew of roughly 1,300, a $150 million budget and some nasty monsters. (Not to mention the support of the Chinese government.) If all goes according to plan, the film could be China’s first international blockbuster — one that might presage a wave of similar films intended to present a new face of China to the world.

That’s a lot to expect from a decidedly unusual action flick. In “The Great Wall,” Damon plays a wandering European mercenary in the pre-gunpowder era who stumbles across the titular structure and learns what it’s really for. (Hint: Those monsters might be involved.)

But film-industry types on both sides of the Pacific believe this kind of joint venture could open huge new opportunities for all sides. For Hollywood, it’s about expanding markets and investment; for the Chinese government and private companies alike, it’s about harnessing American stars and storytelling to help movies based on Chinese history, myths and cultural icons break out onto a global stage.

Chinese authorities “have not made any secret of their desire to spread and to encourage and to develop soft power,” says Rance Pow, president of Artisan Gateway, a Shanghai-based research firm that tracks the Chinese box office. Regaling the world with made-in-China blockbusters, he says, is one way to do so.

Hollywood naturally welcomes Chinese investment to help fuel its voracious movie-making machine. One Chinese company — conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group — snapped up an entire Hollywood studio, Legendary Entertainment, for $3.5 billion. Legendary just happens to be the studio behind “The Great Wall.”

Working with Chinese partners also offers a shortcut past rules that limit the distribution of foreign movies in China’s booming film market. That could open up a vast new territory to U.S. studios — at least so long as they play by China’s rules.

“For U.S. industry, these concessions are really about market access,” says Thilo Hanemann, an economist with Rhodium Group, a research firm focused on global trade flows and government policies.

Of course, plenty could still go wrong. There’s no guarantee that either “The Great Wall” or another half-dozen or so would-be Chinese blockbusters will wow either Chinese or global audiences. Some previous efforts along these lines have been global flops.

This time, both Chinese and American movie executives think they’ve got the formula right. The most successful attempt so far is “Kung Fu Panda 3,” which has pulled in $314 million, including an outsized $149 million in China. Unlike its predecessors, the third movie in the series was produced by a joint venture between the series’ original studio, DreamWorks Animation and Chinese investors, including state-backed China Media Capital.

The biggest draw for Tinseltown is China’s huge and expanding film market. Cinema attendance in the U.S. and Canada has been flat for a decade, but Chinese moviegoers are on a tear, snapping up tickets worth $6.8 billion in 2015, up nearly 50 percent from a year earlier. At that pace, China could eclipse the U.S. as the world’s largest film market as early as next year.

But tapping that market has been a challenge. Chinese regulators allow no more than 34 foreign films to screen in China every year — far fewer than filmmakers release in the U.S. every month — and impose multiple “blackout” periods during which none at all can be shown. Regulators vary the length of the blackouts so that Chinese-made films eke out a majority of the market every year, Artisan Gateway’s Pow says.

Films like “Kung Fu Panda 3 and “The Great Wall,” however, get ushered to the front of the line. Because of their Chinese backers, the films qualify for prime release dates. Their backers also get to keep a bigger share of the box office than they ordinarily would.

So Hollywood has eagerly welcomed Chinese partners. From 2000 to 2015, Chinese direct investment in U.S. entertainment firms amounted to $4 billion, according to Rhodium Group. That pace then skyrocketed in January with Wanda’s purchase of Legendary, which almost doubled that total by itself.

Chinese studios and investors have pledged another several hundred million dollars for Hollywood film slates. Warner Bros., DreamWorks Animation and Universal have linked up with state-owned enterprises and private companies such as electronics maker LeEco and Internet giants Alibaba and Tencent.

That flood of Chinese cash makes possible epic films like “The Great Wall,” helmed by internationally acclaimed director Zhang Yimou and filmed at a multi-billion-dollar production facility still under construction in Qingdao on China’s eastern seaboard. Legendary plans eight more Chinese-themed projects with similar budgets, says Peter Loehr, CEO of Legendary’s wholly owned subsidiary Legendary East.

“We’re hoping this is a model that works and that we can recreate it often,” he says.

But the Western appetite for China-centric films remains uncertain. Consider “The Flowers of War,” a 2011 film about the Japanese army’s vicious 1937 sack of Nanking. Despite star Christian Bale and a $94 million budget, the movie pulled in less than $500,000 in the U.S., according to Box Office Mojo.

The brutality portrayed in the film turned off foreign audiences as a “kind of propaganda,” says Peter Li, managing director of CMC Capital Partners, a unit of China Media Capital.

Foreign co-productions could suffer a similar fate if they grow too heavy handed in an attempt to satisfy Chinese censors, who oversee all films released domestically. “If you promote socialist core values, you’re not going to succeed overseas,” says Stan Rosen, a University of Southern California political scientist.

Follow AP Business Writer Ryan Nakashima at https://twitter.com/rnakashi . His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/ryan-nakashima

6

Slightly OT

…but I just can NOT resist posting this here. :o

Why Trump’s comparison of his wall to the Great Wall of China makes no sense
WEDNESDAY , MARCH 09, 2016 - 6:00 AM


Image by: AP
In this March 7, 2016, photo, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally in Concord, N.C. Can Trump really make good on his promise to build a wall along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexican border to prevent illegal migration? Whats more, can he make Mexico pay for it? Sure, he can build it, but its not nearly as simple as he says. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome)

MICHELLE YE HEE LEE, The Washington Post

“The wall is going to cost $10 billion. It’s so easy. . . . They say you’ll never be able to build a wall. Well, it’s 2,000 miles but we really need 1,000 miles. The Great Wall of China, built 2,000 years ago, is 13,000 miles, folks. . . . They didn’t have cranes. They didn’t have excavation equipment. The wall is 13,000 miles long. We need 1,000 miles and we have all of the materials.”

— Donald Trump, news conference at Mar-a-Lago, March 1, 2016

“Two thousand years ago, China built the Great Wall of China. This is a serious wall. And they didn’t have Caterpillar tractors. . . . But they didn’t have the equipment. And they built a wall. Think of this: 13,000 miles long, and this is a serious wall, okay? This wall is wide.”

— Trump, campaign event at Liberty University, Jan. 18, 2016

As we all know by now, Trump wants to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. China did it, after all, and Trump’s wall will only be a fraction of what the Chinese built, he frequently explains. And the Chinese didn’t even have the building materials we do now!

We get why it’s easy to hearken the world heritage site whose name contains two of Trump’s favorite words (“great,” “wall”), as it may seem like an iconic physical barrier erected to protect a country’s borders. But this is a moot comparison, as history buffs know.

Trump keeps making the comparison anyway, and he has done so since early on his campaign, joking that he would name the wall the “Great Wall of Trump.” And he insists on a questionable estimate for the cost of his wall, which we have debunked. Let’s look at the facts.

The Facts

Unlike what its name implies, the Great Wall of China is actually a non-contiguous series of walls, trenches, natural barriers and fortresses built in different locations along the border between northern China and southern Mongolia.

It took a long time to build — over dynasties. The earliest construction of fortifications dates to the Warring States period from the 7th through the 4th century B.C., and the Qin Dynasty of 3rd century B.C. to protect against foreign invaders. The fortifications and castles were used to control commerce or prevent rebellions under Mongolian control of China.

The majority of what we consider now as the Great Wall was built over some two centuries from 1368-1644 during the Ming Dynasty, after Beijing was made the new capital of China.

The Ming Dynasty wall measures at 5,499 miles — of which 3,889 miles (70 percent) were actual wall. The figure that Trump uses (13,000 miles) is the updated calculation of the entire wall system combined, including watchtowers, trenches and natural defensive barriers like rivers and hills.

Ming rulers invested in its construction to prevent future attacks from Mongols from the north and to deny a trade relationship with barbaric nomads attacking Chinese farmers for grain and other products.

“They are better understood as capital rather than national defenses. Vast amounts of money were spent and they had some effect. But late in the [Ming] dynasty, a genius of a minister decided to permit markets to serve the nomads — and defense expenses collapsed,” said Arthur Waldron, University of Pennsylvania historian in Chinese studies and author of “The Great Wall of China: From History to Myth.”

Plus, it wasn’t an effective security barrier. As our colleague Ishaan Tharoor wrote: “The Great Wall of China, for all its majesty, was very porous. While a towering monument to Chinese civilization, it was hardly impregnable. The Mongols, Manchus and others all breached this great defense and went on to establish their dominion behind its ramparts. Perhaps that’s the best way for Trump to understand the Great Wall’s significance — not as a security barrier, but as a work of political propaganda.”

Trump says the Chinese were able to build the wall even without imported equipment, like Caterpillar tractors. Sure. The Chinese didn’t have tractors, but they did use forced labor of peasants, criminals and soldiers.

Labor conditions were so appalling that some 400,000 people are estimated to have died building the wall. The longest human construction project in history was also called the “longest cemetery on Earth” when it was being built.

In Chinese poetry and through most of Chinese history, the wall was a negative symbol of oppression, cruelty and death, Waldron said — the wall as a symbol of strength and resourcefulness is a part of the myth and misconception of its true history.

Trump says he would only need to build 1,000 miles of new walls along the U.S.-Mexico border because there are “natural barriers.” Border security experts say he is most likely is referring to the deserts along the border, where many migrants have died.

Trump continues to assert that the wall would cost $10 billion, without providing any serious discussion of the costs. But that’s simply not credible.

For major government projects, $10 billion is not a huge sum. The cost of 1,000 miles of fences — not even a concrete wall — is at least $3 billion. That’s not even including the upkeep and maintenance. The Corps of Engineers estimated that the 25-year life cycle cost of the fence would range from $16.4 million to $70 million per mile; the total cost of the fencing so far has been $7 billion, according to the Congressional Research Service.

A concrete wall would cost much more than that. We updated calculations done by a structural engineer in an article in The National Memo and found raw materials alone would cost $2 billion. A retired estimator and economist for one of the nation’s largest construction firms worked through some of the math and said a wall of this type would cost at least $25 billion. That’s not even counting the video system to keep watch on the border.

The border is much harder today to cross than in the past, experts said, thanks to a mix of the proliferation of fencing and walls, increased Border Patrol presence, aerial surveillance and ground sensors. New walls alone wouldn’t help increase security, as a physical barrier is just one portion of border security.

Increased enforcement efforts along the border may explain about 35 to 40 percent of the decline in illegal immigration flow, said Edward Alden, trade policy expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. Trump’s wall is “a rhetorical talking point and a half-thought-out idea that sounds good to people who don’t understand what they’re talking about,” Alden said.

The focus on building a wall overlooks many of the other reasons that have led to the number of unauthorized migrants in the country, experts say. Walls are not impregnable — as shown in the example of the Great Wall of China — and simply putting more of it up doesn’t help. “You’re dealing with symptoms. You’ve really got to look at the deeper issue of immigrant labor that our economy uses,” said Nestor Rodriguez, University of Texas at Austin professor and immigration researcher.

The Pinocchio Test

Unless Trump is running to be the emperor of the United States and plans to build a series of fortresses, walls and trenches that will be added on to for dynasties to come beyond a Trump Dynasty, he should really drop this nonsense assertion. It is an apples-to-oranges comparison that shows the Republican front-runner’s lack of understanding of the history behind the Great Wall of China, which was built over many millennia to meet a variety of commerce and defensive needs of certain dynasties. And as a security measure, it was not an effective barrier.

Moreover, Trump continues to assert a questionable estimate for his wall that is much lower than experts have calculated. As we’ve said before, we welcome a serious discussion of costs and benefits of building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, rather than wild rhetoric. Neither his comparison to China nor the wall estimate is rooted in any factual basis.

Three Pinocchios.

Michelle Ye Hee Lee reports for The Fact Checker at The Washington POst. Twitter: @myhlee.

7

the Beijing Olympics with monsters?

This sounds great! I love monsters, especially out of Chinese mythology.

Matt Damon’s Olympic Monster Movie
25 March 2016


Matt Damon

Matt Damon thinks ‘The Great Wall’ is like “the Beijing Olympics with monsters”.

Damon may not be able to communicate directly with director Zhang Yimou but has always understood his vision for the historic fantasy and thinks their project is “next-level insane”.

He said: "It’s amazing. Zhang Yimou doesn’t speak a lick of English and I don’t speak any Mandarin. But we both have made movies our entire adult lives, so I always know where he’s coming from. The guy is a genius.

"It’s basically a historical fantasy monster movie but with Zhang Yimou directing.

"It’s next-level insane. The shot making is so exciting.

“Having done this for 25 years, to watch hi work is just amazing. He directed the Beijing Olympics [opening ceremony in 2008]. It’s like the film version of the Beijing Olympics but with monsters.”

Matt - who stars alongside Pedro Pascal, Andy Lau and Willem Defoe in the film - plays a mercenary who gets captured and wants to help defend China against the rise of mythical monsters.

He explained to Total Film magazine: "It takes place around 15AD and I play a mercenary who has gone to northern China to steal gunpowder.

"The movie starts with him being pursued by these nomad tribesman who are going to kill him.

"They are a group of Chinese soldiers whose job it is to defend the wall because every 60 years these monsters out of Chinese mythology rise up and assault the wall, and try to break through to take over and kill everyone.

"Some of these soldiers living and die without ever seeing these beasts. They live to defend China.

“Pedro and I get captured by the army on the eve of an attack and prove ourselves worthy of helping in the defence of the wall.”

8

:slight_smile: This movie has already attained BlockBuster Status as far as I can see. They know they can’t botch this one with an overplayed hokey storyline. Will be awesome !

9

Cannes 69

2016 Cannes is on - official site

We’ll start with a Chinese Cannes darling, Zhang Yimou. :cool:

Zhang Yimou’s ‘Great’ Adventure
Vivienne Chow


Zhang Yimous Great Adventure Matt Damon AP IMAGES

MAY 11, 2016 | 09:44AM PT

At an age when most men might prefer to slow down, Zhang Yimou is set to take on a string of global-scale projects that will venture beyond cinema.

These projects aren’t just ambitious and lucrative for Zhang, according to China film observers. They’re also widely viewed as key projects capable of exporting China’s soft power and competing for high-profile accolades. The latter goal would seem to be well within reach of Zhang, a two-time Golden Lion winner at the prestigious Venice Film Festival.

The iconic Fifth Generation director is in post-production on “The Great Wall,” his first English-language film. With a budget of $135 million, it stars Matt Damon, Andy Lau and Zhang Hanyu.

Zhang previously enjoyed great box office success with his 2003 martial arts epic “Hero,” which raked in 250 million yuan ($41 million) in China — more than three times what he had expected — and $177 million worldwide. Afterward, “House of Flying Daggers” and “Curse of the Golden Flower” followed a similar formula of major box office success as well as enthusiasm from the world’s critics, especially “Daggers,” which grossed nearly $100 million worldwide and boasts a 95% Rotten Tomatoes rating.

But Zhang’s current large-scale productions also require the popular success that may have left some fans of his earlier, more artistically daring films wishing for a return to his auteur roots. But Zhang’s priorities are clear. “The ultimate purpose of a film is to enchant the audience. If it scoops up many awards, but attracts very few moviegoers, it is still a failure,” Zhang told UCLA’s Asia Pacific Arts.

Zhang’s upcoming projects also include directing the opening and closing ceremonies of the November G20 Summit in Hangzhou, China, and a new company, SoReal, which Zhang says will develop interactive games and possibly VR films.

Ma Fung-kwok, who was a producer of one of Zhang’s most acclaimed films, “The Story of Qiu Ju,” says as China grew into a world economic powerhouse, the country was in pressing need to “showcase its soft power.” Ma, now a politician, says, “Zhang’s strength in visuals can help bring the images of China to an international audience.”

10

Slightly OT

Netizens in uproar over man destroying Great Wall

Source: ECNS.CNEditor: Ouyang
2016-07-21 10:513

A screen shot of the six-second video

A six-second video of a man knocking two bricks off a section of the Great Wall of China has caused a stir online, with netizens expressing strong criticism, the Legal Evening News reported on Tuesday.

The short-haired man, who wore a white shirt, light grey shorts and brown sandals, screamed nine times in six seconds as he knocked off one brick with his hands and another with a kick of his right foot.

The section of the Great Wall in the video looked desolate and in a state of disrepair.

At the end, the man posed to conclude his “feat”. Another man, who stood nearby to shoot the video, commented: “It was not easy for Emperor Qin Shihuang to build the Great Wall, and he has come to destroy it.”

The Chinese Law on Protection of Cultural Relics stipulates that those who willfully or negligently cause damage to the country’s cultural relics can be charged and punished according to law.

Dong Yaohui, the vice president of the China Great Wall Society, said the section of the Great Wall in the video could be the Dapanying Great Wall located in Huailai County, Hebei Province.

According to Dong, the Dapanying Great Wall was built during the Ming dynasty, not the Qin dynasty. It is a wild section of the Great Wall that has not undergone repair and does not have around-the-clock monitoring.

idiots. everywhere. the headline below makes it worse. :o

Video: Brazen vandal filmed ‘kung fu’ kicking a section of Great Wall of China
Sat, Jul 23 Source:One News
Police in China are looking for a brazen vandal who was filmed destroying part of what appears to be the Great Wall of China.
In footage posted online on July 19 the man is filmed kicking at a crumbled section of the centuries-old stone structure while pulling kung fu poses, the People’s Daily Online has reported.
It all seemed to be a great joke for the man, who also tore away sections of the wall and let them tumble to the ground while his friend behind the camera laughed.
The section of the Great Wall in the video looked desolate and in a state of disrepair.
Another man, who stood nearby to shoot the video, commented, “it was not easy for Emperor Qin Shihuang to build the Great Wall, and he has come to destroy it”.
The Chinese Law on Protection of Cultural Relics stipulates that those who wilfully or negligently cause damage to the country’s cultural relics can be charged and punished according to law.
Dong Yaohui, the vice president of the China Great Wall Society, said the section of the Great Wall in the video could be the Dapanying Great Wall located in Huailai County.

11

Feb 17, 2017

//youtu.be/Dr7LYG9E8VM

Official site

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:slight_smile: UPGRADE STATUS : http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-36921328

13

Whitewashing? Srsly?

While I respect Constance Wu, I think she jumped the shark on this one. Who knows if Damon will be the great white hope? Take Netflix’s Marco Polo, the ultimate historical whitewashing (especially if you’ve actually read Travels) but I wouldn’t call that project whitewashing. If anything, Polo’s character is downplayed. He’s second stage to the Asian leads.

Matt Damon Movie Slammed For ‘Whitewashing’
31 July 2016

Matt Damon

Matt Damon has been slammed for his new movie ‘The Great Wall’.

Damon plays a soldier in ancient China, who helps to battle against an ancient monster, in the English-language film directed by Zhang Yimou, and the movie has been accused of “whitewashing”.

Taiwanese-American actress Constance Wu took to Twitter to insist, "We have to stop perpetuating the racist myth that only a white man can save the world.

“Can we all at least agree that hero-bias & “but it’s really hard to finance” are no longer excuses for racism? TRY (sic).”

And ‘Fresh Off The Boat’ star Constance posted a lengthy statement, which read: "On The Great Wall. Our heroes don’t look like Matt Damon. They look like Malala. Ghandi. Mandela. Your big sister when she stood up for you to those bullies that one time. We don’t need salvation. We like our color and our culture and our strengths and our own stories.

“Money is the lamest excuse in the history of being human. So is blaming the Chinese investors. (POC’s choices can be based on unconscious bias too) Remember it’s not about blaming individuals, which will only lead to soothing their lame “b-but I had good intentions! but…money!” microaggressive excuses (sic).”

She also hit out at “implied racism”, explaining: "It’s about pointing out the repeatedly implied racist notion that white people are superior to POC and that POC need salvation from our own color via white strength. When you consistently make movies like this, you ARE saying that. YOU ARE. Yes, YOU ARE. YES YOU ARE. Yes, dude, you f**king ARE. Whether you intend to or not. We don’t need salvation. We like our color and our culture and our own strengths and our own stories. (If we don’t, we should) We don’t need you to save us from anything. And we’re rrrreally starting to get sick of you telling us, explicitly or implicitly, that we do.

“Think only a huge movie star can sell a movie? That that has NEVER been a total guarantee. Why not TRY to be better? If white actors are forgiven for having a box office failure once in a while, why can’t a POC sometimes have one? And how COOL would it be if you were the movie that took the “risk” to make a POC as your hero, and you sold the s**t out of it?! (sic).”

‘The Great Wall’ is set for release in China in February, 2017, and in the US two months later.

14

And in other Great Wall news

This has also become our Great Wall thread by default. Maybe some day, I’ll split them.

JULY 30, 2016
THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA IS DISAPPEARING, BRICK BY BRICK
ANNE SEWELL

The Great Wall of China is a well-known UNESCO site and popular tourist destination. However, the wall is gradually being eroded away, as people steal bricks as souvenirs, or to build homes. Now China is taking action to stop this erosion.

While the Great Wall is not a single, unbroken structure, it is estimated to extend some 13,000 miles (21,000 kilometers) in total. The wall stretches for thousands of miles in sections, from the east coast of China all the way to the edge of the Gobi desert.

Construction of the massive defense wall started in the third century BC, but almost 6,300 kilometers were built during the Ming Dynasty from 1368-1644, including the most-visited and popular sections just north of China’s capital, Beijing.

After bricks started to go missing from the Great Wall around ten years ago, China introduced protection laws, but the problem still continues. The protection campaign, dubbed the “Great Wall Protection Code,” was launched after the rise in tourism and the idea of stealing bricks to build houses took away around a third of the UNESCO site. Natural erosion has also left its mark.

As reported by the Guardian, further and more stringent laws were introduced, but according to Chinese state media, around 30 percent of the wall has disappeared over the years.

While the country handed out fines of 5,000 yuan to anyone taking Great Wall bricks, poor villages in Lulong county in the northern province of Hebei were known to knock out thick, grey bricks from a section of the wall in their village in order to build homes.

There’s also vandalism. As reported recently by the Inquisitr, destruction of part of the Great Wall was captured on video. The footage, which went viral, showed an Asian man kicking at the wall. In other parts of the video footage, the man could be seen forcibly removing a brick from the wall, kicking it, thus causing another brick to fall and portions of the structure to crumble.

It turns out that person was just trying to gain attention on social media and handed himself in, but more damage continues on a regular basis.

15

Yet more Whitewashing complaints

Hollywood Keeps Hiring White Men to Do an Asian’s Job
By Chin Lu
July 31, 2016

//youtu.be/LVw9YdP1O-0

Last week, Legendary Pictures released the trailer for The Great Wall, a new film about the Great Wall of China… starring Matt Damon. The plot appears to revolve around Damon’s character, a white male protagonist, saving the Chinese people from the mythical doom that lurks beyond the wall.

It shouldn’t be shocking that yet another “white man saves foreigners” Hollywood story is ****ing people off. We’ve been through this before (Gran Torino, City of Joy, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom), not to mention all the examples of white people starring in films about Asian culture (Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai, Emma Stone in Aloha, Scarlett Johansson in Ghost in the Shell, and on and on). Just scroll through Twitter, and you’ll find hundreds of people expressing their frustrationincluding Taiwanese American actress Constance Wu, who wrote: “We have to stop perpetuating the racist myth that only a white man can save the world… When you consistently make movies like this, you ARE saying that.”

[QUOTE] Constance Wu @ConstanceWu

Can we all at least agree that hero-bias & “but it’s really hard to finance” are no longer excuses for racism? TRY
11:03 AM - 29 Jul 2016
15,063 15,063 Retweets 21,597 21,597 likes

While The Great Wall has secured Chinese director Zhang Yimou and the majority of the actors are Chinese, the six credited writers are all white American men. And in the trailer, even though there are plenty of Asian faces in the background, the only voice we hear is Damon’s. It’s not just about representationit’s about white people writing, starring in, and claiming stories about Asian culture.

In the wake of The Great Wall, Chinese Singaporean writer J. Y. Yang is hoping to flip the script. Yang is writing an alt-history novel centering on a Chinese Joan of Arctype heroine saving white peoplewhich she says is directly in response to the whitewashing of Asian culture in films like The Great Wall.I talked with Yang about her novel, representations of Asian culture in popular media, and why it’s so important to let Asian people star in their own stories.


Matt Damon in ‘The Great Wall’ trailer

VICE: Tell me a little bit about your background.
J. Y. Yang: I’m a Chinese Singaporean currently doing my master’s in creative writing. I’ve been writing fiction professionally since 2014, and I just sold two novellas for the first time earlier this year. I write mostly sci-fi and fantasy.

How did you come up with the idea of writing a book with a storyline that’s the opposite of The Great Wall?
I found out about the upcoming Matt Damon film through a friend who’s Malaysian Chinese, and I assumed at first that he was a sidekick, which already made me sad. The Great Wall is one of China’s great achievements! Then I watched the trailer, and it felt like a cloud of anger rolled over me, and I wanted to do something about this. Then it hit me: I should write a historical fiction out of spite.

What about the trailer made you the most upset?
I think a lot of people were really excited about the prospect of a monster film about the Great Wall of China; then they found out about the casting, the screenwriters, and the plot summary. It’s such an old story trope: A white person demonstrating superiority over Asians. I’ve been annoyed by this centering of white narratives for many years, and there’s the context of Hollywood being a racist industry with whitewashing as well.

jen yamato @jenyamato

1700 years to build, just for Matt Damon to come save it. How problematic is #TheGreatWall? http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/07/29/matt-damon-whitewashes-chinese-history-in-the-great-wall.html
9:13 AM - 29 Jul 2016
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What would you say to those who argue, “Hey, this is not a documentaryit’s a fantasy film.”
Yes, I know this story is not real. But the context here is the history of Western imperialism in Asia, and how white narratives are always centered even in stories set in Asia. This status quo devalues Asian cultures. Part of the reason I want to write fiction about a Chinese woman saving Europeans was to mess with one of the “sacred cows” of Western history and culture, Joan of Arc, because I know people will react with: “That is disrespectful! You can’t do this!” Yet it seems like Western heroes are valued, while apparently Asian cultures can be something randomly picked and chosen from like Memoirs of a Geisha. The industry doesn’t seem to care about the authenticity of Asian cultures represented yet when it comes to Western cultures; it’s all about preservation. For instance, Hollywood movies about World War I make sure to be historically accurate.

“It’s such an old story trope: A white person demonstrating superiority over Asians.” J. Y. Yang

What about the fact that Zhang Yimou is the director? Does that change anything?

I read in an interview with Zhang that he’s trying to use this film to bring Chinese culture to America through this blockbuster, but [we saw that] done years ago with his House of Flying Daggers and with Crouching Dragon, Hidden Dragonboth of which were cast with all Chinese actors and written with all Chinese characters, and did well at the box office.

This is not a new thing. This has been going on for years along. There was that movie [The Impossible in 2012 with Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor] about a real tsunami that happened in South Asia, yet the story was centered on the white people vacationing there. Recently, we’ve had so much whitewashing, too: Ghost in the Shell and Dr. Strange. There were so many that I cannot remember all of them right now.

I looked into how the local Chinese press was covering the Great Wall film, and I found this interview where lead producer Peter Loehr was asked how the idea for the film came about: He said the chairman of Legendary Pictures, Thomas Tull, was on a plane, looked outside the window, and saw the Great Wall of China. And he thought it was such an impressive structure that it should be turned into a film, so Tull contacted screenwriter Max Brooks to write a rough storyline. This seems troubling to meas if Loehr had never considered the Great Wall’s existence beforeand his first instinct was not to contact a Chinese or Chinese American screenwriter.
Right. And again, it’s not just about white actors taking Asian roles. It’s also about the centering of white narratives. The appeal for me to start writing my own historical fiction is to base it on actual history, and I’m so excited to do all the research about 15th-century European history for Joan of Arc and the Ming Dynasty. This is part of my Chinese heritage, and this would be a new way for me to connect to my heritage.

For those who are upset but are not writers or filmmakers themselves, do you have any advice on how to channel their frustrations constructively?
Buy my book when it comes out! I’m only kidding. Please support writers and filmmakers who are marginalized. Talk and debate about the importance of diversity. I think one of the best ways to influence is with your money is to let Hollywood know that we don’t accept this, that we want genuine stories from authentic perspectives.[/QUOTE]

More news on Legendary today here.

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Zhang Yimou comments

The Great Wall director addresses Matt Damon whitewashing controversy — exclusive
The movie ‘is the opposite of what is being suggested,’ Zhang Yimou tells EW
BY JOE MCGOVERN • @JMCGVRN


(Chris Weeks/Getty Images)
The Great Wall
Posted August 4 2016 — 12:50 PM EDT

On July 28, acclaimed Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou (House of Flying Daggers) released the first photos and trailer of his — and his country’s — most expensive movie ever. Many audiences were surprised to see that The Great Wall was not about the construction of China’s 5,500-mile long Wonder of the World, but instead a full-fledged monster movie.

But many more were surprised and disappointed that the film, set about 1,000 years ago, starred white American actor Matt Damon. In a lengthy tweet posted one day after the trailer debut, Fresh Off the Boat star Constance Wu criticized the project for “perpetuating the racist myth that only a white man can save the world” and wrote, “Our heroes don’t look like Matt Damon.”

In a statement provided exclusively to EW, Zhang addresses the controversy, explaining that Damon’s character serves an important plot point, and defends his film against charges of racism. Read his full statement below.

As I suspected…

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Next Bruce Lee…yeah right.

If nothing else, this film is buzzing with silly superlatives.

‘The Great Wall’ star Eddie Peng touted as the next Bruce Lee
Maolen E. | Aug 15, 2016 02:40 PM EDT


Eddie Peng poses for a picture on the red carpet at The 18th Shanghai International Film Festival on June 13, 2015 in Shanghai, China. (Photo : Getty Images/Kevin Lee)

Taiwanese actor Eddie Peng, who is set to star in “The Great Wall” film, has been touted to be the next Bruce Lee. Interestingly, the 34-year-old actor has his sights set on breaking into Hollywood as the next enormous martial arts film export.

Peng, who was born in Taiwan before moving to Canada at the age of thirteen, had been making clamor in the Hollywood and China’s film industry. In a recent interview with The Daily Telegraph, Peng admitted that he has huge plans in Hollywood.
“A couple of years ago I started to learn martial arts and Kung Fu basically because of the role I took,” he explained. “You know we all have a Kung Fu dream, right. We all like Bruce Lee. I grew up with Bruce Lee, I grew with Jackie Chan movies, so when I got the chance to do Kung Fu, I was like, ‘I’ve got to do something here, I’ve got to learn something’.”
Although learning Kung Fu is not easy as it seems, the “Rise of the Legend” actor expressed how fortunate he is to learn something from it. He then revealed that he does all his own stunts, stressing, “In Asia, they really want to see your face, it is not like Hollywood movies where you have the stuntmen and four doubles for one shot.”
Peng will star in the upcoming American-Chinese 3D epic science fantasy monster adventure action film, “The Great Wall,” alongside Matt Damon, Pedro Pascal, Jing Tian, Andy Lau and Willem Dafoe. The film apparently allowed Peng to showcase some of his martial arts expertise.
Peng also hopes that “The Great Wall” film will open ways to a Hollywood industry that is looking at off the inexorably lucrative Chinese market. Set in the Northern Song Dynasty, “The Great Wall” revolves around an elite force of soldiers, who make a last stand for mankind against a slew of legendary creatures.
With a reported total budget of $135 million, the upcoming epic science fantasy film is said to be the most expensive and the greatest American-Chinese co-production to date.
“This is the biggest movie I’ve ever been involved with,” Los Angeles Times quoted Damon as saying before a group of reporters, adding that the viewers will surely be in for some “fun surprises” once they see the film’s version of the Great Wall.

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“The Next Bruce Lee”? Really?

There can never be another Bruce Lee (or Jackie or Sammo or whoever). And even if there could be, it certainly wouldn’t be Eddie Peng. I thought his movie Rise of the Legend was pretty good, but on second viewing it was obvious how they used quick-cut edits, wirework and CGI to mask his rather limited MA skills, double or no double. Of course, an actor does not need to be a high-level MA expert to look passable or even quite good on film. However, to even be considered in the same light as Bruce Lee, your ability at performing MA onscreen cannot rely on clever editing and FX.

And it’s also quite common for very legitimate MAists to come across as mediocre in movies. I’m betting that the majority of top MMA fighters, as well as top Kung Fu teachers, would probably not look very spectacular onscreen, either, as screen fighting, screen charisma and at least fair acting ability for the camera are very different (in many ways opposite) from fighting in a ring/cage, or mastering a MA over a lifetime. Being a really good screen fighter, just like any type of acting or performing, requires a certain knack that not everybody has the potential for.

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I’m in that ‘whatev’ group

While I respect Constance Wu, I think she cried ‘wolf’ on this one. She jumped on a bandwagon, a bandwagon that I’m firmly riding, but fingered the wrong film. She wasn’t looking at the whole picture, as we have been with this particular film, since 2012. She should really join our forum here. We’ll allow her, even if she isn’t a martial artist. :wink:

The Great Wall: Why The Matt Damon Whitewashing Is No Big Deal In China
Contrasting Chinese and U.S. reactions to Matt Damon’s casting in “The Great Wall” underscore the difficulties co-productions have appealing to audiences in both countries.

Aaron Fox-Lerner
Aug 30, 2016 4:27 pm


Matt Damon is the star of The Great Wall.

It seems reasonable to expect that a movie called The Great Wall, billed as the biggest production in Chinas filmmaking history, would feature Chinese actors. Instead, when Universal and Legendary released the trailer for Zhang Yimous film, the first face viewers saw was that of the decidedly white Matt Damon, fighting monsters atop the Middle Kingdoms most famous monument.

In America, it was a call to arms in the battle against whitewashing, that curious tendency to insert Caucasian faces where history tells us there were none. We have to stop perpetuating the racist myth that only a white man can save the world, wrote comedian and Fresh Off the Boat star Constance Wu in a lengthy, impassioned statement posted to Twitter. Our heroes dont look like Matt Damon.

China had another take. There, the prevailing sentiment over the trespass on their national identity might best be described as a Whatevs.

On Weibo, essentially Chinas Twitter (the social media service is banned there), searches relating to The Great Wall and whitewashing in Chinese turn up only a few dozen responses at most. Many posts are simply articles explaining the American controversy for Chinese readers. Even of those, most are focused on director Zhang Yimous defense of the film, rather than Wus criticism of it.

Why the collective shrug? In China, Chinese are the majority, said Sally Ye, a Chinese-American producer who has worked in China for more than a decade. They dont have this feeling of representation which people of minority backgrounds would feel in the United States.

Added Wang Xiaoyi, film editor for the Chinese-language Time Out Beijing, So out of five heroes, theres one whos not Chinese.

However, while the US perceives the film is about Matt Damon saving China, people in China think hes just one character out of many. Early marketing in the two countries has been markedly different.

In the US, Damons face occupies most of the poster, with the titular wall merely a detail over his shoulder. The films synopsis on the official website also puts the American actor front and center: Matt Damon leads humanitys greatest fight for survival in The Great Wall from Legendary and Universal Pictures.

By contrast, China is much more interested in the screen debut of Chinese boy-band idol Wang Junkai, who appears alongside fellow boy-band-member-turned-actor Luhan and popular star Andy Lau. The Chinese trailer mixes in images of local actors early on, and a teaser poster from Zhang Yimous Weibo account also positions Damon in equal proportion to his co-stars.

Its just like how the new Independence Day used Angelababy, said Wang, referring to a popular Chinese star whose bit-part casting in the latest Independence Day movie was a clear play for the Chinese market. Zhang Yimou chose Matt Damon because he didnt want the movies audience to be limited to China.

//youtu.be/mHLOEuUmd5M

The Damon comparison is a bit generous; Hollywood films ranging from Mission Impossible Rogue Nation to Iron Man 3 pander to China by creating marginal roles for Chinese stars (a move thats inspired mockery both in the US and China). However, co-productions allow foreign companies to dodge barriers that prevent them from participating in the worlds second-largest moviegoing market. China has a 34-film quota on foreign productions, and also allows foreign studios to claim only 25% of a movies box office. If a movie has some Chinese participation, companies can circumvent these limits.

One of the few domestic hits in China this summer has been Skiptrace, an English-language action-comedy directed by action journeyman Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2, Deep Blue Sea) starring Jackie Chan and Johnny Knoxville. In the U.S., the film went to DirectTV July 28, with a theatrical run via Saban Films September 2; in China, its already has made over 800 million RMB (about 120 million dollars). Other co-productions have been even more explicitly aimed at Chinese audiences: 2015s Hollywood Adventures was co-written and co-produced by the Taiwan-born Justin Lin and featured Chinese stars and dialogue, but it was directed by an American, Timothy Kendall, and shot almost entirely in Los Angeles. That film was also a success in China while remaining largely unknown outside it.

Other movies have gone The Great Wall route of shoehorning foreign stars into ancient Chinese settings. Dragon Blade, a 2015 epic about warring Roman factions in Han Dynasty-era China, featured John Cusack phoning it in, Adrian Brody hamming it up, and Jackie Chan sporting dreadlocks. It proved a box-office smash in China, while going practically unnoticed in the US. The critically maligned Outcast (2014) also sent stars Nicolas Cage and Hayden Christensen into historical China, this time as disillusioned medieval Crusaders.

Even for purely Chinese productions, foreign roles ranging from token to central have become commonplace. When I first came to China, the people making movie and TV shows didnt know any foreigners in real life, Jonathan Kos-Read, a Chinese-speaking white actor who was born in Southern California but makes his living in films like Mojin The Lost Legend and IP Man 3 productions targeted to the Chinese audience. But now because theres so many foreigners, most of the writers know a real foreigner And the practical, artistic upshot of that is that they write better, more sophisticated foreign characters who are people before theyre foreigners.

The trajectory of Kos-Read who described himself to me as a minority actor from stock clichés to more complex characters would be the envy of many Asian-American performers who find themselves faced with frustratingly stereotypical roles. While The Great Wall has been a flashpoint in America over the lack of Asian representation, for the Chinese film industry the main issue has been whether the movie will show growing internationalization can lead to success outside of China.

The fact that youre writing an article about Great Wall is kind of a genuine change, Kos-Read said. If it works, thats going to be great. It means a lot more of that is going to happen, and as an actor, itll mean a lot more work.

Still, even with an American star and a Western writing team (among them Max Brooks, Tony Gilroy, and Marshall Herskovitz), Ye believes The Great Wall is aimed mainly at China, with the US as a secondary bonus. I think they took China as priority, she said, but they dont want to not have the US distribution, because its a huge, big-budget film.

Censorship may be another reason why The Great Wall is not controversial in China; as a state-approved production, the governments involvement might be enough to presume national respect. I think that media in China, at least the ones who are going to drive word of mouth for The Great Wall, will want Great Wall to be a success, said one Asian-American working for a large Chinese film company who wished to remain anonymous. Right now SARFT [the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television] is more invested in showing that Chinese filmmakers can make a movie of Western standards than they are in undermining the kind of ideological fiber inside the movie itself.

The Great Wall is clearly aimed at a level of international success beyond any prior Chinese film or co-production and with it, a previously unknown level of scrutiny. As the anonymous film worker put it, even without its whitewashing controversy, The Great Wall is a glaring example of how much people are willing to spend to make the co-production prove its viability. The U.S. controversy over the movies casting shows just how hard that viability may be to achieve.

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Chinese poster

The Great Wall Poster is Here And Matt Damon Learned How to Fly
By FizX on September 8, 2016@fizx

Legendary Pictures and Universal Pictures‘ The Great Wall new international poster is here, Starring Matt Damon.

The Great Wall tells the story of an elite force making a valiant stand for humanity on the world’s most iconic structure. The first English-language production for Yimou is the largest film ever shot entirely in China.

When a mercenary warrior (Damon) is imprisoned within The Great Wall, he discovers the mystery behind one of the greatest wonders of our world. As wave after wave of marauding beasts besiege the massive structure, his quest for fortune turns into a journey toward heroism as he joins a huge army of elite warriors to confront this unimaginable and seemingly unstoppable force.

The Great Wall will hit 3D screens on February 17, 2017.

I’m still trying to wrap my head around what this film is about, but I trust Zhang Yimou to deliver something engaging.