10 Monster Movies To Watch In 2017
9. The Great Wall
Currently playing on a screen near you, The Great Wall is (at $135 million) the most expensive feature ever filmed entirely in China, so to ensure the film plays across the world (and isn’t remade very badly) it’s been shot in English with Matt Damon in the lead.
Directed by Zhang Yimou (House Of Flying Daggers), the fantasy/monster movie takes place in the days of Imperial China, where Damon’s adventurer has come in search of their “black powder.” Instead, he ends up in a military garrison on the eponymous wall, which he quickly realizes was built for a special purpose – to keep out the Tao Tei, which look like flying dragons with T Rex heads.
The critics, however, were unimpressed.
“The Great Wall is so fantastically misguided and so wonderfully bad,” wrote Richard Roeper, “I could see some coming for the action and staying for the cheap laughs.” The Telegraph was more succinct, calling it a “wall to wall fiasco.”