Matt Damon is about to star in what could be the biggest movie of all time: Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. Based on Homer’s epic poem, the story blends history with fantasy and mythology, as Odysseus attempts to make his way home following the Trojan War, all while rival factions vie for his land back home. The Odyssey could be the biggest historical fantasy movie to date. But it’s far from the first. In fact, it was Matt Damon himself who starred in one of the biggest historical action misfires of recent years. Not only was the movie awash (literally) with controversy, it also bombed at the box office. You can now experience Matt Damon’s missfire for free, as it just landed on a new streaming home.
Only a director like Christopher Nolan could tackle the scale of The Odyssey. But, in 2016, Zhang Yimou attempted to do something similar when they released The Great Wall. As the title suggests, the movie is set in Ancient China and centers around the Great Wall of China. In reality, the wall was built to defend against the Mongol Empire. But the film reveals the wall’s true and more fantastical purpose. Set at the end of the late-medieval/early-modern period, Matt Damon stars as William Garin, a mercenary who sets off to China in search of gunpowder. Finding himself imprisoned in the Great Wall, he learns that the wall was built to defend against an ancient evil that emerges once every 70 years. In a moment of perfect timing, it had been 70 years since the evil last appeared.
After bombing at the box office, The Great Wall is setting up its defenses on free streaming. The movie was recently added to Tubi. The ad-supported, free streaming platform added The Great Wall on Jul. 1. Tubi tends to hold movies on one-month contracts. So (while it hasn’t been officially confirmed), expect The Great Wall to leave Tubi at the start of August.
‘The Great Wall’ Couldn’t Hold the Line at the Box Office
The Great Wall feels like a very 1990s/2000s movie. Unfortunately for everybody involved, it came out in 2017 and couldn’t hold its own at the box office or with critics. The film holds a 36% Rotten Tomatoes score, with a slightly stronger, but still quite bad, audience rating of 42%. The movie didn’t perform horribly at the box office. It managed to gross $334 million worldwide. However, against a production budget of $150 million (which is more than doubled when marketing costs and distribution fees are factored in), the film lost an estimated $75 million.
‘The Great Wall’s Controversy, Explained
The Great Wall isn’t just a very 1990s movie because of its campy action and plot, but also because of the bizarre (but very Hollywood) decision to whitewash the casting. Somebody in a Hollywood studio thought that a movie called The Great Wall, set in Ancient China, about a mythological threat attacking the Great Wall of China, directed by a Chinese director, should be led by a white actor. It’s a similar situation to Tom Cruise’s The Last Samurai. The film received a lot of backlash in 2017. But thanks to its poor performance as a movie in its own right, that quietened down quickly as everybody forgot about The Great Wall anyway.
