Sure, there were a few wrong things, like it always happens anytime they try to intrigue you with impossible battles and undefeatable enemies, they often set the stakes so high that at the end they are forced to cheat to give the story an ending.
Focusing on Matt Damon, he is the big name to advertise the movie, indeed, but the trailer made it look like it was all about him, like the Chinese desperately needed him to defend their wall... which is totally not what the movie is about. He helped.
Now, the story in a few words:
William and a bunch of friends/enemies are traveling together through China in search of the powerful black powder, when only two of them survive after ‘something’ killed the others. William manages to cut off an art of the creature. When they are captured by Chinese soldiers, they lie about their purpose there but tell the truth about cutting it off. We learn that there are dangerous creatures called Taotie that will eat everyone in their way. The soldiers are there to stop them from reaching the cities.
At first William and his friend are kept hostages but during the first battle they help fighting the monsters so they are now considered warriors. His friend keeps thinking about taking the black powder and escape while William finds himself wanting to help, thinking this is actually a battle worth fighting. He has a magnet that stops the monsters from getting the others’ signals, and he suggests a way to capture one alive, which will be then transported to the Emperor as ordered. When his friend escapes, William is considered a traitor and imprisoned, but when the general finds out that the monsters were much more intelligent that they gave them credit for and found their way across the wall towards the city, he is freed and told that he can go but he decides to stay and fight with them. They use hot-air balloons to reach the city quickly and arrive just in time (of course). They kill the monsters’ queen and this stops all the others. They won and now William and his friend can return home.
Details:
There are two characters that speak English, the female general and the strategist. There had to be someone, since it would have been absurd for mercenary William to know the language, and they explained this quite simply. There is another English-speaking man there, played by Willem Dafoe. He too came looking for the black powder, and was never allowed to leave the place, so they learned from each other: he learned Chinese and they learned English. They speak of 25 years, so I can accept that. Sure, they are very different languages, but the two Chinese people are very intelligent and Dasc (Dafoe’s Character, can’t remember his name) lived for 25 years surrounded by people who only spoke that language, so yes, it is indeed possible enough to be acceptable.
The costumes were very beautiful, the Chinese army looked like it came right out of a Final-Fantasy-game or something. All the female warriors wore blue, the archers wore red, etc, and the armors were beautiful. That’s why at the end they give William a red armor, because he’s an archer.
William was not called to save China, he happened to be there and he helped. Mostly by giving them a different perspective on a few things. His main contributions were: how to capture one alive, using a rampoon like whale-hunters; the magnet, although he didn’t realize this himself, he just happened to have one with him; the final slaying of the queen. He was not ‘the hero’, he was a good warrior among good warriors.
The other two westerners: their idea of escaping, their whole plan and short journey was kind of bad: it’s really better to leave a place where you were a prisoner although very well treated and fed for a place where one might encounter those monsters, and they were really ‘a lot’!?! I mean, is this really the right time? The other members of their company were killed by the monsters, so it’s not difficult to imagine that they might encounter them too once outside. They saw now what kind of monsters they were and how many of them too, is it really the best of ideas? Anyway, even if you’d rather die a free man than live comfortably and well-fed as a prisoner, how stupid was William’s friend? First, Dasc told him to move closer to a bomb that hadn’t exploded: ‘it’s safe’ he said and then it exploded, and yet after that he still obeyed everything Dasc said; it was so obviously a bad move to leave him alone with all the horses and powder and everything they had, to go on foot to get a good look around... only he could be surprised when Dasc left him behind and went away with everything :-/
Dasc is captured by a group of bandits that have no idea what those little bombs are and play with them around the fire. When we hear a big boom it’s easy to assume that Dasc’s dead, but I was kind of surprised when I saw that the other was able to retrieve the horses and the stuff on them.. such a big explosion and they were not at all affected? Anyway, this is just a side matter, not the heart of the story.
I loved the relationship between William and the young Chinese soldier. I mean, there barely was one, but what there was was meaningful; they could not talk because they didn’t understand each other’s languages, but they could covey it with a look. In a way they communicated better than most people here do with a thousand words. The young one’s story: he was the one who had to guard them during the first battle, but he find it difficult to stay put while his fellow soldiers were fighting and dying and eventually joined the battle giving William and his friend the chance to take up arms and fight too, also saving the boy’s life. The boy thanked him later, and although he couldn’t understand the words it’s not going too far thinking that William could understand what he meant.
When the boy dropped a bowl of the poison that was meant to put a monster to sleep so that they could capture it, he was sent to kitchen-duty, but William knew that that was not the place for him, that he was neither a coward or an inept. He stepped forward when William was accusing of conspiring with his friend to escape, and insisted that he saw everything and that William was trying to stop the other two from leaving. There was a smile on his face when he went to free him from his cell, and then he begged the strategist to take him with them in their attempt to kill the queen. When he is injured by a beast, William tells him that he’ll live and they’ll come back for him (the general translates this) but when a lot more beasts showed up, he blew himself up, I imagine killing some of them, and blocking the tunnel allowing them to go on with their mission. It was a brief scene, only a glance between them and the boy, and it said it all. Not a long exchange of glances like often happens in American movies.
What I’m most thankful for: there is no love story. Of course William’s friend at some point suggests that he might have changed because of the pretty girl, but I was very glad when they left together at the end, because to reduce it all to a simple crush would have ruined everything. The point is: William told her that he had thought many battles under many flags, and this looked like to her as if he had no real purpose, as if he cared for nothing but money or battle (which was true actually), and he told her how he had never trusted anyone after she explained how in their army everyone could count and trust the others. I think that William maybe felt a little ashamed by the comparison between himself and this young brave soldier (about to become general) who fought for a higher purpose, by her integrity and faith in what she was doing, and for once he found a reason to fight other than money. If this battle was lost, soon the whole world would have been in danger. There’s a bit of regret when they separate at the end, but they have different lives and different worlds; they do like, admire and respect one another but that is not romantic love.
The ending: the way the war ends is rather absurd: once the queen is killed all the others fall dead... why? The idea is that they all lived to serve her: they looked for food and then they brought it to her, and the more she was fed the more monsters she could produce, so they said that if they gained free access to the cities they could become such a big number that the whole world would be threatened. When the magnet prevented one of them to hear the others, to get their signals, the beast didn’t die. Sure, the queen was alive, but they were separate beings, it was not a mother-ship sending orders to drones. The logical result of her death should have been that no new beasts can be produced, and that they no longer received signals or had a purpose, but why die instantly? Why they fell inanimate to the ground the instant she died? That made no sense, so the only answer is: they needed a solution because they had shown so many of them that there was no easy, sensible way to defeat them otherwise. Another way would have been: without the queen the other beasts would have become lost and without purpose and the city soldiers could have slaughtered them more easily... not sure it would have worked visually though, viewers usually expect a big end-of-battle from the heroes...
I would have liked more soldiers-fighting scenes.
At the end, as a thank you for his help, William was not only permitted to leave (no reason to detain him anymore, since there are no more Taotie to keep secret, although it’s not totally clear why it had to be a secret) and he was even given a choice: get what he came for, a lot of black powder, or he could free his friend and go away with him. Obviously they went away together.
It was a nice scene because of course he chose his friend thus making peace with him, but it still seemed a bit... I don’t know, they kept saying it was such a powerful weapon they didn’t want to use it, until the end they didn’t even use it against the creatures, and now they are willing to give a lot of the stuff to him just like that :-/ also, they started fighting with arrows, when they had more powerful weapons at hand. Given the force of the enemy, that seemed not very smart :-/
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