There be monsters in new trailer & images for Zhang Yimou’s The Great Wall

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

The new trailer for Zhang Yimou's THE GREAT WALL dropped during the NYCC panel today and looks to up the ante on what we saw in the first trailer, this time giving us our first peek at the monsters and a deeper look at the overall story. Yimou (HERO, HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS) is certainly a proven filmmaker when it comes to sprawling action epics and this is his first English-language push to showcase his work to a broader audience, bringing in a few A-list names to entice viewers, including Matt Damon, Willem Dafoe, and Game of Thrones' Pedro Pascal, who join Jing Tian, Hanyu Zhang, Eddie Peng, Lu Han, Kenny Lin, Junkai Wang, Zheng Kai, Cheney Chen, Xuan Huang and Andy Lau in this fantasy epic. 

Here's the synopsis:

Starring global superstar Matt Damon and directed by one of the most breathtaking visual stylists of our time, Zhang Yimou (Hero, House of Flying Daggers), Legendary’s 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. The Great Wall also stars Jing Tian, Pedro Pascal, Willem Dafoe and Andy Lau.

I'm down for this. Damon is hit or miss for me, but the rest of the cast is solid and Yimou's work has always been beautiful and intriguing, even if not every film in his resume is a classic. Plain and simple, this just looks fun, although I'm a little disappointed that the majority of the monsters all look the same. Here's to hoping for some boss-level creatures to spice things up. A minor complaint for something that looks like a good enough reason to head to the theater and *gasp* most definitely catch in 3D on the biggest screen possible.

THE GREAT WALL hits theaters on February 17, 2017.