‘The Great Wall’ Director Defends Whitewashing Controversy After Casting Matt Damon in Lead Role; Film Hailed Most Expensive Project Shot Entirely in China

‘The Great Wall’ director Yimou Zhang defended his decision of casting Matt Damon in the lead role for a film about ancient China. His upcoming film, hailed as the most expensive project shot entirely in China, is steeped in whitewashing controversy and created a backlash in the online community.

In a statement issued to Entertainment Weekly, Zhang addressed the whitewashing controversy surrounding his upcoming action-adventure and fantasy film that stars American actor Matt Damon in the lead role.

An excerpt from the statement read, “In many ways The Great Wall is the opposite of what is being suggested. For the first time, a film deeply rooted in Chinese culture, with one of the largest Chinese casts ever assembled, is being made at tent pole scale for a world audience… Our film is not about the construction of the Great Wall. Matt Damon is not playing a role that was originally conceived for a Chinese actor.”

The prominent filmmaker explained that Damon’s character is essential to the film’s storyline. He insisted, “There are five major heroes in our story and he is one of them — the other four are all Chinese. The collective struggle and sacrifice of these heroes are the emotional heart of our film. As the director of over 20 Chinese language films and the Beijing Olympics, I have not and will not cast a film in a way that was untrue to my artistic vision.”

According to Vanity Fair, actress Constance Wu of ‘Fresh of the Boat’ fame was one of the film’s most outspoken critics. She previously tweeted that Yimou’s project would “perpetuate the racist myth that only a white man can save the world.”

Zhang’s film is not the first to receive some backlash over the apparent whitewashing of its cast members in the recent years. Marvel’s ‘Doctor Strange’, Cameron Crowe’s ‘Aloha’, Alex Proyas’ ‘Gods of Egypt’, and Rupert Sanders’ ‘Ghost In The Shell’ are prime examples of films that earned a degree of hate for casting Caucasian actors in roles supposedly made for actors of other races.

The Chinese-American co-production is deemed the most expensive film ever shot entirely in China as it reportedly has a production budget of around $150 million, according to the Washington Post. It features Damon, Willem Dafoe and prominent Chinese actors namely Andy Lau, Jing Tian, and Wang Junkai.

Assistant professor of media studies at the University of Virginia and author of ‘Hollywood Made in China’ Anne Kokas said, "'The Great Wall' is definitely among the biggest budget co-productions, and it's the first very large budget one in which there is a major Chinese creative force behind it." 

The strategy is part of Hollywood’s aim at enticing Chinese moviegoers in recent years seeing that China has become one of the world’s largest markets. The Chinese movie industry, in turn, also moved to develop more films that will reach a global audience.

‘The Great Wall’ is an upcoming action-adventure and fantasy film scheduled to premiere in theaters on February 17, 2017. It is directed by Yimou Zhang and written by Tony Gilroy, Doug Miro, Max Brooks, Edward Zwick, Marshall Herskovitz, and Carlo Bernard.

It is produced by Legendary East, Atlas Entertainment, Kava Productions, Le Vision Pictures, and Legendary Pictures. It is distributed by Universal Pictures worldwide and the China Film Group Corporation in China.