ALL SCI-FI

Bud Brewster · Posted: Sat Feb 20, 2021 9:49 am Post subject: The Great Wall (2017)

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DVRed this movie from Cinemax back in July 2018 and kept putting off watching it until today when I read the Wikipedia article and discovered that the monsters in this movie are aliens! Shocked

Cool.

The film is visually stunning, and the story grabbed my interest right off and hung on tight! I was a little disappointed at first when I saw that the movie had made the Great Wall about three times higher and four times wider than it really is, but I understood the reason. This was supposedly a "legend" about the Great Wall, so everything was bigger-better-more colorful-and-outrageously cool.

By the time I got to that first attack on the Great Wall by the aliens, I was so dazzled by the remarkable technology of the ancient Chinese army and their spectacular soldiers that I was delighted by the way the filmmakers had created such a dynamic and appealing film!

Exaggerated though they may have been in the movie, the elaborate ways the Chinese used to pass signals along the Great Wall during their ambitious military campaigns were inspired by the actual methods used by the Chinese for a thousand years!

The incredible imagination and artistic excellence displayed in this movie just in its first thirty minutes should have insured it's success at the box office! The fact that it did NOT proves yet again that the great unwashed masses of movie goers don't have a clue about what it takes to make a movie like this, nor do they have the ability to appreciate all the intelligence and talent being presented on the screen before them.

On that same note, the snide and demeaning reviews written by film critics who feel compelled to deride science fiction and fantasy movies in general — often phrasing their comments in pseudo-intellectual phrases, just to show how much smarter they are than all those "average people" who read their reviews — do a great disservice to the gifted filmmakers who spend years planning and executing films like this one.

And as a result, the public is steered away from astounding motion pictures which they should have adored.

Amazon offers the DVD of this movie for the paltry price of $5.00, and the Blu-ray for $6.99. Hell's bells, I spend more than that on breakfast five days a week at my favorite restaurant, Phat Daddy's Cafe! Shocked

Naturally I just bought it from Amazon. I'll just have cereal tomorrow morning and basically get this wonderful movie for free! Rolling Eyes

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______________ The Great Wall Official Trailer

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

Bud Brewster · Posted: Wed Feb 23, 2022 4:55 pm Post subject:

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Oh my God! Is there not a single member of All Sci-Fi who hasn't watched this amazing movie? Shocked

I mean, even if you have to BUY the Blue-ray from Amazon for the paltry fee of $12.93 to watch it?

The Great Wall (+ digital download) [Blu-ray] [2017]

Hey, what happened to the days of our youth, when we were thrilled by movies like This Island Earth and War of the Worlds?

Can we no longer appreciate an alien invasion and mankind's, spirited defense against it!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

Bud Brewster · Posted: Wed Mar 09, 2022 4:17 pm Post subject:

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Forgive my bluntness, gentlemen, but the reason All Sci-Fi is currently limping along with so few posts is because many of our members don't even bother watching amazing movies like this one — much less commenting on them, either pro of con! Rolling Eyes

Consider the fact that the Blu-ray of this movie is just $12.93. That's less than the price of a movie ticket! And you only get to watch the damn thing ONCE! Rolling Eyes

Anyway . . . IMDB has several interesting trivia items for this production, in case anybody is interested.
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~ This was the most expensive Chinese film ever, with a budget of $135 million and, due to the huge amount of crew involved, had over 100 translators.

Note from me: If Hollywood hadn't destroyed their own industry by causing high production cost, we wouldn't need to make movies in China!

~ For his role as an archer, Matt Damon was trained in Hungary by Lajos Kassai, a world-champion archer.

Note from me: As the author of The Hero Experience — a novel four about teenage boys in the 1960s who create a hoax about superheroes armed with bows — this impresses me. Very Happy

Click on the link below and read the climax my enjoyable novel — available on Amazon for $19.92 — but free right here with illustrations I created myself! Cool

Then you can read the rest when you realize what you've missed . . .

~ James Horner was contracted to write a score to this movie before his death.

Note from me: The soundtrack is terrific, but I wich Mr. Horner had been the composer. Sad

~ This was director Yimou Zhang's first film almost entirely in English, with some lines in Chinese.

Note from me: The movie is quite skillfully directed.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)