The Empire of Effects by Julie A. Turnock

Author:Julie A. Turnock
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 2022-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Fig. 4.03 The Great Wall (2017): The humans’ side consists of a well-organized and exquisitely trained army who fight not only fiercely but with martial artistry.

As the onslaught continues, the cerulean-armored, female Crane Division leaps balletically into action, diving from parapets hanging from cords. They fiercely stab at the wall-crawling Tao Tei with their lances, but empty, bloody hoops metonymically represent their sacrificial numbers. The Tao Tei queen, shielded by a force of paladins, barks transmitted orders to her throng, which they receive as if by radio waves. A few individual Tao Tei breach the top of the wall, so we can see them fight the Nameless Order in close combat. William and Tovar are released from their bonds, in time for William to show his archery and fighting skills and save the life of the general’s son. The Spaniard Tovar even gets to break out a bit of toreador skills in fighting the beast, waving a red cape so that William can kill it. After a lengthy pitched battle, the queen inexplicably signals a retreat, and the Tao Tei rush back to the depths of the valley, pulling their dead and injured along with them. The Nameless Order regroups for the next fight, with some new information about their Western captives. The sequence is conceived and edited similarly to the Battle of Helm’s Deep in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, with sweeping camera moves that highlight scale in long shots and in plummeting virtual tracking shots, rapid cutting between the two sides picking up pace for suspense, and an emphasis on both sides’ strategic coordination. In other words, as demonstrated in this early battle, The Great Wall’s effects strategies and priorities emphasize the expanded scale and size, height, and expanse available to the movie.

At one point in the film, Andy Lau’s strategist (described in the press releases as “alchemist, intellectual and technological innovator”38) characterizes the Tao Tei as “greed unchecked,” “devouring all meat” in their path. Moreover, the conception of the effects and the technological aesthetics used to depict them draw significant differences between the two sides. The hordes of lizardlike Tao Tei are seemingly made up of pure algorithm, which systematically swarm in formation as they attack (figure 4.04). As the ILM VFX supervisor put it: “Zhang Yimou wanted [the Tao Tei] to move in specific formations and form patterns.”39 Their appearances attacking the Great Wall are regular as well, occurring predictably every sixty years.

In contrast, the human multitude, instead of an unthinking, automated digital mass, is frequently seen in medium shot to demonstrate pointedly that they are not digitally generated (film promotion bragged of 500-plus costumed extras).40 The Chinese Nameless Order troops are a color-coded, well-trained, disciplined crack force, instilled with ideals of duty and the honor of protecting their homeland. They are masters of the most advanced knowledge and technology (including gunpowder) available to them. Importantly, although many human troops and most of the Great Wall environments are digitally generated, only the Tao Tei attacks are represented as markedly CGI, perhaps even in a dated way.

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