Not only that Matt Damon's latest film "The Great Wall" received mixed reviews and performed poorly at the box office, it is also getting backlash for whitewashing Asian roles. He stars in "The Great Wall" as William Garin, a European mercenary searching for gunpowder in the medieval China. He was caught in a fight with CGI monsters on the Great Wall of China.
Zhang Yimou, "The Great Wall's" director, said that there was no whitewashing that happened. The group of heroes consists of four Chinese and just one white European. With that, people now bashed the movie for using the "white savior" trope.
IGN released an article saying that "The Great Wall" is Damon's worst-performing movie since 2011's "We Bought A Zoo." The movie grossed $18,475,685 on its opening week against it $224.5 million budget.
The reviews cannot save the movie's reputation either. It has a 36% "rotten" approval rating in Rotten Tomatoes. Its consensus says that for a Zhang movie with Damon, "The Great Wall" is neither exciting nor entertaining.
This is not the first time Hollywood was pointed out with its tendency to use white people as the hero or protagonist of a story. Last year, British actress Tilda Swinton was criticized for playing The Ancient One in "Doctor Strange," a character who was originally a white, old, Chinese man.
American actress Emma Stone was also slammed for playing as an Asian character in "Aloha". Scarlett Johannson was criticized for being chosen to play a Japanese character in "Ghost in the Shell."
The list could go on and on. But with the people now being aware and culturally sensitive, such actions could result to backlash as reported by Buzzfeed. These tweets show sarcasm on how "The Great Wall" and Matt Damon helped Asian people. Check out the tweets below.
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