“This guy can do things that no one else can do”: Matt Damon finally landed his dream director and then disowned the movie they made
Having been joined at the hip until they shared an Academy Award for Good Will Hunting, when Matt Damon and Ben Affleck split off in separate directions, it became clear what their individual goals were.
Affleck clearly had designs on becoming a movie star, which explains why he was in two Michael Bay blockbusters, replaced Harrison Ford as Jack Ryan, agreed to suit up as a superhero in Daredevil, collaborated with John Woo on Paycheck, and thought Gigli was a good idea.
That makes it all the more ironic that Damon, who’s always wanted to direct but never has, unlike his lifelong best friend, sought out the industry’s most esteemed filmmakers, working with Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, Anthony Minghella, Steven Soderbergh, and Terry Gilliam, to name a few.
To ladle on even more irony, he also achieved that which had eluded Affleck across multiple attempts when The Bourne Identity single-handedly turned him into an action hero, and that was a film he was concerned would destroy his career before the amnesiac assassin became an instant big-screen icon.
Even when it’s a director who’s never even considered making an American movie with an American cast, Damon will still put them on the wish-list in the hopes that his dream could one day become a reality. When it did, though, the star realised that he should have been careful what he wished for.
With epic and awe-inspiring pictures like Hero, House of Flying Daggers, Raise the Red Lantern, and more to his name, Zhang Yimou was well-established as one of his era’s finest auteurs. However, there was little chance Damon would enter his orbit, unless he ended up helming a mega-budget blockbuster that needed a little Stateside star power to enhance its box office prospects.
As fate would have it, that opportunity fell into his lap when The Great Wall, although Damon had a funny feeling it was meant to be. “Look, this guy can do things that no one else can do,” the actor explained. “His movies are one thing, but when I saw what he did orchestrating the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, I just knew that somehow, somewhere, we would work together.”
They did, and the results weren’t pretty. Even on its worst day, the premise of ‘Zhang Yimou directing a $150 million, 11th-century fantasy flick where the Great Wall of China is defended against hordes of monsters’ should have been entertaining at the very least, but it wasn’t even that, and it’s probably the worst thing he’s ever made.
As for Damon, he knew it was doomed from the start, confessed that the realisation he was making a terrible, terrible film plunged him into a state of depression, distanced himself from both the movie and the associated whitewashing accusations, and now he lives in a world where his children make fun of him for having been in it. Yes, he finally got the chance to work with Yimou after decades of daydreaming, but at what cost?
