Lin takes the group to Shangri-La, where Zi Yuan still lives and heals Rick's wound. The Emperor throws a sword at him, but Rick shoves Alex aside and is stabbed instead. With the help of Yetis summoned by Lin, the group hold off Yang's soldiers but the Emperor discovers Shangri-La's location. He accepts Yang's service but kills Wilson and escapes, despite the O'Connells' attempt to stop him in a pursuit.Īlong with Evelyn's brother Jonathan Carnahan, the O'Connells and the mysterious woman, Lin, travel to a stupa in the Himalayas that will reveal the path to Shangri-La when the Eye is placed on top of it. They open it, but it accidentally lands on the statue of the carriage driver, which is revealed to actually be the Emperor's mummified body. Yang believes that the Dragon Emperor is the one who can lead China out of the chaos following World War II and plans to resurrect him using the Eye, which contains the Elixir of Life. However, they learn that Wilson works for a rogue military faction led by General Yang, who had provided the financial backing of Alex's expedition. Meanwhile, the British government entrusts the O'Connells to take the Eye of Shangri-La (a huge pear-shaped gemstone) back to China. Though attacked by a mysterious woman, they succeed in bringing the coffin to Shanghai. In 1946, Alex O'Connell, Rick and Evelyn O'Connell's son, and his archaeology professor Roger Wilson locate the Emperor's tomb. He stabs Zi Yuan with a dagger, but having foreseen this event, she immolates and imprisons the Emperor and his soldiers in clay, turning them into the Terracotta Army, and flees. She seemingly casts a spell on him in Sanskrit, before he executes General Ming, his trusted friend and Zi Yuan's secret lover. The Emperor soon grows fearful that his death will end all he has accomplished and summons Zi Yuan, a sorceress who is said to know the secret of immortality. He orders the construction of the Great Wall of China to bury and curse his dead enemies, eventually learning power over the traditional Chinese Wu Xing elements of fire, water, earth, wood and metal. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.In ancient China, a brutal and tyrannical warlord unites the country's kingdoms into an empire and becomes the Dragon Emperor. On Metacritic, the film has a score of 42 out of 100, based on 40 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". The website's critical consensus reads, "For a Yimou Zhang film featuring Matt Damon and Willem Dafoe battling ancient monsters, The Great Wall is neither as exciting nor as entertainingly bonkers as one might hope.". On Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, the film has an approval rating of 35% based on 234 reviews, and an average rating of 4.90/10. This is easily one of the most controversy of all time.
When a mercenary warrior (Matt Damon) is imprisoned within the Great Wall, he discovers the mystery behind one of the greatest wonders of the world.