Matt Damon has starred in a roster of successful film projects like The Bourne Trilogy, The Departed, and others. But not every project of his could be a homerun. However, there was one feature he knew would be a disaster while he was filming it. And unfortunately for the star, there was nothing he could do about it.
Matt Damon knew early on this movie wouldn’t be good
Despite his impressive filmography, even Damon isn’t immune to starring in a few Hollywood clunkers every now and then. But for Damon, the only thing worse than starring in a Hollywood bomb, is doing a movie that he knows is going to fail while filming. It was a horrific experience he had to live through when he did 2017’s The Great Wall. The critically and commercially disappointing feature saw Damon as an ancient mercenary who helps Chinese warriors battle a mysterious force. But Damon could see The Great Wall’s lackluster performance coming from a mile away after the film’s director was forced to compromise his story by financial backers.
“I was like, this is exactly how disasters happen,” Damon once said on the WTF with Marc Maron podcast. “It doesn’t cohere. It doesn’t work as a movie.”
So Damon had to do the rest of the shoot knowing the film wouldn’t turn out the way anyone wanted it to.
“I came to consider that the definition of a professional actor; knowing you’re in a turkey and going, ‘OK, I’ve got four more months. It’s the up at dawn siege on Hamburger Hill. I am definitely going to die here, but I’m doing it,’” he said. “That’s as s***ty as you can feel creatively, I think. I hope to never have that feeling again.”
But there were certain criticisms of the movie that Damon might’ve still heard even if the movie managed to stick to its original premise. The Great Wall was accused of perpetuating the white savior concept seen in many stories that some considered tone deaf. When reading the script, it wasn’t a complex that Damon overlooked, either. He even compared it to other movies that were once accused of the white savior trope like Avatar, a film he has some history with.
“I saw the movie as the exact same plot as Lawrence of Arabia, Dances With Wolves [and] Avatar,” he continued. “It’s an outsider comes into a new culture, finds value in the culture, brings some skill from the outside that aids them in their fight against whatever and they’re all changed forever.”
James Cameron tried to move away from the ‘Avatar’ white savior trope with the sequel
Cameron was well aware of the white savior criticisms leveled at his film. But Avatar may have some wriggle room when it comes to this looked-down-upon stereotype. Cameron’s Jake Sully, played by Sam Worthington, is interfering in the affairs of a tribe of fictional aliens rather than real people. Still, Cameron acknowledged the criticism, and felt that the sequel The Way of Water was a perfect response to it.
“Jake is just a father, he’s part of the tribe, he’s much more submissive in a way,” Cameron once told Unilad. “When he shows up to the Metkayina as a refugee and says ‘take us in’, he’s not running things. He doesn’t want to run things.”
However, Cameron isn’t quick to brush off conversations of race when it comes to the Avatar franchise. Rather, he welcomes it.
“I think the important thing is to listen and to be sensitive to issues that people have,” he said.
“Here’s my philosophy in general,” Cameron added. “The people who have been victimized historically are always right. It’s not up to me, speaking from a perspective of white privilege, if you will, to tell them that they’re wrong. I have to listen. I have to say, ‘Okay, if that’s what you’re feeling, that’s what you’re feeling.’ And it has validity. It’s pointless for me to say, ‘Well, that was never my intention.’”
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