Live Recap: The Great Wall Panel With Matt Damon At NYCC

ComicBook.com is live at the New York Comic Con event spread between the Javits Center, Madison [...]

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ComicBook.com is live at the New York Comic Con event spread between the Javits Center, Madison Square Garden, and the Hammerstein Ball Room. The four-day event will cover topics from Nickelodeon to Netflix and everywhere in between with live panels, celebrity interviews, breaking news and more.

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*** 12:30 p.m. ET - The Great Wall panel begins at Madison Square Garden ***

The lights go down to queue a video. A trailer for the Great Wall plays. An army of men in yellow, red, and other colors prepare for battle on the wall.

The lights come back for moderator Dave Carter to take the stage.

Matt Damon is introduced Carter quickly prompts the audience to sing happy birthday for Damon.

After the song, Damon details how big the film is and how he has never done something this big before. "It felt very exciting to encorporate Chinese mythology into a big Hollywood sword and sandal epic," Damon says. "It's unlike anything I've ever seen."

On set, Damon even suggested a couple lines of dialogue which director Zhang was grateful for.

Jian Tian is introduced to the stage.

"This character is incredibly powerful female character," Tian says of her character. " She's very strong, brave, and determined. As a leader of the army she shows a lot of wisdom and courage. One of the things I loved most about the story is the quality between men and women in leadership roles. The respect that all of these wrriors had for each other regardless of gender is something I wish we cuold see more of in film and real life."

"This character brings a lot of girl power to the movie," Tian says. "She is such a kick-ass role."

"The girls in this, they really are bad-ass," Damon adds. "The woman wear blue, theyre called the Crane Corps."

Carter brings out Narcos and Game of Thrones star Pedro Pascal. Pascal says his and Damon's character are "partners in crime" and reveals Damon's characters name to be William.

Pascal tells a story about writing a letter to the director expressing his gratitude.

Next up is Wang Junkai, who gets a huge applause from fans. Through a translator, he says New York is "a very beautiful city."

"Working on an international blockbuster is extravagant. It's awesome," he says. "I learned a lot. I can really concentrate a lot and learn so much from everybody."

"He's a young emperor," Junkai says of his character. "Even though he's terrified on the inside and the outside, he's super strong."

A highlight reel of the director's work rolls. Hero, Raise the Red Lantern, House of Flying Daggers, and other films play as Damon narrates with praises, saying, "I've been dying to work with him for years," and calls out his direction of the Beijing Olympics. Pascal chimes in with more praise for the director.

"Making this movie is awesome," Zhang says. "Being able to work with Matt and Pedro and so many great actors and working with a crew of over a thousand people was so awesome."

The film took three years to make, he reveals, joking that it took so long despite having over 100 translators.

"This movie is made for the world audience," Zhang says. "We have people working from all over the world, from the United States and from China, and we worked really hard to present this movie to you guys."

"We made a Great Wall," the director explains, "To facilitate filming, we made three walls." The film was not allowed to use the real wall.

"The most interesting thing is actually the monster," he goes on. "Fighting a monster on the Great Wall, it's gonna be spectacular. You've never seen that before."

Clark makes mockery of big walls keeping unwanted things out.

Damon reads a text meesage from his dad which wishes him a happy birthday and says, "In one month, we can kiss Trump goodbye." He goes on to joke that if he does get elected, Mexico might put up a wall to keep him out.

A trailer concludes the panel.

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