The poster says the Great Wall took 1,700 years to build. This is technically accurate, since it was actually constructed as a series of several walls built separately over that time by various ruling dynasties. Each new wall section built by any single ruler would take approximately ten to 20 years to construct.
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Spoilers (1)
This was the most expensive Chinese film ever, with a budget of $135 million and, due to the huge amount of crew involved, had over 100 translators.
For his role as an archer, Matt Damon was trained in Hungary by Lajos Kassai, a world-champion archer.
The filmmakers were denied permission to film on the actual Great Wall, so the locations were added digitally.
The colored mountains in the film are real. They can be seen in Zhangye in the northwest region of China.
The beasts in this film are called the taotie, named after an evil fiend in Chinese mythology. Here they are represented as alien beings.
Matt Damon and his family spent nearly half a year in China during filming.
James Horner was contracted to write a score to this movie before his death.
This was Andy Lau's first Hollywood movie.
Bryan Cranston was in early talks for the role of Ballard.
Andy Lau and Matt Damon both played the same role of an undercover gang member working in the police force. Lau played a triad member and senior inspector working for the Hong Kong Police in Infernal Affairs (2002), and Damon played his American counterpart, Staff Sgt. Colin Sullivan of the Massachusetts State Police, in its American remake The Departed (2006).
This was director Yimou Zhang's first film almost entirely in English, with some lines in Chinese.
Edward Zwick was set to direct at one point, with Henry Cavill to star.
This was the second film Matt Damon and Pedro Pascal starred in together, the first being The Adjustment Bureau (2011).
Benjamin Walker was cast for a role in the film but dropped out.
In the first battle against the tao tei, the Spaniard Tovar uses a red cape, much as would a matador in a bullfight in Spain.
Spoilers
When William (Matt Damon) was asked if he had been left behind before, he replied, "Yes. Twice before. And it didn't end well for them." This is an homage to his previous films Interstellar (2014) and The Martian (2015), in both of which he was left behind on other planets and the expedition went wrong.
