- The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
- Opening Date: 08/01/2008
- STUDIO: Universal
- TRAILER: Trailer
- ACCOMPLICES: Official Site
The Charge
A new evil awakens.
Opening Statement
You ain’t kidding. It’s called corporate greed and misplaced enthusiasm. Between the trailers and the pre-release promos that showed up on the recent special edition DVD releases of the first two films, Universal had us believing that The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor could be the sleeper hit of the summer. But the first thing that entered my mind when the movie ended were the immortal words of Frank Cross (Bill Murray) from the perennial holiday classic Scrooged, “Wow… did that suck!”
Facts of the Case
The year is 1947. It’s been fourteen years since we’ve last seen the O’Connells and much has changed. Rick (Brendan Fraser) is retired, spending his days learning to fly fish or falling asleep in his chair while reading. Evelyn (Maria Bello) is a best selling author, with two books detailing her Egyptian exploits and a third supposedly on the way. Alex (Luke Ford) is following in his parents’ footsteps, trading in his proper British accent for a California surfer twang and romping across the globe in search of buried treasure. On a dig outside of Shanghai, Alex and his archeology professor uncover the tomb of the legendary Dragon Emperor (Jet Li), who along with his entire army were turned to stone by a witch whom he doublecrossed. Of course, waiting in the wings are betrayal and the requisite bad guys who want to revive the emperor and help him conquer the world. So, of course, it’s up to the O’Connell clan to dust off their swords and guns and save the world once again from unspeakable evil.
The Evidence
This movie is such an unholy mess, I don’t know where to begin. I suppose we should give credit where credit is due, and that’s kudos to Rachel Weisz for staying far away from this project. She’s the only winner here. Everyone else was either duped into believing they were working on something truly special or swallowing their pride and cashing a paycheck. I realize it takes an army of production folks to pull off a feature film and I hate to cavalierly discredit the time and energy they put into their work, but The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor looks and feels like the failed pilot to an ill conceived television series.
How is it that the guys who gave us Smallville and Spider-man 2 can pen a script so awful it makes your brain hurt? Not only does it begin with 10 minutes of the most boring exposition of any adventure film in recent memory, but it follows that up with an additional 30-40 minutes of nothingness. Book readings, fly fishing, retirement woes — in what alternate universe does that make for a great action picture? By the time the bullets start flying and the car chases begin, half of the audience has either left the theatre or fallen asleep, only to be woken up by such stunning dialogue as…
Rick: Fire! You’re on fire!!
Jonathan: What?
Rick: Your ass is on fire!
Jonathan: My ass is on fire?! Put it out!
Rick: I’m trying!
Jonathan: Spank my ass, Rick!
or
Evelyn: What is that god awful smell?
Jonathan: The Yak yacked.
…and it only gets worse from there. Alfred Gough and Miles Millar proceed to lift recognizable elements from other action adventure films to cobble together a story that’s about as fresh and vibrant as a 3,000 year old corpse.
For anyone who enjoyed Stephen Sommers The Mummy and The Mummy Returns, the elements that made those films sing — the character development, the scenery chewing bad guy, the sweeping cinematography, the special effects, and the unbridled classic movie serial fun — are nowhere to be found here. Instead, director Rob Cohen (Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story) delivers characters nobody cares about, tensionless action sequences, a bad guy whose motives and actions are confusing at best, cuddly pet Yetis, a trip to the front door of Shangril-La (you can look at, but we don’t have the creative energy to take you inside), some of the worst ADR work ever recorded (for the character Lin), and imagery so flat you’ll wonder why this is a $50 Million feature.
Oh, and there are no mummies here. The emperor and his army were turned to terra cotta by a curse. When awaked, one would think they would revert back to human form, but instead they become animated stone men and horses. And for some reason, when the stone breaks, it quickly reforms in blaze of fiery glory. But the big guy can break off his face and throw it at people, so there is that.
The cast does their best to sell whatever it is this script is hocking. Brendan Fraser is as charming as ever, looking completely trapped in a role that’s barely a shadow of its former self. What’s worse, he’s a 39 year old forced to unconvincingly play father to a 26 year old. There’s no way anyone is buying this father/son relationship, nor the fact that he’s aged 14 years from the last film. Maria Bello steps into the role of Evelyn and while she works very hard to duplicate Rachel’s voice, there’s no connection to the original character whatsoever. The same holds true for Luke Ford, whose Alex bears little resemblance to his intelligent, mischevous predecessor. John Hannah is back as Jonathan, but armed with a script full of lame jokes and lacking Rachel to play off of, the character withers and dies… as does the audience.
Script and direction aside, the most confounding aspect of the film is why go to the trouble of casting Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh, two of the greatest Asian action heroes of all time, and give them nothing to do? We see Jet during the pre-credits flashback (with one minor action set piece) and again in the final act. But his actual fight time is negligible, consisting primarily of an all too brief sword fight with Michelle, and a hand to hand melee with Brendan which makes absolutely no contextual sense. The emperor is a guy who has complete control over the Five Elements — fire, water, earth, wood, and metal — and yet he wastes his time getting into a fist fight with a guy whom he could destroy with little more than a thought? The entire film is laden with these head scratchers.
Closing Statement
It’s time to seal up this franchise for another 75 years, until such time when some ambitious young writer/director comes along with a fresh take on the genre. Until then, Universal can move onto mining its other classic creature features.
The Verdict
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor is more guilty than you can possibly imagine.
2/10
5 comments ↓
Wow, tough review. I saw the film, thought it was pretty silly. I wouldn’t care to see it again. Still, I found it to be pleasant, amusingly dumb, and far more watchable than Sommers’ wretched headache-inducer “The Mummy Returns”. Neither comes close to the entertainment value of “The Mummy”, though.
Sounds like Tomb of the Dragon Emperor met everyone’s expectations; fun overall, but Brendan Frasier tries too hard to act, so he has an unnatural feel on screen
lyk yaaa
its sooo kl
well ill say mumy returns ia even more action thrilled then this but ill giv it 7/10
for the fighting and the yetis
This film looked like the script had been penned in about two minutes flat. Or more likely the ‘one size fits all generic script’ was taken down from it’s shelf, a couple of names were changed and off this movie rolled from the mass produced factory line without another thought.
Gone was Rachel Weisz who obviously saw the sense in not appearing in this travesty. Gone was a ‘Mummy’ who instead was replaced by a clay baked Jet Li who seems to be cropping up in movies more than a bout of the pox in medieval Europe. Gone was the humour and sense of fun apparent in the other films in this franchise to be replaced by meaningless, endless chases, so called action sequences. and a bunch of washed up would be thespians taking their flimsy parts way to seriously.
This film unashamedly confirms Ervine’s comment that “American motion pictures are written by the half-educated for the half-witted.”
I’d like to see you pathetic excuses for humans to come up with a better script, come on you have only 5 minutes (long than what moriarte said it took to make) to come up with a script that is better. Better start writing.
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