The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.

Review #2583: The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.

Cast:

Brendan Fraser (Rick O'Connell), Maria Bello (Evelyn Carnahan-O'Connell), John Hannah (Jonathan Carnahan), Russell Wong (General Ming Guo), Liam Cunningham (Mad Dog Maguire), Luke Ford (Alex O'Connell), Isabella Leong (Lin), Michelle Yeoh (Zi Yuan), Jet Li (Qin Shi Huang), Anthony Wong (General Yang), Jessey Meng (Colonel Choi), David Calder (Professor Roger Wilson), Albert Kwan (Chu Wah), with James Bradford (Jameson), and Freda Foh Shen (the Narrator) Directed by Rob Cohen (#043 - The Fast and the Furious, #924 - The Boy Next Door, #1089 - Stealth)

Review: 

"I think it's the charisma of the idea of the undead and how they are cursed because they can't be successful denying mortality. I think we ascribe powers to the undead--if something has transcended death, it can't be normal. And whenever something unsettling has power, it makes a great villain. Movies are made by great villains, not by the heroes. A movie like this depends on how bad the bad guy is, so the good guys can rise to the occasion."

You know, with The Mummy [1999] (as devised by Stephen Sommers, Lloyd Fonvielle, Kevin Jarre, which in turn was a loose remake of the 1932 movies of the same name), you could see the appeal of having a good ol' adventure within a loose deal of romance within tinges of horror, and, well, some humor. The Mummy Returns [2001]...was almost as decent. Maybe it was rushed, maybe it was a bit too hollow to really make for a quality sequel, but it was still a crowd-pleaser. Seven long years later, there was a third The Mummy movie for folks of the new millennium to enjoy. I suppose it seems timely to cover a film that won't even be considered a "direct sequel" to Returns (2001) by 2027 because somehow, someway, there is an impending Mummy movie (okay, there was that one Mummy movie released in 2026, but let's not get into that now*). By 2004, Stephen Sommers, director of the previous Mummy movies, was not keen on coming back for a third movie, feeling that it would just be too hard to make it really come together like the first two, although he did co-produce it; directing duties went to Rob Cohen*. Screenwriting duties went to the duo of Alfred Gough and Miles Millar (you might recognize them from such scripts as Lethal Weapon 4 [1998], the Shanghai movies [2000, 2003]). Made on a larger budget than the last two films (estimated at over $145 million), the movie was a mild success with audiences.

It's not exactly a mummy movie, if you want to be technical, since the Emperor and his army is actually just encased in clay as part of a curse that draws upon actual history, mainly the Terracotta Army (the real Army is a collection of ceramic sculptures of the armies of Emperor Qin Shi Huang that was buried with him in his mausoleum). Now, are we talking about archeology (because sometimes I have links for that) or we talking about a middling sequel? Honestly, I didn't have many expectations for this movie, mainly because the recasting of Rachel Weisz for Maria Bello could not possibly be a good omen for a film that will also feature further moments within the parent-son dynamic of adventure that surely isn't a discount version of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (incidentally, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull came out two months before Dragon Emperor). And, well, it is a pretty mediocre movie, filled with possibly even less energy between the people you want to see (our human goofballs stumbling around in the history books). But it is sometimes funny within all of the stops thrown in to try and elevate this shambling spectacle that honestly is almost more interesting than the previous movie. You get CG catlike yeti, Shangri-La (who else but crib from Lost Horizon?), attempts to look like 1946 that doesn't really look that timely, further CG amusements involving dragons, the Great Wall having a litany of dead folks coming out of it, and more within a 112-minute runtime that somehow seems rushed to oblivion. Fraser* just doesn't have that much to genuinely do besides be stuck in cartoonish dynamics with a present-only-in-spirit Bello and present-in-theory Ford, who each can't deliver anything other than tired remarks and only hints of an actual connection. How hard is it to have gone with a plan to move on from Arnold Vosloo in the whole "evil mummy with a reign of terror"? Evidently, not too easy of a plan. It isn't even worth trying to see Li or Yeoh try to pull the local flavor of "go-go mystic bullshit" because honestly, there is barely anything worth mentioning that you haven't seen in some way before in constrained drama (they are the ones who start the movie, mind you, hence the narrator credit) that goes for little charm and little everything, honestly. Hannah might as well be sleepwalking through the experience, which isn't something worth saying for the only other regular besides Fraser to be in all three movies. After a while, you really do just go through the motions of watching this movie do the bare minimum. The magic of the first movie was those folks (Fraser, Hannah, Weisz) intermixing with mayhem for actual warmth and fun. The second just ran with the spectacle at the expense of really challenging anything and the third just feels tired when undead folks are going around mowing each other down or in its evitable finish of folks getting the girl and so on. You can do better than checking out this middle-of-the-road movie.

Overall, I give it 5 out of 10 stars,

Song of the day!

*Honestly, I didn't have time to see it. Who the hell releases a mummy movie in April? Also, who the hell thought it would make sense to call it "Lee Cronin's The Mummy"? Are you kidding me? Really? Oh but it was to alleviate the confusion from other "The Mummy" movies - shit, just put the year in the title to really set yourself apart. Quibble over.

*In 2019, Cohen was accused of sexually assaulting his trans daughter as a child. Incidentally, he has not directed a movie since 2018.

*There are some movies that have future Academy Award winning actors, why not two with Brendan Fraser and Michelle Yeoh here?