The Mummy III: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

[AGateFan]

Yeah, that’s a fair review. I saw the movie, I thought it was fine but not as good as I was expecting.

Spoiler:

So first, a point they made in Bey0nds post that I whole heartily agree with is that I didn’t think Frasier looked nearly as old as his lines in the show would make you think he was and his "son" didn’t look much younger then Frasier. They looked the same age.

A second issue for me was the actress that played Evee (Maria Bello). I mean I am sure she’s a fine actress but she didn't seem like Evee. I would think the director would want Maria to at least try to play the Evee roll in the same manner as previously established by Rachel Weisz but that does not appear to have been the director’s vision. I had expected a joke to address the issue or the change of actresses, and I got exactly that, but it was a far more in-your-face joke then I expected and it fell flat. A sly mention by Frasier’s Rick O'Connell character would have been funnier IMHO.

Also, maybe it’s just me but Maria Bello reminded me a lot of Sigourney Weaver. I mean a LOT. Really, I couldn’t get past it. I kept thinking, "Dang she looks like Weaver, no Weavers way older now...but I wonder if anyone tells her she looks like Weaver". And the character was played more like a Weaver type roll IMHO. Not just any Weaver roll, but the kind of Btchy Working Girl character. I mean the character of Evee in this movie wasn't flat out mean and backstabbing like that Weaver character on Working Girl but she wasn't exactly the sweet, bumbling yet confident and cool Evee that I remember the character being. No doubt this actress had some coolness with the physical acting and I wouldn’t mind seeing her in another movie, but she wasn’t Evee.

Anyway, besides the casting of the Son and Evee the rest of the cast was as good as one would expect from a mummy movie. Everyone delivered their lines well.

Now to the actual spoiler portion of my spoiled review.

As for the movie, this one further reinforced to me that this series is a knock off on Indiana Jones. I think the only thing missing was the aliens and the refrigerator. Maybe it’s the cliché old archeologist that betrays them to the Chinese military guy who seemed to be played almost exactly like the Russian military lady in Indy. Also, the reveal that both O’Connell and Evee worked in Espionage during the war left me thinking "WTF I guess archeologist during that time of history were just a bunch of spies".

There was a ton of action, the snowmen were way cooler then I thought they would be, Jonathan was back to being his good whinny self and O'Connell was his good action self. Jet Li's emperor only spoke in Chinese (as it should be) and did a good job emoting. The actresses that played against him did a good job too. The story was fine, but not quite as funny as the ones in the past.

In the end I think I would give the movie a B or B-. I liked it well enough but would have been just as happy to have seen it on TV or DVD.

[Bee11]

i am really excited about this film
loved the first 2 and i've started to get into films with jet li in and films like it

[Dumper]

Unfortunately it's been slated by the critics, click here.

[the fifth man]

Unfortunately it's been slated by the critics, click here.

I rarely agree with critics anyways. I didn't think this movie was that bad at all. The other two were better, but still, it was enjoyable.

[Admiral Mappalazarou]

Okay, just got back.

...

One of the worst movies I seen in a long time. Definitely up there with The Cave and King Arthur in awful films.

[cheese]

I saw it the other day.

very very small spoils, nothing big.

Spoiler:

John Hannah was the only good thing in it. That and the joke about it being a different actress playing the woman

I can't reccomend seeing it. If you haven't seen it don't bother unless you're really desperate to.

[Admiral Mappalazarou]

Full review;

Spoiler:

Okay, I wasn't looking forward to seeing this movie. I didn't even want to go but my friends insisted and I had nothing better to do, so I arrived, paid £5.50 for the ticket, bought a massive pepsi and sat through the previews, and on a side note...Hellboy II looks awesome.

Anyway, The Mummy III or The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, the movie I sat through yesterday at the cinema with my friends. It started off predictable with the typical flashback sequence in the intro featuring the background to this instalment’s 'big undead bad guy' as well as covering how Ancient China was a magical and mysterious land full of large pyramid-like hills and cloudy weather, as well as being inhabited by people who like being bad just for the sheer thrill of it.

I expected this to develop more so into the film, I wanted the bad guy, General something-or-other, to slowly explain his motivation behind wanting to rule the entire planet. A little character development is all to be expected, I mean c’mon, Imhotep had the motivation of wanting to resurrect his dead girlfriend, The Scorpian King wanted some sort of revenge (as shown in his spin-off movie) which is why he summoned the Egyptian gods into wanting to ‘take back’ the rightful Arcadian world, but no. Nothing of that sort is seen in the third instalment. No no, General Jet li just wants to take over the world just because he thinks he can. Seriously, he’s bad because he likes being bad, he really enjoys being evil, that’s it.

This is emphasized on furthermore when he comes out with lines like ‘I will destroy freedom forever!’ near to the movies conclusion, if you can even call it a conclusion. But anyway, on step at a time…So the flashback sequence passed after showing us that somehow, going against the mythology of the first two wonderful movies of the franchise (I say ‘wonderful’, the Mummy Returns was adequate but watchable) and instantly diving into the fact that the ancient Egyptian gods and the ancient Chinese gods live on the same plain of existence, peacefully ignoring each other as they meddle in the affairs of the pitiful human children on the planet below. Somehow. That’s the only way logically, according to their own fictional mythology, that I see the happenings of this third instalment making any apparent sense. General Jet li has superpowers; he can ‘control the five elements’, but let’s face facts – so can Bruce Willis, Ian Holm and Chris Tucker. It’s not exactly something new, Rob Cohen, but thanks for your input into it. Without making any jokes as to how Jet Li can control fire, earth, air, water and Leeloo, let us continue on with my assessment of the action/adventure as a whole.

Moving on, we are re-introduced to our heroes, instantly acknowledging the fact that the parent O’Connell’s are incapable of aging but failed to pass this genetic defect onto their son who appears about twenty years older with no memory of his time as a prisoner to a big bald priest and his re-incarnated wife in the second instalment. See? The reset button has been pushed and held down before the central movie even begins; implying to me already that it is already going to suffer from a severe case of ****. Having said that, it doesn’t ignore the first two films completely (that’s actually three films but let’s ignore the dodgy younger brother with no friends, The Scorpian King, for now as it’ll over-cramp my already needlessly growing review), no, because occasionally (‘occasionally’ being an understatement) the major players yell out in the middle of a crowded Shanghai street how they’ve dealt with the un-dead before and have come through victorious in the past, much to the surprise of the surrounding Chinese people.

So after ‘being forced by a crazy old man’ to resurrect the long dead General Jet Li, who by the way was turned into a statue along with his army because he killed a witch’s lover and then stabbed her after she declined a generous offer to ‘get busy’ with him, the O’Connell’s jump into action and chase the evil emperor across the country, into the snowy mountains and then across a large desert before finally, after several confrontations, watching him resurrect his stone army. Being the ‘intelligent’ and ‘lovable’ retards that they are, the adventurous family finds guidance from the witch (turns out that she and her daughter are immortal…No, I’m not making this up) and she ‘summons’ the bodies of the dead that the emperor buried beneath the Great Wall of China when it was constructed.

When the un-dead corpses of the undeserved damned arise, they’re not too curious as to why they were killed, how they were brought back or why they have to fight and die again, but just get on with the job and fight the opposing army of statues in the midst of the sprawling desert, as the good guys close in on the Emperor with the only sword that can kill him…

(Deep breath)

So there’s a big battle, lots of the un-dead get torn up and mutilated as they quickly begin to deconstruct the approaching statues with the swords and axes that they were buried with in case they were ever brought back to kill anyone…(sigh) and the good guys face off with Jet Li, with the father and son (who had apparently fallen out at some point but its hard to notice through the cardboard cut-outs of their characters) team up and succeed in stabbing the emperor in the heart, which makes him explode like a volcano…Seriously, there’s lava and everything. So, like the Anubis Jackal army from the climax of the Mummy Returns, the remains of the two fighting armies get swept away by a tide of sand and everyone lives happily ever after. The end.

There are possibly hundreds of clichés that I didn’t mention, like how the ninja who attacks Alex in the beginning is a woman he’s destined to fall in love with, or how she ends up making a big story thing out of how she can never fall in love because she can never die (Doctor Who can pull this trick off, Rob Cohen and his writing team can’t…Neither can the poor actors who were being paid to perform this dribble)…

On a final note, it acts more of a spin-off, I think, than a third instalment. I say that mostly because there’s not a single mummy in the entire movie. They keep mentioning mummies frequently through out the entire film but there’s no mummies in it, not even in the museum… And so the title itself is a complete lie.

Apparently they’re out to make more sequels, and so this is my response;



Seriously though, go and watch Wall-E, or Hellboy II, or Batman again...This steaming pile of crap isn't worth any money. My first words ten minutes into it were quite simply 'How did this get made into a movie?'...

[Flyboy]

Spoiler:

Utterly lackluster movie imo.

I felt the new actress playing Eve was utterly wooden and didn't even embody the spirit of the character as portrayed in films one and two, the jokes got stupider and frankly the character of Alex annoyed the hell out of me. It strikes me that this film is as bad as the old black and white "Return of the Cursed Mummy from the Dracula's dungeon" type movies, just with bigger budgets and better FX.

Would not see again.... ever.

[Kezia]

Spoiler:

Wow, this one was a stinker. The script was cringeworthy from start to finish, and the bland characters weren't helped by the weak acting. I'm not surprised Rachel Weisz turned this down; I bet she took one look at the script, threw it in the trash can and ran as fast as she could in the opposite direction. As if that wasn't bad enough her replacement is simply awful (is that supposed to be a British accent or what?! seriously.)

This movie was an obvious cash-in but failed to be even remotely entertaining. Very, very weak. The fact that this was the very next movie I saw after Dark Knight did not help.

[Flyboy]

Spoiler:

Wow, this one was a stinker. The script was cringeworthy from start to finish, and the bland characters weren't helped by the weak acting. I'm not surprised Rachel Weisz turned this down; I bet she took one look at the script, threw it in the trash can and ran as fast as she could in the opposite direction. As if that wasn't bad enough her replacement is simply awful (is that supposed to be a British accent or what?! seriously.)

This movie was an obvious cash-in but failed to be even remotely entertaining. Very, very weak. The fact that this was the very next movie I saw after Dark Knight did not help.

I reccomend everyone go watch the new X-Files movie instead.

Tons better.

[HyperCaz]

I saw it the other day.

very very small spoils, nothing big.

Spoiler:

John Hannah was the only good thing in it. That and the joke about it being a different actress playing the woman

I can't reccomend seeing it. If you haven't seen it don't bother unless you're really desperate to.

Totally agree about...

Spoiler:

John Hannah. His dialogue was quite amusing and I laughed at the Peru thing at the end. The joke about being an "entirely different woman"... was amusing, but kind of painful.

I guess I fell into the "really desperate" camp. As for the script, I admit to expecting worse (come on, written by the guys who do Smallville... not promising) and didn't mind some of the dialogue, even if most of it was yucky.

The movie might have survived the script... had any of the original chemistry been present. You just can't...have a good Mummy movie without the Fraser/Weisz dynamic. Just can't.

But I was entertained for most of the movie... some laugh-out-loud moments. By the way, if you heard a snort-laugh in the cinema, it was probably me.

[Admiral Mappalazarou]

I reccomend everyone go watch the new X-Files movie instead.

Tons better.

Or we could all just go and see Batman again.

[Flyboy]

Or we could all just go and see Batman again.

Hmmm.....


No. "X-Files: I want to believe" all the way. Second best film ever.

[Franklyn Blaze]

Hmmm.....


No. "X-Files: I want to believe" all the way. Second best film ever.

You're not serious? I thought it was a slightly longer bad episode than a movie. It wasn't even mildly scary, and I'm a scaredy cat!

[Flyboy]

I agree it wasn't scary, but some X-Files eps were meant to be creepy. It was a really strong plot driven story with great character moments. Nowhere near up to the standards of the first movie, but highly enjoyable. I absolutely adored this film, and the fact that it felt like a longer than normal episode was ideal to me.

There's been a lot said about the US/European reaction to the movie, Gillian Anderson said herself that it was more of a European film, as they don't do the whole sex, explosions, CGI thing that apparently Americans want. I agree I think. I find it dissapointing that often people think that only films with massive SFX deserve to be big screen.