The second Mummy sequel isn’t going to win any Academy Awards in the writing department, that much becomes almost immediately clear. It’s been years since I’ve seen either of the other preceding films, although that doesn’t matter so much. The third installment in the Mummy franchise starts out with an extensive back story of the Chinese Emperor Qin (pronounced “cheen”), the “dragon emperor,” and how he came to be fossilized along with thousands of his soldiers. Obviously, wild liberties are taken with the story in order to turn it into a Hollywood film, although for an introduction into a half-assed movie, it’s not a bad dramatization.
Our friends Rick and Evelyn, now married (and now Maria Bello), have retired from the action adventure life and are trying to be boring middle aged parents in the English countryside, until they find themselves faced with the opportunity to deliver a priceless artifact to China, where their son Alex is secretly excavating an ancient Tomb. Soon, of course, the Tomb turns out to be cursed and the artifact that they are delivering turns out to be more than meets the eye.
It seems that the despotic Dragon Emperor has been awoken and now wants to come back and turn China into a unified nation under his rule. China was in the middle of a civil war at that time, between the Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek and the Communists under Mao Tse-tung. There had been widespread battling between warlords throughout China since the Mongols were overthrown in 1911, so the nation was in bad need of order.
Of course, the Dragon Emperor had no intention of creating a benevolent government, he planned a vicious, brutal dictatorship where freedom was a myth. Of course, in reality, less than two years after the movie takes place, Chairman Mao took over, proclaimed the foundation of the People’s Republic of China with himself as Emperor, and began his vicious, brutal dictatorship where freedom was a myth. Ouch!
The movie puts all of it’s stock into it’s special effect and climactic battle sequences, but unfortunately the special effects, like in the two movies before it, are interesting but not convincing for a second, and the battle sequences are exactly the same thing we’ve seen dozens of times before. Even the army of the dead has been done before, and using far more primitive but much more effective cinematic trickery, in Army of Darkness, a much better movie than this one.
Unfortunately, Jet Li turns out to be nothing more than a marketing ploy for the movie, since he literally only appears in it for a few minutes. The vast majority of his screen time is as a special effect, a bizarre living statue that occasionally hurls pieces of his regenerating face in anger and talks through a throat full of gravel. At one point he morphs into a three-headed dragon and, while the morphing is not unimpressive, Jet Li fans are sure to be disappointed that they have to spend the entire movie waiting for him to show up.
Just in case you forgot for a minute that this is an American movie, some CGI yeti show up late in the movie (to which O-Conell responds, “Aboninable snowmen?!” Yeah I had the same response, just with more question marks) and turn into stupid, stupid comic relief. They literally act exactly like frat boys, kicking bad guys through field goals and puking and whatnot. What a joke.
There are several movies this summer that have been more impressive than I expected, but sadly The Mummy 3 is just not one of them. GI suggest going to see Pineapple Express instead…
This is me kicking it with the real Dragon Emperor back in May '07. We go way back.
Oh and just so you all know, I auditioned for a role in the movie but they said I didn't look Chinese enough. Sometimes I just don't get those people.