“You’d be surprised, Mr. Conway, age is a limit we impose upon ourselves.”
– Chang from Lost Horizon (1937)
“What say you? What say you? I am Isildur’s heir. Fight for me. And I will hold your oaths fulfilled. What say you?”
– Aragorn from The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
– Dr. Indiana Jones from Indiana Jones and The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull
We live in very interesting times. A year ago, I would never have given any thought to Rob Cohen’s The Mummy: Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor. The first two Mummy films were fun, disposable entertainment that owed more to the Indiana Jones films than to the great Mummy films from Universal Pictures and Hammer Film Productions. No one would call Stephen Sommers a visionary, but he knew how to make decent summer popcorn films loaded with CGI effects and pleasing characters. The best thing to come out of The Mummy Returns was Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as the Scorpion King. He even got his spin off film the following year– The Scorpion King. If anything, the films showed that The Rock was the rightful heir to the action hero genre. In December of last year, National Treasure: Book Of Secrets came out and that fun film was inspired by the Indiana Jones films as well. It served as a warm up to this summer’s eagerly awaited, Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull. When the new Indiana Jones film finally opened in May of this year, it was a huge disappointment. The magic was missing for the most part. It never came together; it was incredibly disjointed. The most amazing thing was that given the nineteen year absence, the film felt rushed. The film’s lackluster appeal heightened my interest in two other films that were not high on my radar, The Incredible Hulk and The Mummy: Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor. The Incredible Hulk benefited greatly from the goodwill generated by Iron Man. I am not sure the film would have been received as well had it not been for Iron Man and the very nice Robert Downey Jr. cameo. By default, The Mummy: Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor was looking more and more like a late summer winner rather than a desperate attempt to revive a series of recycled films.
Blandness is the order of the day in The Mummy: Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor. I hate to say it but this may be the most blatant example of paint by numbers filmmaking I have seen since Simon Wells’ awful remake of The Time Machine in 2002. And while this latest Mummy film is far better than Rob Cohen’s previous film, Stealth, it is still nothing to write home about. They used to punish directors for making bad films. These days one seems to get an extended lease to commit further crimes. Rob Cohen likes to tell a story about how he met Billy Wilder in Musso And Frank’s. Wilder told him how he would love to make a picture again. The tragic thing was that Wilder never made another film after Buddy Buddy (1981). The film was a dud and the studios never let him make another film after that. The truly sad thing is that Wilder lived until 2002; we would have been better off if he was allowed to direct more films. In hindsight, Buddy Buddy is far more watchable than either Cohen’s Stealth or Stephen Sommers’ Van Helsing. At the end of the day there is something very wrong in the world when the man who gave us films such as Some Like It Hot and The Apartment could not make another film for the last 21 years of his life. The sad thing is that Rob Cohen knows how to make a decent summer popcorn film like XXX and The Fast and The Furious, but he instead made this Mummy film.
I am not sure we needed a third Mummy film– I remembered being mildly entertained by The Mummy Returns, but I was not losing sleep about what a third film would add to my life. It was not as if Universal marketing associates rushed me with questions after seeing it asking me if I was eager to see the further exploits of explorer Rick O’Connell (Brendan Fraser). Speaking of Brendan Fraser, he was half of what made the first two films work. The other half was Rachel Weisz who played Evelyn O’Connell. She did not come back to reprise her role because she had issues with the screenplay. That is our loss because her presence is sadly missed in this lesser installment. Maria Bello steps into the role as Evelyn. I have no problem with Maria Bello. She was fantastic in A History Of Violence and The Cooler. I think that she is a splendid actress, but here she tries too hard. The result is jarring. Fraser and Weisz had great chemistry onscreen– it helped make these Indiana Jones knock offs so pleasurable to watch. With that element gone, all we have is a series of special effects overkill and a grocery list of scenes taken from other films. I like Brendan Fraser a lot, but he looks like he is phoning in his performance. He seemed more animated and engaged in the recent Journey To The Center Of The Earth film. The funny thing is that given the right role, Fraser can truly thrive. School Ties, Gods and Monsters, Crash and The Quiet American showed a side to him we do not get to see as much as we would like. And as much as I like him in his Indiana Jones/Allan Quatermain mode in the Mummy films, he looks like he would rather be somewhere else than fighting Jet Li’s Emperor Han in this film. He must also deal with his son, Alex (Luke Ford) who is in China digging up mummies when he should be in school. The father/son conflicts that defined the last two Indiana Jones are played out here. It does not ring true because Brendan Fraser is thirty-nine and does not look that much older that Luke Ford in the film. There is only a thirteen year age difference between them in real life. Actually given the post-World War II setting of Tomb Of Dragon Emperor, plus the father/son storyline, the film feels like a direct knock off of Indiana Jones and The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull. The other thing that both films have in common is that they are less than memorable once the credits roll up.
The basic story of this installment is more martial arts than Mummy. And yes, it would giving the film way too much credit to say it is in the same league as the 1974 film, The Legend Of The 7 Golden Vampires, which was a joint production between Hammer Films and Hong Kong’s famous Shaw Studio. Rick and Evelyn O’Connell are called out of retirement in 1946 to go to Shanghai– which looks awfully swinging given that this is a year after the War has ended. In Shanghai they are reunited with their son, Alex and Evelyn’s brother, Jonathan (John Hannah). Rick and Evelyn are tricked into helping resurrect a 2,000 year old emperor (Jet Li). His plans to become immortal were foiled many centuries ago by a compassionate sorceress played by Michelle Yeoh. The details of this struggle between Li and Yeoh’s characters are played out in the film’s prologue which is by far the best part of the film. Zi Yuan (Yeoh) placed a curse on him. This curse is accidentally lifted and Emperor Han joins with the rebel Chinese Army to go off to the Himalayas to reach the mythical city of Shangri-La. Once in Shangri-La, Han must dip himself in a pool that promises immortality. It is up to the O’Connell’s to stop him. Sound familiar, not only does this sound like elements of the Indiana Jones films, but it seems that the original Lost Horizon was on everyone’s mind as well. Not just that, Li’s Han already has super powers, he can turn himself into a three headed dragon that looks like a really bad CGI version of King Ghidorah from the Godzill a films. I am sure Ishiro Honda, Eiji Tsuburaya and Tomoyuki Tanaka are rolling in their graves. Jet Li’s character’s stone appearance and ugly demeanor looks like a reject from the Daimajin films. The sad thing is that Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh are terribly wasted in this film. They, like everyone else, play second fiddle, to the special effects which overrun the film, especially in the film’s cluttered mess of a final battle between skeletons and rusty soldiers. The final battle lifts from everything– the Sinbad films, The Pirates of the Caribbean films, The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, Henry V and Hero just to name a few. At the end of the day, it is just a mess of pixels.
The Mummy: Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor is the weakest film in the series. There should not be another installment. These films were always seen as lesser Indiana Jones films. The problem is that not even Indiana Jones and The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull can live in the shadow of the three films that came before it. What hope could a third Mummy film have if its inspiration could not live up to its pedigree? Granted there has been seven years in between the Mummy films as opposed to the nineteen year gap in between the Indiana Jones film, but I think it is time to put both series to rest.
