Archaeologist Rick O'Connell travels to China, pitting him against an emperor from the 2,000-year-old Han dynasty who's returned from the dead to pursue a quest for world domination. This time, O'Connell enlists the help of his wife and son to quash the so-called 'Dragon Emperor' and his abuse of supernatural power.
Universal Pictures China Film Co-Production Corporation Relativity Media Alphaville Films Sommers Company, The
The only film that has ever made me walk out of the cinema. It almost made me walk out of my own house..
"Here we go again..."
Who needs Rachel Weisz?
Who needs decent special effects?
Who needs an engaging plot?
Hell, who even needs a fucking mummy?!
This did.
Desperately.
Universal. Blu-Ray
2.35:1
Color
35mm
12
"I hate mummies"
The shift of tone is by far one of the biggest issues with this third outing. It completely disregards any horror element and focuses on physical comedy, which just doesn't work well with the franchise at all. Ultimately, this leads to an absolute disaster in character development. Fraser is a complete contrast to his previous incarnations. The re-casting with Bello doesn't necessarily ruin the film but doesn't add anything new. The action sequences are good, big in spectacle and look great with some decent CGI but that's really all the film offers.
37
(I was watching this with the PMI commentary)
To start off, this came out in a month after THE DARK KNIGHT. I went to see THE DARK KNIGHT, for my 4th time, with my friend, who happened to have cancer at the time. After THE DARK KNIGHT ended, we wanted to see another movie, but had no money. My friend told the ticket guy that he had cancer, and the ticket man gave us free tickets to...
THE MUMMY: TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR
...and I remember enjoying it like I would've probably given it like a 3/5, at the time.
Well, 7 years later, I re-watched this "film." And, holy shit, I cannot thing of one redeemable value in…
I am a pretty big fan of the Stephen Sommers directed, 'The Mummy.' Everything about that movie was so over-the-top, but done in an admirable way that creates this strange feeling of emotion and logic mixing that I rarely feel during movies.
"Why do I like this? It's bad. OH WOW!! Did you just see Brendan Fraser scream at the mummy for absolutely no reason??!! What a riot! Wait, what was a I saying?"
The second Mummy was okay, but after a long-awaited return to the Mummy franchise, I went to the theaters with my mom to see this..... aaaannnnddddddd my 12 year-old heart was obliterated. Everything I loved about the original was absolutely atrocious here. I hated EVERYTHING. Even as a kid, I knew this film was utter garbage. The stupid action scenes, the bad acting, terrible writing, and incoherent plot made me wary of ever returning to 'The Mummy.'
P.S. I did and it is still fucking awesome
I was DREADING THIS and, like, I'd never watch it again, but it turns out it's the most watchable of the Brendan Fraser Mummy movies?
Mostly that's because Fraser's barely in it. This is one of those baton-passing franchise movies, with Alex Ford (who?) playing Alex O'Connell. He's much less annoying than the previous incarnation of this character, except he does almost cause the end of the world by digging up the titular tomb.
It's kind of a flaw of all the Mummy movies (from the 40s onwards, excluding maybe the first Hammer one) that you're meant to root for the dumbass white people who are so busy trying to loot ancient graves that they get a ton of people…
I think I've maybe felt more warmly than I should do towards this because it is just such a huge leap in quality from the first two abominations. Luckily, we're out of the cinematic wilderness years of the 90s/early-00s now and this threequel, under the flashy direction of Rob Cohen, looks and sounds and feels much nicer. It also relegates the terminally annoying Brendan Fraser's role to co-starring with Luke Ford, who appears his fully grown son (which, thank God, means there isn't an annoying child character like there was in part two).
There's an abundance of cool secondary characters too. This one's set in China and basically is a similar Mummy story to the last two but with a…
Uitgemolken rotzooitje. De komische knipogen uit de vorige delen zijn ordinaire slapstick geworden, met rare geluidjes en bizarre montage-overgangen. Brendan Fraser mocht voorheen al niet een enorm charismatische actieheld zijn, maar in dit deel lijkt hij het laatste beetje sjeu te zijn verloren en draagt het kinderachtige vehikel als een houten klaas. Jet Li, Michelle Yeoh en Maria Bello voegen verder niet veel toe. Een klein lichtpuntje: de speciale effecten van het terracotta-leger en de yeti's zien er schappelijk uit.
Michelle Yeoh and Jet Li in an Asian mummy flick? I'm down, there were mummies in other places beside Egypt.
After a couple goofy scorpion king spin offs, the O'Connels are back, if somewhat recast. The effects are hit and miss but overall the action is sound. But boy does the comedy fall flat and the romance feel forced.
Maybe they waited too long. Maybe losing writer/director Stephen Sommers took too much away. Maybe the idea was sound but the script was trash. The Mummy magic wasn't powerful enough to bring this series back from the dead.
Shame, I would have loved to see an Aztec mummy in the sequel.
xXx's capitalism treatise is hardly the focal point of that film, but that film works as a complete narrative with one predominant style. Here we find a scattershot of filmic concepts and personal experimentation. Finally discovering coherence in adopting a complete "screw it" mentality towards coherency.
Cohen opts Zhang Yimou for the opening sequence. Several shots and some minor color usage could be favorably compared to last year's "The Great Wall" which is a testament to Cohen's understanding of Yimou beyond surface copy-catting. Then again for the finale when the characters land in China or more accurately Yimou's China. With pitch-perfect House of Flying Daggers slow motion and CG and light.
The complete conviction with which the actors say the most absurd of lines is also a delight.
Hmm. Something about this one just didn't sit well with me. Maybe it was Maria Bello stepping in to replace Rachel Weisz. She dyed her hair and matched the accent, but there's a spirit missing. Maybe it was Rob Cohen's visual style - wanting to be so modern and slick that he's forgotten this is supposed to feel more like and old adventure serial, and not like XXX or Fast and Furious. Maybe it was too violent. Maybe it was too heartless. Maybe it was just too late.
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