THE MUMMY: TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR (2008)
Tagline: Adventure is Resurrected.
(Adventure, Action, Fantasy) [PG-13]
When the Emperor built the Wall, he buried his enemies underneath it and cursed their souls to hold it up for eternity. Most of them were conquered soldiers. I will call them to battle once again.
In this one we have a really ambitious and evil Emperor named Han who wants to take over the world, but determines that his mortality is going to be an issue. Apparently, it takes like, a really long time to take over the world. So he has his general go to a sorceress to give him an immortality elixir. That’s a no go for her and she ends up turning him and his army into freakin terracotta statues (or mummies for all intents and purposes). It’s 1946 and Rick O’Connell and his wife Evelyn are pretty bored with their lives after all their previous adventures and this one is right up their alley. They need to take “The Eye Of Shangri-La” to China. Their son is also there, so it’s a win, win. Along the way Han is resurrected by some cult followers of his and bam…it’s mummy re-killing time.
Even by today’s standards, the CGI effects in this thing are over-the-top bonkers. I mean we get a dragon, crazy King Caesar (see GODZILLA) on all fours looking creatures, we get Yeti’s and burning terracotta horses, it’s out of freakin control. The scale of this movie is just incredible and the settings are mind-blowing. It’s got a bit of INDIANA JONES and the previous two MUMMY movies thrown in.
Rachel Weisz who played Evelyn in the first two films, wasn’t down with the script so she passed on this one. To be honest, I kind of loved that. The movie even takes a stab at it in the opening sequence where we see Maria Bello who takes on the role of Evelyn. To be honest, I am not a huge fan of Rachel Weisz in almost everything she’s done, so seeing Bello take this role for me was a plus. Brendan Fraser steps seamlessly back into his role as Rick O’Connell and hasn’t lost a step. We also get a Jet Li role as Han and he’s fantastic in it. I am a huge Jet Li fan, so I love seeing him in just about any role. Michelle Yeoh (most famous for CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON and TOMORROW NEVER DIES) is great in this as the sorceress. I wasn’t familiar with Isabella Leong (who plays Lin) prior to seeing this, but she stands out in the role. I can really only think of one scene where she over-acted a bit. Her chemistry with Luke Ford (who plays Rick’s son Alex) is pretty good. I liked Ford in some scenes and others just felt a bit off.
This movie does start off just slightly slow but picks up quickly. The amount of just everything they get in this movie is astonishing. Every time I watch it I am blown away. There are a ton of cool details and the final sequence is just epic. Speaking of details, the film crew, and director when out of their way to get things as authentic looking as they could. They even mimicked the very real traps that were involved when the real terracotta army was found in the tomb of the first emperor of the Qin Dynasty, in Xi'an, China. I would have loved to have seen the planned 4th installment in this series which was going to be called THE MUMMY 4: RISE OF THE AZTECS. Instead, we got THE MUMMY which was also pretty freaking great.
This is a standby movie for me. Whenever I am looking for a really fun action romp with all kinds of rad creatures, this is a great go-to. I give THE MUMMY: TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR a solid 7 out of 7. It’s what movies were meant to be.
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