The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008)

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008)

4/10

Starring

Brendan Fraser

Jet Li

Maria Bello

John Hannah

Directed by Rob Cohen

The third movie in the mummy trilogy happens during the time of World War II and the movie has too much going on from the fortieth minute than it should and less happening before that. This time we are not dealing with an Egyptian mummy like we did in The Mummy (1999) and The Mummy Returns (2001), so there is no Imhotep, this time the bad guy is some Chinese tyranny warlord, called the Dragon Emperor.

The movie is not spectacular, and it deals with too many daddy and son issues.

The acting from Maria Bello as someone with martial art and fighting skill, was not bad seeing. But the rest of the cast were swamped in too much action scenes requiring guns and all that to be as impressive as they were in the previous two films.

All that comedic and awesome supporting cast that made the first two movies magnificent, gone. All we have is just too much fighting.

The plot as with the first two films introduces the mummy we shall be dealing with, this time he is a Chinese bad guy. He wanted to live forever and so made all the necessary plans to have everlasting life, but things did not go as planned as he betrayed those who helped him and they in turn betrayed him. He was in a way mummified in stone and kept underground away from everyone and a bunch of people were guarding him, as with Imhotep.

But as things will have it, the Mummy got resurrected again. The people behind the resurrection as you can guess are the O’Connell.

Now as they have done in the previous movies, they must now work with the people guarding the mummy, who in all the movies never do a good job at this guarding thing, to stop the mummy.

The movie was a commercial success, but not a critical one. The movie’s pulsating could have been done better and the writing had all the comedy removed and the movie was made too serious for its own good. I ended up missing the presence of Imhotep and his lover Anck-su-namun.

The series was supposed to get a forth, with the cast from this movie planned to reprise their roles and Anthonio Banderas set to be the new bad guy.

Universal pulled the plug on this and decided to launch their Dark Universe Franchise, with The Mummy (2017) reboot being the first film in the upcoming series.