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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 first Mummy was a gem, a diamond in the rock. The second was Universal pushing their luck, this las one is best unseen. The third movie in the Mummy trilogy happens during World War II, and it has way too much going on after the fortieth minute—and not enough before that. This time, we’re not dealing with an Egyptian mummy like we did in The Mummy (1999) and The Mummy Returns (2001), so there’s no Imhotep. Instead, the bad guy is a Chinese tyrannical warlord called the Dragon Emperor.

The movie isn’t spectacular, and it deals with too many daddy and son issues. Maria Bello’s acting as someone with martial arts and fighting skills wasn’t bad to see, but the rest of the cast were swamped in too many action scenes requiring guns and explosions 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, like in the first two films, introduces the mummy we’ll be dealing with. This time, he’s a Chinese bad guy who wanted to live forever. He made all the necessary plans for everlasting life, but things didn’t go as planned—he betrayed those who helped him, and they, in turn, betrayed him. He was mummified in stone and kept underground, guarded by a bunch of people (who, like in the previous movies, aren’t great at their job).

But as things go, the mummy gets resurrected again. The people behind the resurrection, as you can guess, are the O’Connells. Now, as they’ve done in the previous movies, they must work with the people guarding the mummy (who, again, never do a good job at guarding) to stop him.

The movie was a commercial success but not a critical one. The pacing could have been done better, and the writing removed all the comedy, making the movie 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 fourth movie, with the cast from this film set to reprise their roles and Antonio Banderas planned to be the new bad guy. However, Universal pulled the plug on this and decided to launch their Dark Universe franchise instead, with The Mummy (2017) reboot as the first film in the upcoming series.



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