Customer Reviews

Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

5 star:		(49)
4 star:		(44)
3 star:		(51)
2 star:		(43)
1 star:		(65)

 

 

...the ball was dropped on this film. Someone in Hollywood believed Brendon Fraiser and Jet Li in the same film would miraculously make this a winner. That someone should lose his job.

Synopsis: Ancient Chinese warlord is reawakened (along with 10,000 Terra Cotta warriors) to conquer the world. And there are Yetis....

The first two movies in the series were fantastically entertaining. You had action, emotion, love, despair, and discoveries of a linked past that made the movies engrossing. They had excellent scripts, beautiful effects, and acting that made it look real. I watch them over and over. This dog...well, at least I watched until the end.

Whoever cast this movie screwed the pooch. Fraser, as Rick O'Connell is, of course, excellent. I love the gung ho balls ahead character. He IS the character. In fact, he is the franchise.

Rachael Weisz declined to return citing problems with the script. Boy did she make the right call. So Maria Bello is cast as Evy. Dear God In Heaven. what where they thinking! Where Weisz played Evuy with emotion, perfect timing, and a boatload of sex appeal, Bello is a block of freaking wood who phones in her part. She has NO fluidity, no sense of timing, and not a trace of sex appeal. In fact, a block of wood could have done a much better job.

In the 2nd film, The Mummy Returns, the son, Alex, has a very strong `proper' English accent and typical `Brit' attitude. In this movie, Alex (Luke Ford) has NO trace of accent or his English upbringing. He plays the role like a young John Wayne, as if he was raised in Arizona. It totally fails.

Jet Li as Emperor Han...well, I loved him in Lethal Weapon 4, Unleashed, and The One. He should have done the role of Emperor Han with the same soft-sneering attitude he had in LW4. But he wasn't directed that way in this film. He was concrete, and wooden. There was no sense of surprise upon awakening 2000 years later. No marveling at the changes in the world. No wonder at how the world had changed. Totally unrealistic.

Redeeming factors: Michelle Yeoh (very big star in China) as Zi Yaun, the witch who betrays Han knowing his merciless character, Isabella Leong as her immortal daughter, and Russell Wong as General Ming Guo (Han's right hand man who falls in love with Zi Yaun). John Hannah plays Evy's gold-digging brother seamlessly from the prior films.

And there are the Yetis. Ya gotta love the Computer Graphics. At first, the Yetis were fluff, but then you start to like them. They are the `untarnished good' surrounded by evil.

The special effects are admirable. The battle scenes at the end are exceptional. The warriors (and Han) turning to sand and clay are so cool, myself and my friends all gave it a big `WHOA!'.

Rent it, just to see it. Own it, ONLY if you need to complete the series.

Hope this helps you decide.

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (Widescreen) is the third movie in the series and it is painfully bad. The plot is a joke. Bredan Fraser phones in a lame performance and the replacement actress for his wife try as she might the chemistry is just not there. The first two movies were full of fun, wit and good adventure. This move is nothing short of a travesty. Pointless violence, a plot written by Dr Nick Riviera from the Simpsons or maybe even Homer himself, shoddy acting. I was so disapointed considering that the first two movies are good enough to watch again and again. This one I will avoid att all costs. 1/5.

This movie was a big let-down. I LOVED the first two Mummy movies in the series and could watch them over and over. This one was written so bad that the lines could be laughed at throughout the entire thing (and I don't mean the comedic lines). The wife is a different person and is awful, son talks like John Wayne and is too old compared to the years that went by, and Jet Li was barely in the movie/had any lines. The special effects in this movie were mediocre in 1995 and that's saying something. The story of it completely broke off from what it was in the first two. The wife has no connection to her past like in the second one whatsoever. I would not recommend this to anyone that loves the first two. If you don't want to ruin the series and have not seen this movie, then don't even think about watching this. I have never been so disappointed in a movie.

Without Rachael Weisz, this movie shouldn't have been made period. I was so disappointed. It's completely obvious to me that if Weisz refused the script, you either change it to her satifaction, or don't make the stupid movie.

Rachel Weisz was smart to stay away from this movie. The leads give unconvincing, wooden performances, and Bello and Fraser have zero chemistry. The actor who portrayed the son gave a terribly one-note performance (the type that usually befits straight-to-DVD movies). John Hannah's Jonathan is still warm and funny, but that doesn't make up for the fact that the movie is just plain underwhelming. The only relationship that seemed genuine was the one between Michelle Yeoh and Isabella Leong, which, I'll admit, was convincing and tender. Jet Li was woefully underused as he gave as intense a performance as his limited role would allow. Most importantly, however, removing the Mummy franchise from Egypt also removed all of the charm of its predecessors. The first two films were fun, charming, and a joy to watch. The plot sprawls and the movie makes you wonder how the heck the lovable Rick and Evie could become so unlovable and boring. It's not that I disliked the characters--they were just so one-note and uninteresting that I couldn't bother to care. Rent before you buy.

Other reviewers have gone over this quite well, so I won't do that. I will tell you about the problems with this that I saw.
First... Rachel Weisz does not play the wife/mother. Bad bad bad move... keep the family intact or make up a reason why she's not appearing at all. The scenes with the new female were way out of line from what you would expect from the first two movies. She was more hesitant, mystic in the first two. She didn't attempt lame comedic lines in the first two.
Second... when you mix cultures that are far enough apart, it takes fine tuning. That didn't happen. And I hope it doesn't happen in any subsequent takes on the new mummy theme. It just didn't work.
Third.... the new Mummy. Just didn't work.
Fourth... the 'comedy relief' lines.... really really didn't work.
In summary... don't waste your time. Stick to the first two, they were congruent and flowed nicely together. This one stuck out poorly.
What was good was the special effects. Especially the Yeti... great job. Otherwise.... don't bother.

This was not in the same class as the first two Mummy films. The story line was decent but the acting was poor. The chemistry was missing between the actors and it was very disappointing.

They need to find the first Evie and bring her back. She added much to the first two movies. She was an intelligent klutz in the first films, which added dimension to her character. This one doesn't fit with Fraser very well. The characters were not well developed and it just didn't do the film justice.

This movie was clearly only an attempt to cash in on the success of the first two Mummy movies - the plot was completely unrelated to the earlier films. After the first half hour of being inundated with mindless violence and special effects, I realized there wasn't going to be a plot. It was not going to morph from a bad martial arts film to a real Mummy movie and no one was going to end up in Egypt with the REAL mummy, that cute bald guy with the killer eyes.

I ended up fast forwarding to the end to see if there was any merit here. There wasn't. The actress who played Evie was absolutely horrible - without that sense of continuity and chemistry between Brendan Frasier and the adorable and much-missed Rachel Weisz (if she really did turn it down because of the script I love her even more) there was nothing to hook you - and I wasn't buying that new guy as their son either.

So if you were expecting a real sequel to the Mummy movies, I am sorry to tell you this one isn't it. And a note to big shot Hollywood producers - quit insulting your audience. Special effects don't make a movie.

Arguably a miserable film, but what a heck of a BD.

First off, this was tested on several players (Sony, Samsung, and PS3) and with the amount of menu navigation and options imposed upon screen pics - your player needs to be in perfect shape. The victor was the PS3 for seamless navigations and wait times.

The picture looked adequate almost to a fault on some of the special effects sequences. There are plenty of chances to test your white balance and motion blur with black/dark backdrops. The sound was enjoyable with the DTS, but you must have your system set up just right for a film like this as the highs can drown out some of the dialogue mix/music mash (so a solo HDTV will not sound as good obviously).

What makes this fun is the special features though. There are hours upon hours of extras to utilize, whether you watch them during the pic or by themselves. The two main docus are very informative on the production and are worth the watch. If anything, watch the Terra Cotta docu when Cohen gets a nice slam on Disney vs. real Chinese cultural history. The amount of "I love working with (fill in the blank)" gets sickening, especially with Fraser's high on something look in his interviews. The deleted scenes were thankfully removed from the film (11 minutes). The vast majority of the other features include trivia tracks, jumps to behind the scenes clips and various other trips throughout the Mummy trilogy via itemized chapter selections (like prior Universal titles).

Worth the purchase? Not really on a film level, but yes if you have the time to access all the extras.

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor / B001HQZJMU

*Spoilers*

I love The Mummy series, but this addition is simply terrible - a lazy retread of of its predecessors in hopes of wringing a few more dollars out of this franchise.

Tomb of the Dragon Emperor seems one of those Hollywood movies devoted to making marriage look as pleasant as a root canal. Rick and Evie have stopped being passionate soul-mates who carefully balance their exploratory endeavors with less dangerous, but no less interesting pursuits (as in the second Mummy movie) and have, instead, been turned into the stereotypical empty-nest drudgery marriage. Evie no longer manages museums and attracts the praise of the historical community - she writes historical romances where she (disturbingly) has re-envisioned the most horrifying moments of her life as sexually exciting events. Really, my gorge rose when Evie tried to make the scene where she had been tied down next to a writhing, rotting mummy with a dagger poised over her heart as an erotic game to entice her tired husband to bed. Evie doesn't need an adventure - she needs counseling.

(Or perhaps it is the director who needs the counseling - the odd sexual connotations keep coming over and over through the course of this movie. Alex (a grown man now) confesses to his mother that he is not a virgin and she brightens in relief and asks chirpily "How many?" partners he has had, and seems positively panting for details. And Alex and his dad, Rick, spend far too much time arguing that "size matters" when it comes to...guns.)

Once the marital bickering is over and the action starts, we are treated to a lame, lazy retread of the first two movies. The motivations of the mummy are boring and trite without the depth of the previous movies (I preferred the motivation of 'true love' to a plain, straightforward "Megalomaniac Seeks Immortality" reading).

Oh, yes, and there's also a vomit scene. Do you know what made the other Mummy movies genuinely good flicks instead of soulless retreads? A lack of vomit, among other things. Thanks, Hollywood.

This movie provides captions for the hearing impaired.

~ Ana Mardoll