Mummy : Tomb of The Dragon Emperor

Genre : Action | Adventure | Fantasy
Plot    : Random people traveled half way across the globe to kill mummies

This is of course the 3rd installment of The Mummy series which surprises me because it has absolutely no link between the 2nd nor the 1st, i was expecting that it would continue where it left off on the 2nd but no, the script writer decided to take viewers to a new spin, into Ancient China. Who doesn’t know Jet Li, that midget Chinese guy who cannot speak English properly but he speaks so fast that his voice is at so high a pitch that even a glass could break but worry not, his speech is almost non-existence in the movie because most of the time, his voice was computer generated because mummy can’t speak right?

The story is pretty much the same old, same old. Somebody makes a discovery of a mummy and that the mummy is cursed and then it was dug out for exhibition purposes and then the bad guy came and wanted it for evil desires who subsequently revived it and then all hell breaks lose. Now the hero of the movie will have to put an end to this cursed mummy by making sure it won’t come back alive the second time. Pretty much a no brainer movie but entertaining to watch, just like the 1st and the 2nd installment and that’s what was retained by the producer i guess.

We’re no longer stuck in Egypt where mummy speaks using hieroglyphics, we’re now in China, not that ancient anymore because we have motor cars and machine guns already. There’s a large reduction on yelling scenes though, i barely notice Brendan Fraser yelling in this movie. The title is “Tomb of The Dragon Emperor” and as far as all of us could remember, the only great emperor in China that’s worthy of making a movie out of is Shih Huang Ti but he was named Emperor Han but i guess it all makes sense since Shih Huang Ti was of a HAN descend. In this movie it was told that the emperor buried all his enemies bodies under the Great Wall of China during its construction but in reality, it’s just that many people died during the construction of it. It also depicted that the Terracotta Warriors’ existence was because Michelle Yeoh read out a mantra that has a curse on it and cursed it on the evil emperor and his army so that they will remain clay forever WHICH of course all of us know that it’s not history per se.

There are several things that i didn’t like about this as much as the previous 2 and one of them being that they changed the cast for Evelyn, who was originally played by Rachael Weisz who i think was perfect because has that little British accent to her speech and that rather ignorant face all the time, it compliments Brendan Fraser’s character very much who was a very hap-hazard person. The NOW Evelyn looks more like a dumb blonde =O there are many unnecessary characters in the movie as well namely Isabella Leong who contribute nothing to the progress of the movie. The other unnecessary character is Alex, the son of Rick and Evelyn who was seen as a small boy in Episode 2. Alex was a very cute boy in episode 2 but i don’t know what happened, he looks fairly ugly as an adult T____T he has a very limited screen time of which i think explains that even the producer knows that his presence was insignificant but because in episode 2, Rick and Evelyn has a son, it is only normal if in Episode 3 the son is to be seen grown up. They cannot just killed the son away and said he has been turned into a mummy right?

Is it just me or is there something wrong with the movie industries lately? It seems like all movies lately has too much special effects, explosions and animations. It’s quite boring to see all of this and when the title say Dragon Emperor, the producers really mean it, Jet Li can transform into a Chimera and of course other mythical Chinese creatures namely the Chi Lin. The one more thing that i hate is the swift ending of the movie, it just ends too fast and too simple. Although this movie has Jet Li in it, martial arts was at its very minimum so don’t expect Fist of Fury here.

In conclusion, it’s not a movie that you can shout about after watching it. I was a little bit disappointed.

My Rating : 3.5/5