Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, the third movie in the Mummy franchise, is a messy film that loses its grip on its original focus, and overall falls clearly short of its goal. The scenery and history may be changed from Egypt to China, but that does nothing to save the Mummy franchise.
In 200 BC, the Chinese Emperor Han (Jet Li) united China and brought it together. Seeking out immortality, he sent his right hand man General Ming to find he witch Zi Yuan (Michelle Yeoh), who holds the secret. Instead, Ming and Zi Yuan became secret lovers. When Han found out, he had Ming brutally executed, but Zi Yuan cursed Ming and his formidable Chinese army, so that they were forever trapped inside terracotta, and Zi Yuan escapes into the Himalayas. Skip forward to the year 1946, just after World War II. The O’Connell’s (Brenden Fraser and Maria Bello, who replaces Rachel Weisz), are doing well and their son, Alex (Luke Ford), has now completely lost his British accent from the Mummy Returns and is Americanized, has skipped college, and is using the financial backing of an archeology professor, and locates Emperor’s Han’s tomb. It ends up that the Chinese general Yang wants to resurrect Han to use him to make China the new world superpower. It’s another wild ride for the O’Connell’s who get caught up in this new, predictable adventure, and the action hardly lets up until the credits roll.
The premise for the movie is tired, over used and formulaic, and pretty much a repeat of the Mummy Returns but with a new setting in China. It was also a mistake to Americanize Alex, who now is like an immature adult, not the smart, determined little kid like previously.
Tomb of the Dragon Emperor isn’t worth much. If the promising start made me feel like we were going through another repeat, it gets even worse when we get to the gunbattle high within the Himalayas, where the O’Connell’s fend off against a platoon or so of Chinese soldiers (with the help of CGI Yetis!). After that, all sense is lost in the movie as we are lost in action sequences after action sequences.
When I say that the second act of the movie is overwhelmed with action sequences, I will still have something to say about part of the final action scene, where thousands of undead Chinese soldiers. Thousands of arrows fly through the air and rain down on one army, but then we are reminded that they are all undead and can’t die anyway. The sequence is filmed fairly well, and is actually the biggest highlight of the movie.
Fraser is an actor who can blend in action and comedy nicely together. However, he is unfortunately let down by the movie itself that never can pick itself up from the ground.
The Mummy, Tomb of the Dragon Emperor is only partly fun to. The Mummy was a good though not great adventure film overall, while the Mummy Returns was a disappointing adventure. Tomb of the Dragon Emperor is the weakest adventure of all three.
* ½/5
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