StarDestroyer.Net BBS

I saw this today at the behest of my son David. I actually thought it wasn't bad; it wasn't as good as the first one, but it was better than the second one, which I thought sucked donkey balls and was responsible for some of the flaws in this one. I'm aware that it's been absolutely slagged at rottentomatoes.com (10%), but the second film got 47%, and it was an utter horror-show. That's not really fair; if the second film was worth 47%, then this one should be worth at least 60%. We're not talking about a great movie here with the third film, but egads, the second one should have led to someone being tarred and feathered.

Strong points of the film:

1. Brendan Fraser has a good persona for these kinds of absurd over-the-top movies. He knows how to strike a balance between action and levity which befits the intrinsic silliness of the material.
2. Jet Li is suitably intense, and his character has a good mix of powers. I particularly liked the way he looked before he was fully reincarnated.
3. The whole terra-cotta idea was begging to be done.

Weak points of the film:

1. The son, Alex. By the sweet lords of cinema, I have never seen a flatter character in a big-budget motion picture.
2. The actress who replaced Rachel Weisz. She was competent, but it never really works to replace an actress with another actress playing the same character. Worse yet, they made her a typical Hollywood "strong woman", which is to say that she made a very strong impression and never really seemed to get rattled. The original Evelyn from the first movie had strong opinions, but she was terrified and discombobulated once the fighting started, just as she should have been.
3. The "warrior woman" revision to the Evelyn character. This stupid idea helped sink the second film, and it does the same to this one. Evelyn was a clumsy bookish bespectacled librarian in the first movie, and that was part of the great charm of her character. In the second film, they made her the reincarnation of some fighting warrior chick from ancient Egypt, and irrevocably ruined her character.
4. The nerfing of the bad guy. In the first Mummy movie, Imhotep was nigh-unstoppable. He was a living god, and the film reinforced this. At every turn, he seemed more invincible. But in the second one, the villain was a lame CGI scorpion with the face of The Rock, and he didn't even really do anything at all until the end of the movie. In this one, the villain is the Emperor, who is said to control the five elements: earth, wind, fire, water, and since it's Jet Li, I'm assuming the fifth element is kung fu. That's a pretty damned impressive dossier. Earlier in the film, he demonstrates the ability to control snow and turn it into ice shards, and he can hurl fireballs. At one point, he turns into a three-headed fire-breathing flying dragon. Pretty cool, but later in the film, his army is beset by an airplane, and his only response is to turn into a giant dog and attempt to leap into the air in a futile attempt to claw at it. Why the fuck doesn't he use his cool powers? Shouldn't he be hurling fireballs at the plane, or turning into a fire-breathing dragon to bring it down? Wouldn't it inspire so much more awe and dread if he seemed truly unstoppable, rather than just being a guy with a big bag of party tricks?
5. The nerfing of the bad guy's army. They did this in the second film as well: when the dreaded Army of Anubis was raised, there was a growing sense of dread as the mere mortals of the Magi faced off against them. They charged, the battle was joined, and ... the Army of Anubis turned out to be a bunch of pussies. They literally crumbled when hit. The movie just hit the wall at that point, and never recovered. They do the same thing in the third movie: the undead Terra Cotta army is raised, and they look appropriately menacing, but they crumble like clay pottery when struck. Couldn't they have given them the consistency of granite, to make them much more threatening? They did say that the army would become "indestructible" once they passed the Great Wall, but of course, that only telegraphs the fact that they will never make it past the Great Wall. And sure enough, they don't. They don't even seem to be able to sweep past the undead skeletons that the kindly witch raises to stop them, even though they are the poorly equipped skeletons of the very same enemies that this same army effortlessly crushed 2500 years ago.
6. The part where Brendan Fraser challenges Jet Li to stop using his powers and fight him hand to hand, like a man. In English, even though Jet Li's character doesn't understand a word of it. And it works: Jet Li fights him without using any of his powers: a mistake which naturally leads to his death. Groooaannnn ...

I don't know why the writers felt the need to include a big contrived battle scene in the second and third films of this series. Wouldn't it be more dramatic to show the Army of Anubis or the Terra Cotta army effortlessly crushing all who stand in their way, rather than being inevitably countered by a force which can fight them to a standstill while Brendan Fraser takes out their leader? The word "formulaic" seems appropriate here.

I guess that looks like a pretty scathing review. But it is what it is: a mindless summer popcorn movie. Besides, negative points #1, #3, #4, and #5 were all flaws found in the second movie as well, which for some reason got roughly five times as many positive reviews. And I have to admit that the kids loved it.

Reinforcing one of your points there, it would be nice to see an extremely powerful villian in this vein who actually uses his awe inspiring powers intelligently and consistently.

But then that would force the writers to, I dunno, really come up with some intelligent plan that actually beats him/her in a believable manner.

Bubble Boy wrote:Reinforcing one of your points there, it would be nice to see an extremely powerful villian in this vein who actually uses his awe inspiring powers intelligently and consistently.

But then that would force the writers to, I dunno, really come up with some intelligent plan that actually beats him/her in a believable manner.

That's when you have no choice but to accuse them of insulting the audience's intelligence. When I saw that the plane was strafing his terra cotta army and I knew that he had power over the wind, I was thinking "well obviously, he's going to bring down that plane with his wind powers". But noooo, he turns into a giant dog and tries to leap up and claw it out of the air! WTF?

Bubble Boy wrote:But then that would force the writers to, I dunno, really come up with some intelligent plan that actually beats him/her in a believable manner.

Why do the goods guys need to beat them? One of my favorite movies: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (70s version) ends with the protagonist being killed and replaced by an alien. In fact, the good guys losing reinforced how scary the aliens were.

I loved the first Mummy, and think it's one of the best light-hearted action movies. I agree that the second one was terrible; turning Evey into a warrior woman pussifying Imhotep took away some of the best things from the first movie. I still don't understand how The Mummy Returns managed to get mixed reviews that only somewhat leaned to the negative.

Glad to hear from someone that the third movie isn't the complete piece of shit that RT says it is. I like most of the actors involved and thought it would have been a shame if they all went down because of this movie (which could very well still happen).

It's possible that after the shitty second movie, the Mummy franchise lost any good will with the critics, who went into this movie hating it.

Darth Wong wrote:

Bubble Boy wrote:Reinforcing one of your points there, it would be nice to see an extremely powerful villian in this vein who actually uses his awe inspiring powers intelligently and consistently.

But then that would force the writers to, I dunno, really come up with some intelligent plan that actually beats him/her in a believable manner.

That's when you have no choice but to accuse them of insulting the audience's intelligence. When I saw that the plane was strafing his terra cotta army and I knew that he had power over the wind, I was thinking "well obviously, he's going to bring down that plane with his wind powers". But noooo, he turns into a giant dog and tries to leap up and claw it out of the air! WTF?

I'd argue they aren't necessarily trying to insult the audience's intelligence; rather they may be just displaying the lack of their own.

CaptainZoidberg wrote:Why do the goods guys need to beat them? One of my favorite movies: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (70s version) ends with the protagonist being killed and replaced by an alien. In fact, the good guys losing reinforced how scary the aliens were.

'The Terminator' was scary as fuck, unstoppably powerful, and yet it was defeated in a very realistic and believable way.

Not that I have a problem with the villian winning, I just think writers lately tend to be extremely lazy when it comes to making the good guys win.

In regards to this specific movie, sounds like it would've been great if Jet Li had been taunted to fight without powers by any character, and he promptly roasts them with fire (or other power application).

When you have bigger guns than your opponent, you don't dial them down to make the fight more fair. You reduce your opponent to ash and go after what you're fighting for in the first place.

Well he did challenge the Emperor's honor. Again, in English, so I'm not sure how that got through, but apparently he could ignore that. The fifth element was metal, although you're right, it would've been better if it'd been Kung Fu. I enjoyed the movie though, it was silly, lots of action, and had Yetis kicking a soldier over the goal posts.

Darth Wong wrote:In this one, the villain is the Emperor, who is said to control the five elements: earth, wind, fire, water, and since it's Jet Li, I'm assuming the fifth element is kung fu.

Darth Wong wrote: When I saw that the plane was strafing his terra cotta army and I knew that he had power over the wind, I was thinking "well obviously, he's going to bring down that plane with his wind powers". But noooo, he turns into a giant dog and tries to leap up and claw it out of the air! WTF?

Did they mention wind specifically? Because the five Chinese elements are fire, water, earth, wood and metal. No wind.

Darth Wong wrote:
[*]The nerfing of the bad guy's army. They did this in the second film as well: when the dreaded Army of Anubis was raised, there was a growing sense of dread as the mere mortals of the Magi faced off against them. They charged, the battle was joined, and ... the Army of Anubis turned out to be a bunch of pussies. They literally crumbled when hit. The movie just hit the wall at that point, and never recovered.

I think the invincibility aspect was not so much that they were impossible to destroy, but that the army could endlessly respawn and possibly in greater numbers as well. If you consider the opening scenes where the Anubian army overran the ancient city, they pretty much are invincible for their period.

XaLEv wrote:Did they mention wind specifically? Because the five Chinese elements are fire, water, earth, wood and metal. No wind.

They mention wind in the previews I've seen.

Darth Wong wrote:In this one, the villain is the Emperor, who is said to control the five elements: earth, wind, fire, water, and since it's Jet Li, I'm assuming the fifth element is kung fu. That's a pretty damned impressive dossier.

Well, the fifth element is, actually, "heart." At least until that video happens.

I think I'll wait for the DVD and for when I have nothing else to watch through Netflix, but thanks for the review.

XaLEv wrote:Did they mention wind specifically? Because the five Chinese elements are fire, water, earth, wood and metal. No wind.

Nope, no wind. At the start, when they're telling the tale of the dragon emperor, the narrator lists off the elements the emperor controls and they're the Chinese ones you listed. Also, when the emperor is trying to suck the undead army back into the Great Wall, the five orbs he has levitating before him are pretty clearly of those materials.

Still, he should've been able to shoot the plane down with fire balls or turn into a dragon again and knock it out of the sky. Also, I don't think he ever did anything with wood or metal, which would have been nice to see. He pretty much stuck with fire and water.

I believe he used metal when he pulled all the mummies towards the wall briefly at the end.

Trogdor wrote:Also, I don't think he ever did anything with wood or metal, which would have been nice to see. He pretty much stuck with fire and water.

He may have turned his hand into hot metal when he cut Alex's Professor's head off with his hand.

He could also recall his sword after throwing it.

I also have to wonder how the hell the undead slave-worker army came up with weapons. They weren't buried with weapons. But at that point, you know the battle is happening just because the writers wanted a big CGI battle, not because it logically flowed from the story.

Some of them carried tools which may have been left in the ground when they built the wall. That doesn't explain the actual weapons though.

It also doesn't explain how Ming, a man DRAWN AND QUARTERED BY HORSES still had three out of four limbs attached. The man should've been nicknamed Torso Boy by the end of the introduction. Maybe he had a regen orb on him or something.

Kuja wrote:It also doesn't explain how Ming, a man DRAWN AND QUARTERED BY HORSES still had three out of four limbs attached. The man should've been nicknamed Torso Boy by the end of the introduction. Maybe he had a regen orb on him or something.

I haven't seen the movie, so I can't say if he was actually torn apart and then magically got his limbs back, but in real life, the human body is surprisingly resilient against this kind of thing. There were many cases where the horses couldn't pull the limbs off, and the executioners had to cut through most of the flesh themselves. The horses were easily able to dislocate the joints, however.

It had some decent bits (and I did like Brendan Frasier's character), but other than that, I think it kind of sucked (and saying it was better than the second movie, which I thought was at least more entertaining, is damning with faint praise).

Jonathan was nerfed mostly (he had some funny moments, but it really paled in comparison to the first movie), the son was, as mentioned, flat (at least the kid in the second movie was funny at times, and had character), and what was the deal with the sudden romance between said kid and the young woman (Lin, I think?)? Are we supposed to assume that he's met with her at some points between the museum and when she tried to kill him at the burial site? Minor nitpick, but it kind of bugged me.

Jet Li wasn't bad, but Imhotep was still more interesting and better as a villain in both movies.

You can blame the son character for Rachel Weisz not signing on for the movie. She felt she didn't look old enough to credibly play the mother of a college-age boy, and she was right. Brendan Fraiser looks like he's the same age as the son in a lot of scenes and it bugged the hell out of me. The film would have been MUCH better without that kid. Flat character, bad acting, and he needlessly complicated the plot (with the dual clunker subplots of getting Lin to fall in love with him out of nowhere and reconciling with Brendan Fraiser).

I think the movie's most damning flaw however was the fight between Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh. You've got two of the greatest martial arts performers in the world playing bad-ass magic-powered kung fu immortals and all you have them do is cross swords a few times?

You can blame the son character for Rachel Weisz not signing on for the movie. She felt she didn't look old enough to credibly play the mother of a college-age boy, and she was right. Brendan Fraiser looks like he's the same age as the son in a lot of scenes and it bugged the hell out of me. The film would have been MUCH better without that kid. Flat character, bad acting, and he needlessly complicated the plot (with the dual clunker subplots of getting Lin to fall in love with him out of nowhere and reconciling with Brendan Fraiser).

That's why she dropped off? I thought it was because she read the script and thought it was appalling.

I didn't mind having A kid; it adds some interesting new bits to the story, although they should have picked someone with more of a character.

I think the movie's most damning flaw however was the fight between Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh. You've got two of the greatest martial arts performers in the world playing bad-ass magic-powered kung fu immortals and all you have them do is cross swords a few times?

Because Li's fighter is apparently "honorable" in some way (apparently not honorable enough to have the sorceress he used for immortality killed after breaking a promise to release her lover), and it wouldn't be honorable for him to simply turn into a monster and kill her.