Universal is pushing the fact that Roger Ebert called The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor “the best in the series,” but considering he gave the first movie praise and alternatively disliked the second what does any of it really mean or matter? Personally I am a big fan of the first two films as mindless entertainment, but as it turns out this third film is just mindless and listening to director Rob Cohen talk about it in his audio commentary (which also comes as a video commentary on the Blu-ray) it isn’t hard to figure out why it all falls apart.
Cohen approached this film as if we needed to care about the characters and on top of that you will soon realize he has an undying love for China, its culture and is a practicing Buddhist. It is one more instance confirming my belief a director should not have too much of an emotional investment in the subject matter because they become blinded by what interests them and not necessarily what is going to interest the audience. As you listen to the commentary Cohen consistently talks about how authentic everything is, how the Terracotta army doesn’t include any duplicate warriors and how we should Google this and IMDB that to learn more about each structure, setting and actor. He forgets, a third Mummy movie shouldn’t be about character building, the characters are already built.
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor destroys everything an audience member already knows about the O’Connell family from the first film only to attempt to rebuild it all over the course of one new action adventure. This is a needless exercise as the audience is already invested in the characters, they don’t need to be reintroduced as a downtrodden family, hardly worried about the son they no longer pay attention to and are unwilling to admit they are desperate for the adventure their lives once contained. Based on the characters created in the first film neither one of them would have left the attempt to find more historic artifacts behind and they certainly wouldn’t have abandoned their son to the point they didn’t know he was off in the desert unearthing ancient immortal emperors. And to think this was all done to create characters the audience cares about, as Cohen insists, he forgets he already has the audience in the seats and this film wouldn’t have been made had they not supported the original films. It’s wasted time on screen and none of it works. I won’t even touch upon how bad Maria Bello didn’t fit the feature as Evie.
Cohen’s commentary is really the most fascinating thing about this entire release as he also offers up what amounts to a Blu-ray commercial all while finding an opportunity to actually compare the Mummy movies to Barack Obama saying, “Obama’s got a lot to do with The Mummy. Because he’s also going to lift the curse and bring the country back from the dead.” Uh, what? Will he also turn water into wine and make the blind see once again? Perhaps he will create a big face made of sand and swallow up our enemies.
There is no denying he is passionate about the project as he also talks about the potential of making a Mummy 4 and following Jonathan (John Hannah) to Peru with the diamond he stole, but based on the measly $102 million this flick made on a $145 million budget I don’t see a fourth film in the near future without a more competent director and a much better script.
The rest of the features include a 22 minute making of featurette that details the 89 days of shooting, a variety of special effects features, 11 minutes of deleted scenes and a second disc that includes a digital copy of the film and four other making-of featurettes.
I can’t be 100% harsh on this film because a couple of things do stand out. The effects and production design are fantastic and they are the one thing Cohen’s passion for the project proved to enhance. Perhaps he should have been an effects or production design supervisor instead of director. The U-Control feature offers up four versions of the great “Scene Explorer” feature showing a select group of scenes in a variety of stages of production including early effects, no effects and animatics and you will be impressed by some of the work shown off in a couple of the featurettes. Hardly a reason to buy the disc, but if you do find it in your player give it a peek.
The U-Control also has a silly little trivia quiz and a feature showing how the new film links to the previous ones, which is hardly interesting and is actually more annoying than anything.
Overall, this is a flick to skip. Just forget it exists and move along. Both of the previous Mummy movies are available on Blu-ray and your money would be better spent on those and if you didn’t like those movies I wouldn’t even suggest giving this one a try because it is just as big and dumb, but highly lacking in the fun department.
