Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Before I start going into details, I must say that this movie is wrong. Plain wrong, from the very beginning to the end. It might be amusing to foreigners (by foreigners I mean people from the western part of the world), or even kids, but to me, it's everything but.

Let's look at the list of things that's wrong about this movie.

The Setting

If you remember the first Mummy, the setting was in Egypt, and everything was as it should be. War, deserts, camels, pyramids, slavery... And the main reason of all these elements being well-placed is because it's "The Mummy", for crying out loud, we all know mummies generally come from Egypt, 'cause mummification of the pharoahs is what ancient Egypt was famous for. So when I first saw the words "Tomb of the Dragon Emperor", I knew they had gone down a wrong direction, simply because there weren't mummies in China. The only scary thing they have there are Jiang Shi, which looks like this:

The Story

I have to be honest with you. The whole digging up mummies and resurrecting them by accident thing is getting old. In the first movie, Imhotep was resurrected because Evelyn read that bloody book of death or whatever it was called. Fine, I could live with that. In The Mummy Returns, someone resurrected Imhotep for power, and even that is ok for me, but it already was some kind of repetition. Now, Alex had incidentally ditch college, go all the way to China to dig out Emperor Han (Emperor Han? I don't remember there being an Emperor Han who wanted to conquer the whole China and built the Great Wall...) and resurrected him by accident. In fact it could've been another person that they accidentally resurrect, but then incidentally the emperor that they thought was the emperor was a decoy, and the person they resurrected turned out to be the real emperor. How convenient. Too conincidental for my taste, really. I'd rather see someone read from Zi Yuan's book of spells and accidentally resurrected Han.

Brendan Fraser/Rick O'Connell

Don't get me wrong, I like this guy. He's funny, at the very least. However, it is a bit hard to accept that he's still behaving like some 20-year-old when his son is already about 20 years of age. In this movie I really couldn't feel the connection between him and Alex (Luke Ford). It felt as if the two of them were totally unrelated strangers, and when they're having a fight, it looked (relatively) more like 2 brothers quarrelling rather than father and son. I know that they are not close, but blood is thicker than water, and I failed to see that bond of blood between them. Want an example of believable father-and-son relationship? Check out Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Maria Bello/Evelyn O'Connell

I have nothing against Maria Bello's acting. However, Rachel Weisz seemed to have more charm and life in her when she's acting as Evelyn. Maria Bello does have her own strengths, but at the end of the day, she's still no Rachel Weisz.

A lot could change in so many years, and Alex O'Connell is no longer the same boy we knew from The Mummy Returns. He's supposed to be a rebellious young man with the kind of charm his father once possessed. However, in this movie I failed to see his charm or his skills or even his rebelliousness. He just seems so... old.

Russell Wong/General Guo Ming

He's good looking and has great physiques fit to be a general alongside one of the greatest emperors the world has ever seen. Ancient chinese, he's everything but. And speaking of chinese, this guy is what we call "banana". Yellow on the outside, white on the inside. He can't even speak Mandarin properly, for God's sakes.

Jet Li is one of the actors that I respect most. We all remember "Fearless" and "Lethal Weapon 4". However, being the emperor here, Jet Li is most unsuitable. Firstly it's his built. He's fairly short, maybe average Asian height, but do they have to put him beside Russell Wong so often? It makes him look like Frodo in the presence of Gandalf! Then there's his looks. Jet Li has that baby-face that makes him look very young. Somehow, the combination of his looks and his (relative) size failed to deliver that great conquerer's image to the big screen. However he does look better with that moustache though. Wonder why they removed it when he was resurrected.

All I can say is that I don't enjoy seeing old ladies dressed up in sexy, revealing clothes. Her Mandarin isn't that good either.

For a person who had lived for 2000 years, she does seem very immature and emotional. Very very unconvincing. Besides, she calls Michelle Yeoh "Mu Qin" (mother, in Mandarin), but till the very end, when Michelle Yeoh was murdered, she yelled, "MOTHER!!!" So the lesson here is, the mother tongue of non-English-speaking people are actually English.

I can accept that the Yetis came out of their hiding to help. But kicking that army guy over the arch and making that "victory" move? That's probably pushing it too far.

We all still remember that Evelyn was resurrected from her death in The Mummy Returns. But now Rick goes through the same thing? This movie has bored me from the beginning, and the part where Rick took the stab for his son, I kind of wished that he'd die for real. At least it would be surprising, and their fight with the emperor would've been more personal than ever. But well, he got resurrected, big surprise.

I See Dead People

Do you still remember Stephen Sommers' Van Helsing, where Kate Beckinsale died and her face appeared in the sky at the end? It took a massive blow of criticism, that scene. Obviously Rob Cohen had not learned the lesson, and allowed Russell Wong's and Michelle Yeoh's faces appear in the sand in the end. LAME. Besides, there wasn't much character development for Russell and Michelle's character to begin with, why are they suddenly so important that they get to show their faces in the blown sand in the end?

3-Headed Dragon

Ok, so Jet Li is a shape-shifter, and changing into a dragon does make sense since it is regarded as one of the most mysterious and powerful and divine creatures in Chinese culture. But the problem is, there are no 3-headed dragons in Chinese culture. Besides, it looked nothing like a Chinese dragon, which should look like the dragon we see in D-Wars. Besides, whats that hairy creature he morphed into in the final battle? I thought it was a Qi Lin, but it looked nothing like it. Movie makers, please, DO MORE RESEARCH!

There are so many other things that I find wrong in this movie, but I'm too lazy to elaborate already, so I'm going to just briefly go through them. The statue of the emperor - no such thing in Chinese history. Ever. John Hannah isn't funny anymore. The movie's historically incorrect. Anthony Wong was a good antagonist but he posed too little threat. "Why am I laughing?" Well, I don't know... why are you laughing? It's not even funny.

In conclusion, if you're 12, you'll probably enjoy this movie. If you're not, make sure you only watch it when you really have nothing better to do.

Posted by Sky :: 3:14 AM :: 1 Comments:

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