Review of The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008) by Jesse M — 07 Jul 2013

A better made film, but it's still not quite up to par with the first Mummy. There is a welcome change of pace and scenery venturing out to China instead of Egypt.... so you know right off the bat that we're in for a different take. We still have the same main characters, but sadly we're down an actress.

Maria Bello takes over Rachel Weiz's role ( she thought Returns was a better prospect than this??), and I can't fault her for being out of place. She does what she can with a co starring role twice inhabited by someone else. She just can't deliver the impact the way a more familiar face can.

Thankfully everyone else is on board.

Dragon Emperor tells a more focused story and brings forth mythological intrigue with chinese history which I liked very much. It also gives the O'Connells their biggest challenge yet.

The performances are decent to rather meh. The son is full of spirit, but doesn't command the screen. As already stated Bello is servicable but not great. Legendary Jet Li makes a great mummy villain and has fun being him. Fraser is Fraser... he can do this role in his sleep which you'd suspect he actually did.

The dialogue in the script is where most of the flaws lie. Most of the lines fall flat or are very hammy. It doesn't hurt the ears or the braincells too much, but the script is pretty dumb.

The strongest aspect is the technical side with great action set pieces, fantastic production designs and locations, and imaginative visual fx as expected of course. This time we got monsters like 3 headed dragons, abominable snow men, horses made of metal, and a big horned beast. Pure candy for fans of such....

Overall this comes closer to the old fashioned adventure that the first film loved to be, and is a clear step above Returns. Since Universal is rebooting the property, looks like this current franchise with the O'Connells will remain bandaged, enclosed inside a tomb, and buried forever. Perhaps its for the best.