When you leave the theater believing that Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson put in a nuanced performance in The Scorpion King, and that Rush Hour 3 is the last word on insightful cross-cultural filmmaking, you realize you have witnessed the blockbuster action film hit a new low. You do not go into a film titled The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor expecting much subtlety. But the ham-fisted battering you receive from a production team that runs through all the genre cliches in such a cynically derivative manner is a sad reflection of where a reasonably entertaining franchise can be taken in the interests of making more money. (The film made US$101.9 million worldwide in its opening weekend last week.)
Having played out ancient Egyptian civilization in two successful features - The Mummy (1999) and The Mummy Returns (2001) - and the more clunky side-project The Scorpion King (2002), the Mummy franchise moves the action to another ancient civilization. Playing fast and loose with history and legend is not a serious concern for a film of this nature, though a Chinese audience familiar with the legends of the First Emperor may find the treatment somewhat condescending. Clearly the filmmakers did not think this story was interesting enough, and felt the need to incorporate gridiron playing yetis and an immortal mother/daughter pair who guard the pool of eternal life.
Both are, in their different ways, totally ridiculous. This is largely due to the belief, which the producers apparently hold, that because the film is a fantasy, it need not obey even the most rudimentary precepts of narrative logic. The characters don't make much sense, and you can see the gags coming from a mile away.
At a press and merchandising-partners screening earlier this week, the audience registered more shock at the appearance of Anthony Wang (黃秋生) as the evil General Yang than at any of the highly elaborate yet extremely pedestrian action sequences.
Wang plays the leader of a paramilitary force in the deserts of central China who for reasons that are never explained - though he expresses some jarringly nationalistic sentiments - wants to serve under the First Emperor and make China great again. His backstory is never established, which makes him a rather uninteresting villain. Still, as a veteran of the Hong Kong movie scene, he scowls and grimaces with gusto, though without much conviction. Mostly he simply seemed uncertain whether he should be speaking Chinese or English. The same dilemma faced Michelle Yeoh (楊紫瓊), who is never at her best in Mandarin, and in her Chinese sequences appeared to be reading from a script translated from English. Luke Ford's efforts to speak Chinese were commendable, but for local audiences at least, this really put the nail in the coffin of the film's action/adventure credentials. He opened his mouth, and when Chinese emerged, the audience collapsed in laughter. When Brendan Fraser manages to convey to a 2,000-year-old "undead" general that he is one of the good guys in Chinese that nobody could possibly recognize as such, the audience gasped in disbelief. The laughter it elicited was not complementary.
The Mummy franchise was always intended to have a strong comic theme running through it, but since the first film in 1999, the humor has become increasingly labored. In The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, Brendan Fraser's efforts to play a role of a father unable to express his love for his son pulls the comedy rug right out from under his feet, and he is left mugging ineffectually for the camera. Even the comic banter of John Hannah, who was so important in keeping the first Mummy light and frothy, has lost conviction. The changeover from Rachel Weisz to Maria Bello playing Fraser's better half is a bad piece of miscasting, and places further strain on the film's credibility.
Obviously, from a marketing perspective, one of the main interests of The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor is that it is set "in China," and that it has several Hong Kong stars. Jet Li (李連杰) is the most easily recognizable name, and he is clearly more than happy to serve as a Chinese Uncle Tom in this big-budget Hollywood feature. (Li has a record of supremely bad Hollywood action flicks to his name, starting with Lethal Weapon 4 back in 1998.) The only convincing fight sequence was one that pitted Li against Yeoh, who is also known for her on-screen martial arts prowess, while action sequences with the whities clearly relied far more on jump cuts and other effects.
It would be nice to say something good about the younger Chinese actors who appear in this film. Alas, even Isabella Leong (梁洛施), for all her very considerable good looks and potential - she stared in Zero Chou's (周美玲) Spider Lilies (刺青) - is ill-served by this material. Her role as the immortal daughter who gives up her immortality to save the world slips away like many of the other half-hearted references to myth and legend that are incorporated into the film.
So it is all the more depressing to hear - in an interview with MTV News - that the director of this mess, Rob Cohen, of The Fast and the Furious (2001) fame, is already considering, a fourth installment. Having done China, rumor has it that Latin America is next. Surely the region has already had more than its fair share after Mayan, Nazca and other South American cultures were rolled together in the interests of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull earlier this year.
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