The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008)

Widescreen Edition Deluxe Edition 2 Discs Includes Digital Copy DVD

I have an odd history with The Mummy series. I never saw the first film because, well, I thought it looked stupid and a high-tech rip-off of the Indiana Jones films. I saw the second flick, The Mummy Returns, because I wanted to see if The Rock could actually act... and was let down by the movie and the fact that he was barely in the flick. I even saw the spin-off, The Scorpion King, and on opening day, the film was interrupted by that annoying but super-cool-looking technical difficulty that's called a "brain wrap" (Google it) and I had to go back another day... and, while I could bear it more than the previous flick, it's nothing I'd want to watch again. These are the reasons why I just couldn't seem to bring myself to see The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor in theaters, despite the additions of Jet Li, Maria Bello and star on the rise Luke Ford. I'm glad I caught this on DVD though, because it stands out in the series, both for being the best in the franchise, and because it's a stand-alone film that doesn't depend on the others.

The opening minutes, like the second film, gives us some rich back-story on what we're about to see, explaining how, 2,000 years ago, Emperor Han (Jet Li) came to power with his use of mysticism and tyranny and how he was eventually cursed by Yi Juan (Michelle Yeoh) and mummified for 2,000 years. It was said that whoever broke the curse would damn all of mankind. Leave it to the O'Connell's to put the world in peril once more, however, it's not the McConnell you might think that starts it all.

After this intro, we see that Rick O'Connell (Brendan Fraser) and his lovely wife Evelyn (Maria Bello) have succumbed to retirement, with Rick taking up fly fishing as a hobby and Evelyn finishing her second book, aptly dubbed The Mummy Returns... a sequel to her first book... The Mummy. Despite all their success, they're bored with their riches and still yearn for excitement, even though they won't admit it to each other right away, and "reluctantly" agree to return the Eye of Shangri-La to China. Meanwhile, their son Alex (newcomer Luke Ford) has made the discovery of a lifetime, digging up the sarcophagus of Emperor Han. But it all goes wrong when Professor Roger Wilson (David Calder), who helped him make the discovery, turns on him and snags the Eye of Shangri-La from the O'Connell's, which a nasty Chinese general (the awesome Anthony Wong) will use to awaken Emperor Han from his 2,000-year-nap to rule the world once more... that is unless the O'Connell's - mom, dad and son - along with a mysterious new friend Lin (Isabella Leong) can stop them.

One of the biggest pet peeves I have with movies is when they make a sequel and keep an original character... but use a different actor. They do it here, replacing Oscar-winner Rachel Weisz with Oscar nominee Maria Bello for Brendan Fraser's lovely wife, Evelyn O'Connell. To be fair, though, this technique was also employed in this one movie you might have seen this summer, The Dark Knight, switching out Katie Holmes for Maggie Gylenhaal. Of course, no one really noticed much, because the film was so amazing and, while The Mummy isn't nearly as astounding as The Dark Knight, I didn't mind this change with The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor for one main reason: it helped set this film apart from the ones I didn't like that much in the first place. The first films tried to overly-dazzle with special effects wizardry and this film employs a blend of practicals and CGI. The first films were set in Egypt and they've moved to China for this film. In essence, the movie is really a subtle hyrid of a sequel and a remake - keeping the main original characters and creating a separate, closed-off story that really doesn't depend on the first two flicks and the only real correlation between the three films are the main characters. For me, it's the best Mummy flick to date and also the first film in the series I'd include in my collection. They really started over with this flick, so Bello taking over Weisz's character didn't bug me as much as it normally would have... even though I wasn't a huge fan of Bello's performance.

This also feels like a sequel/remake hybrid because they brought in a new director in Rob Cohen and new writers in Smallville creators and Spider-Man 2 writers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar. I have never been a fan of the original film's writer/director Stephen Sommers, and his over-the-top use of CGI in all his films is a constant nuisance to me so, while he still is on board as producer here, his absence at the helm and on the page is quite a welcome one. This film brings in a lot of historical context as well, since there was a real Emperor Han and they, in fact, are still actually looking for his tomb right now. Rob Cohen has long been largely influenced by the Chinese culture and his experience in the action genre makes this a double-whammy win for the film. Yeah, I know, some of his films haven't been the greatest (See: Stealth), but this really seemed like a passion project for Cohen and we're treated to some of his best work to date here. The script from Gough and Millar still employs some of the corny dialogue exchanges we're used to from Rick O'Connell, but it seems they were scaled down quite a bit and there is also the added family element with his son Alex, played quite nicely by newcomer-on-the-rise Luke Ford. This family element, combined with this rich historical story and loads of action make for the best Mummy script yet.

For fans of the first two, you still get the dashing ways of Rick O'Connell played by Brendan Fraser, and the witty barbs of his brother in law Jonathan Carnahan, played nicely by John Hannah. While Fraser is effective, I guess, I just don't know. There is something about him that just bothers me and he just doesn't scream "action star" to me, even though that's what he's been touted as since this series took off. Maybe it's that he's just too tall, and I'm used to growing up in a generation of short action stars (Stallone, Cruise, etc.) and maybe it's that artificially-deep voice thing he tries to pull off to much. Now, I don't despise him as Rick O'Connell or anything and he is a fine actor... but there's just something that doesn't fit with this character for me. While I didn't object that much with Maria Bello replacing Rachel Weisz (after Weisz said she wouldn't do any more Mummy flicks, likely since she has one of those Oscars now), there were aspects of her performance that were bothersome as well. Her British accent isn't really the greatest and, while she actually is much better in the action scenes than I would expect she would be, there's something a little off with her character as well. She does turn in a serviceable performance overall, with some nice motherly bits between her and Luke Ford, but, like Fraser, there's just something intangible missing for me.

I did enjoy all of the newcomers to the series, with Luke Ford turning in a fine performance as Alex O'Connell , who's trying to escape his parents shadow and make a name for himself, Michelle Yeoh as Yi Juan, an immortal mother who cursed Emperor Han back in the day (i.e. 2,000 years ago) after he killed her lover (and father of her daughter) and has been protecting the tomb ever since. Said daughter is played wonderfully by Isabella Leong, a rising Hong Kong actress who should get a big push from this and also look for the marvelous Anthony Wong, a regular in most of the phenomenal Hong Kong director Johnnie To's films, as General Yang, who conspires against the O'Connell's to cause the Emperor to awaken from his centuries-long slumber. The one newcomer I was hoping to see a LOT more of, though, was of course Jet Li. While his performance isn't nearly as miniscule as The Rock's performance in the last film, he's basically reduced to a CGI character for most of the middle of the film (which is explained in the special features). Still, we get some great stuff from him in the expansive opening sequence and some superb fight sequences at the end, including one awesome fight with Michelle Yeoh, both of whom, despite their legendary status in the Chinese film industry, had never fought together on screen before, and it's quite a sight to behold.

Overall, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor starts the series anew for me. It has been rumored that they might continue the series with Luke Ford's Alex O'Connell character as the lead, which would be awesome to see and start a whole new series to make me forget about the first flicks. While it does still retain some of the cornier elements from the first two, this is a whole new Mummy flick, and easily the best one out there.

First up here are some Deleted and Extended Scenes. They run just over 10 minutes and, while some give a tiny bit more context, they really aren't required viewing at all. They might the right choice by cutting all of these scenes.

The Making of The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor is up next, and this is a very comprehensive look at the entire 89-day shoot, from Montreal to China. It's a great fly-on-the-wall kind of thing, mixed in with a lot of little interview bits from Rob Cohen and other cast and crew members and we also see a lot of cool split-screen segments, where we see the actual shot and them on the set. This 22-minute featurette is paced and produced quite well and none of it seems redundant or unnecessary. It's a very nice featurette.

From City to Desert is next, which is almost an alternate version of the last feature, but this is a little more random than the first featurette. A lot of this featurette though, deals with director Rob Cohen's deep love and interest in the Chinese culture, which was a big selling point in getting him to direct the film. Still, it's the same sort of format, but there is different material. It isn't as long as the previous feature, at 15 minutes long, but it's all different so it's worth a look.

Legacy of the Terra Cotta is next, and this talks about the research that went into this film and touches on, again, Cohen's obsession with China. As this feature goes on, this seems to be more about location than research, although we do learn some very interesting tidbits here, including why Jet Li was a CG character for a bulk of the movie. What I did notice at this point, though, that some of these interview parts have started to repeat from other segments, which is a tad annoying, but this 13-minute featurette is pretty solid.

A Call to Action: The Casting Process is up next and they talk a little bit about bringing back Fraser and john Hannah from the first two films and the new additions of Maria Bello, Michelle Yeoh, Isabella Leong and Luke Ford. They dialed this one down a lot, as it's only four and a half minutes long, but it's a nice look at some of the new faces in this film.

Preparing for Battle with Brendan Fraser and Jet Li should've been called just Preparing for Battle, because it's a pretty comprehensive piece on all of the fighting and big action parts in the flick. We are shown a little bit of the training that was involved with everyone and we hear them talk a little bit about the fight between Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh, the first time these two Chinese icons have ever fought in a movie before, which was really cool to see, and the fight between Fraser and Li as well. This is a slick little 10-minute feature that, if you liked the action and fighting in the film, you will surely get a kick out of.

Jet Li Crafting the Emperor Mummy is a visual effects featurette, that shows us how they went about creating the visual effects for the film which coincidentally, were just announced as a semi-finalist for the Visual Effects Oscar today. It's a nice little look at these visual effects, that runs a little less than eight minutes long. It's not the best feature here, but it's worth taking a look at.

Creating New and Supernatural Worlds is the last feature we get on this two-disc affair, and it mainly focuses on the production design of the film. We also get a nice historical tie-in here, with an interesting tidbit that the location that they placed Emperor Han's tomb in the movie, might just be where the real Emperor Han's tomb lies, which is pretty dang cool. We also get some cool stuff from the locations they shot in China, and how these immense set pieces just cannot be possible anywhere in the world. This is a wonderful eight and a half minute featurette that is a great way to close out these special features.

The film is an intriguing blend of a sequel and a reboot, in keeping original characters while introducing a whole new story and new characters and it's a welcome change for the series.