Having missed the two previous Mummy films, I wasn’t too concerned about watching the third in the series, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. This film contains an entirely new storyline separate from the first two, and I figured it would be easy enough to catch up on who the characters are and what happened in previous stories fairly quickly. Roger Ebert may have declared this film “the best in the series,” but I had quite a few people tell me to be prepared to be let down.
Maybe it was low expectations, or maybe the taste in my mouth was still sour after that travesty called Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but I found Tomb of the Dragon Emperor to be a good old-fashioned popcorn film that combined the mysticism and grandeur of the Lord of the Rings movies with the adventure and hijinks of the ’80s (i.e. good) Indiana Jones films (in particular Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade).
The film opens with a very Lord of the Rings-like prologue, complete with a noble-sounding female narrator. We learn that the ruthless Dragon Emperor (Jet Li) and his 10,000 warriors were mummified centuries ago when they tried to achieve immortality. A sorceress (Michelle Yeoh) cursed the emperor and his men after he brutally killed her lover. We then jump ahead to the late 1940s and meet the O’Connell family. Brendan Fraser is explorer and famed Mummy slayer Rick O’Connell, and Maria Bello (with a delectable English accent) plays his wife, Evelyn (a role originated by Rachel Weisz). After their adventures in the previous Mummy films, they have settled down on a large English estate to live a peaceful life. Evelyn has written two successful books based on their adventures, and Rick is giving fly fishing a shot, but both are stir crazy and miss bullets flying past their heads and monsters trying to kill them.
Meanwhile, Alex O’Connell (Luke Ford), son of Rick and Evelyn and a dashing young adventurer himself, has unearthed the tomb of the emperor and his massive army. Alex is tricked into awakening the ruler and must rely on the help of his parents, a mysterious warrior girl (Isabella Leong) and the immortal sorceress (Yeoh) to stop the emperor before he takes his army of immortal warriors and conquers the world. Stopping the emperor is not easy, as he possesses supernatural powers, is able to control fire, wind and water, and he can also shape-shift into fantastical monsters. (more…)
