There are two conflicting forces that are both trying to alter my opinion of The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. First, this is a needless sequel to those other two Mummy movies being released several years after anyone who gave a crap about whether needless sequels to the Mummy movies were made or not. This automatically causes me to award Mummy 50,000 Suck Points. On the other hand, two of the movie's stars are Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh which not only wipes out the 50,000 SPs but even moves it slightly into negative suckiness. Also, you have Maria Bello, whose nickname, I believe, is "Va Va Va Voom," taking over the role of Evelyn from Rachel Weisz and Brendan Fraser, a good actor despite his often poor choice of movie roles.
Okie dokie then. What sort of movie did we end up with after all that? Mummy 3 is the kind of movie where, when the end credits start to roll, you're not sure if you actually just saw a movie or not. It's kind of like a dream in that way. You may have liked the dream or you may not but there will only be bits and pieces that you'll take with you and the rest goes down the memory hole. After a bit of thought, you may say, "Jet Li did some cool martial arts," or, "I liked it when the plane shot up those dead guys," but I'm betting there will be huge portions of the plot that will be relegated to the same part of your brain in which you put facts like what the number 1 export of South Africa is. As I go over a bit of the plot, many of you who have already seen it will probably say, "That really happened?"
The movie opens around 2000 years ago as Emperor Han (Jet Li) uses his superior fighting skills along with some super powers that he picked up along the way to conquer pretty much everything around him to form a massive empire. Han apparently learned to rule a country by going to the "Kill Everyone Who Looks At Me Funny And Then Kill Everyone Who Doesn't Cause You Can't Trust Them Either" School of Governing. Eventually, he decided that he was so awesome that he should live forever so he has the faithful General Ming go and fetch a witch named Zi Yuan (Michelle Yeoh) who knows where the Ancient Book of Surefire Immortalinginization is. As Ming and Zi travel around ancient China looking for the book, they decide that they're hot for each other even though Han said he wanted Zi for himself. The predictable consequences are that, as soon as Zi casts the immortality spell, Han, considering Ming's years of loyalty, service, friendship and sacrifice, mercifully has him pulled apart alive by horses. The predictable consequences of THAT are that Zi mixed in a little curse along with the spell making the Emperor into an immortal statue, along with his army.
Jumping ahead to 1946, we meet Alex O'Connell (Luke Ford), the grown son of the two folks from the first 2 Mummy movies. As in all movies that start off at archaeological digs, he flat out ignores all the ancient warnings and prophecies that tell him not to dig where he is digging and unearths the statues of the Emperor and his army. Alex gets upset when three of his men die when they set off ancient traps but quickly recovers when the professor running the dig site literally tells him that, "they knew the risks," and he should just suck it up and sure enough, he does and starts smiling again even after an assassin tries to kill him.
Skipping over to England, we once again meet Alex's parents, Rick and Evelyn O'Connell. Even though they're only about 40, they've both decided to retire even though, as has been stated, they're both only about 40. To their great surprise, they find sitting around some country estate after exploring the far reaches of the planet to be extremely boring so they suspend their "No More Cool Stuff For Us" vow and accept a job from the British government to return some ancient Chinese artifact to China. In a large country with a population of a billion people, you'd think the odds would be small that they'd run into their son while they were there but sure enough, that happens. Also, you'd think that the odds would be small that the Chinese thingumabob they were transporting would be just what was required to wake the Dragon Emperor but ONCE AGAIN you'd be completely wrong.
So off they go, on a merry quest to try to put down yet another mummy. They're joined Lin, the pretty assassin who tried to kill Alex earlier in the film but that was because she was part of some society sworn to keep anyone from awaking the Emperor. By the way, is there a less effective group on the planet than those that are sworn to keep some ancient evil from being released from its prison? The Presidential Commission On Keeping Gas Prices Below 4 Dollars is better at its job than these zealous warriors are. Lin and Alex are instantly hot for each other and, for me, the only true mystery of the film was whether they would be together at the end or if one of them would die heroically in the other one's arms. Another mystery was how Alex could have grown up in England with an Australian accent but that one never gets solved.
As I said, you can more or less predict what will happen, especially if you've seen any of the commercials or trailers and saw what they do to counter the Emperor's army. What, did you think that Emperor Han would succeed in his plot to conquer the world and rule it forever? The best parts of the movie were some of the fight scenes at the end between Jet Li and the others that actually happened and weren't put together inside some guy's Macintosh. I could say the same thing about Jet Li's last movie too. Filmmakers have forgotten these days how great it can be to show real people in real places doing real things and not to just do everything through CGI.
Oh well, enough preaching. You'll probably kind of like Mummy 3 even though 91% of all other critics disagree with me. As I said, though, it's not horrible, just forgettable. I suppose you could take notes during the movie so that you can impress your friends later on with things like, "Hey, remember when they found the lost city of Shangri-la? And what was the deal with those yetis?" Of course, they may not even remember that when you prompt them which means you can have fun making stuff up. Regale everyone with stories of tap dancing unicorns and gumdrops falling from the skies. It'll probably be better than the actual movie was. In the end, it is fitting that, shortly after you see a movie set in China, you quickly become hungry for another movie.
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