Watch The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor For Free

the audience applauded

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

An unexpected masterpiece

The original The Mummy (1999) with Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz was a bang-up success, its sequel The Mummy Returns (2001) not quite so much, its spinoff The Scorpion King (2002) even less, and now a decade later we have Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008). Actually, it's not bad as popcorn entertainment which doesn't aim terribly high but delivers the goods that you more or less expect. For the purposes I used it for (something to watch in instalments while I was exercising at home), it worked fine.All the standard tropes of Mummy-type films are on display and the plot motors through them with a kind of cheerful energy: discovery of an ancient Chinese tomb, awakening of the evil Emperor (Jet Li) who, of course, intends to rule the world once again, an army of his undead soldiers, Shangri-La and a pool of eternal life, lots of kung-fu action, young romance. Brendon Fraser is back as the square-jawed Rick thrust not entirely willingly back into crazy adventuring, but Maria Bello replaces Rachel Weisz as wife/adventure-partner Evelyn who, after some initial resistance, plunges fully back into action-hero mode along with him. I though Bello did fine, but Weisz in the original pair of movies had an extra degree of charisma that is lacking here.The young-romance leads here are filled by Rick and Evelyn's now-adult son Alex (wholesomely handsome Luke Ford), a chip off the old devil-may-care block, and Lin (the beautiful Isabella Leong), secretly the immortal daughter of the custodian of the Pool of Immortality --- really, the only way to pick up on all the plot complexities is to go watch it on Netflix. Smaller but fun parts are filled by the always-welcome Michelle Yeoh as Lin's mother, and Liam Cunningham as crazy bush pilot Mad Dog Maguire. John Hannah is back as Eveyn's brother, the unrepentedly venal though inept Jonathan, but the third time around his character has become pretty much a bore. There are some surprising "guest stars" in the form of three Himalayan yetis, who are great fun. In the end this whole thing probably falls victim to its own complexity and lack of anything really new, but it's a good cast and a fun ride. Incidentally, pay attention to the end credits. They show fun graphics versions of the characters, along with a nice, driving, energetic score by composer Randy Edelman.

The third and final installment in this Mummy series takes the adventure to a different part of the world while dipping in quality and recasting major characters. The story begins as all the others with a prologue of forbidden romance narrated by the witch Zi Yuan (Michelle Yeoh) about the evil Dragon Emperor (Jet Li). Centuries later, Rick O'Connell (Brendan Fraser) has settled into a simpler life. The recasting of Evelyn (Maria Bello) is a strange thing and feels very off for this installment. Maria Bello is a fine actress but this role was established in previous films and just felt off for this film. Alex (Luke Ford0 has grown up and is on a dig in China. He invades the Tomb of the Dragon Emperor setting off every trap possible and getting nearly all of his coworkers killed, except the old man Roger Wilson (David Calder). He is attacked by a ninja, Lin (Isabella Leong) but escapes. The O'Connells head to Shanghai transporting an artifact back and to see Evelyn's brother Jonathan (John Hannah) who runs a bar. Rick and Alex have a bad relationship as the O'Connells find themselves navigating Post World War II China and being spied on. At the Shanghai Museum, the artifact egg that they brought to Shanghai is stolen by Roger Wilson, General Yang (Anthony Chau-Sang Wong) and used to wake the Emperor.Check out more of this review and others at swilliky.com

Where did Rachel Weisz go? I'm sorry but it doesn't seem like a Mummy movie without her. I mean, they should have known, rarely do franchises or TV series survive when a key character is replaced by a new actor.James Bond and Bewitched are the only two examples I can really think of. Other than than the quality sort of plummets. Audiences don't except it.It would have been better just to write her character out.But then again, it doesn't seem like a Mummy movie without Egypt, or even the Mummy.So here you have a film with one of the main cast members replaced, another removed entirely, and the familiar setting totally removed. Of course people aren't going to like it.And they didn't. It totally killed the series.So now they are rebooting it and too soon. We can only hope they redo it entirely and shoot for a totally different Mummy movie, maybe a return to horror. just to distance from the reboot/remake" feel...but we already know they won't.The action and the humor are still there, but the changes make you feel like it's a cheap copy. It feels like an after-market Mummy film.

I don't consider this movie quite as bad as some have made out. it isn't brilliant but fairly entertaining in places. The special effects were pretty good and the action for the most part not too bad. I don't get others problem with Rachel Wiesz being replaced as her character, played this time by Maria Bello didn't have very much to do.However the movie could have been so much better. It had Jet Li in it, it was set in China, it had some pretty good Martial arts. It had the incredibly good Michelle Yeoh, Russell Wong and Isabella Leong so it had all the ingredients of a great movie, but it just didn't quite get there.I think it hammed it up a bit to much and some of the cgi was silly. It seemed as if the director wasn't sure if he was making a spoof of Mummy/Martial arts films or an action movie, but he didn't do either very well.Silliest part was the Yeti's, there was no point to them and it almost made me turn off (I did watch this on DVD and I did fast forward a lot)I do think one of the problems with Hollywood, is that they never know when to end a series of films, (are we on Rocky 10 yet?) and the sequels seems to come out almost for the sake of it.