Eagerly awaited by millions of fans, the new Mummy adventure disappoints immediately when we realize Rachel Weisz doesn’t return for the sequel and instead is replaced by Maria Bello, a good actress trying to hard to look like Weisz.
Perhaps the British actress didn’t feel comfortable knowing that seven years after the last Mummy adventure her 10 year old son would be now 20 and looking almost 30. In fact we never really believe that Luke Ford could be Brendan Fraser’s son, instead they look more like brothers.
Also missing is Stephen Sommers, director of the box office hits of the previous Mummy adventures who was replaced by Rob Cohen director of inane movies like The Fast and the Furious.
The Videogame Aesthetics
Tomb of the Dragon Emperor is a CGI extravaganza filmed and edited at fast pace with minimal character development and a paper thin plot.
One of the strengths of the previous Mummy films was the good mix between action and tongue-in-cheek humour with plenty opportunities to appreciate the production values, the eye candy scenery and all those CGI sets and extras that gave us the feeling of being transported to ancient Egypt.
Reading the final credits for this movie, one realizes how many talented people worked to create the fantasy world of ancient China in Tomb of The Dragon Emperor. Unfortunately, little of that is actually in the film. The movie fails in creating a fantasy adventure atmosphere. We barely have time to appreciate the Great Wall of China and all the breathtaking landscapes created for the story.
A point in question is the myth of Shangri-la. When the characters get to the lost city everything happens so fast that the fascinating idea of this Lost Paradise is never fully explored. Maybe the screenwriters should have taken a couple of hours watching Frank Capra’s Lost Horizon.
The age target for this film is obviously very young. Tomb of The Last Dragon is exclusively concerned in delivering non stop action cut at a frantic pace, lending the movie a videogame aesthetics that contrasts with the first Mummy adventure.
In their effort to please teenage audiences the producers forgot that what made the first film so popular was the way it looked back to the classic Hollywood adventure films.
Sadly the video game aesthetics is so rapidly infiltrating American film production that movies like Resident Evil, Aeon Flux and Star Wars will soon be the industry standard.
Its time Hollywood realizes there is an adult audience out there looking for good action and adventure films that look more like movies and less like video games. If any evidence would be needed, the successful resurrection of Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky and Rambo franchises are proof of that.
