A Firework Show -- The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

A firework show, this is my feeling after watching the latest episode of that all-time classic, The Mummy.

Actually it was the leading actor, Brendan Fraser himself, that described a blockbuster movie without a good story as a "firework show", during a recent interview with some movie magazine. Unfortunately, this term could be used to describe his movie here, too.

The leaving of director and writer Stephen Sommers has predicted the problem of this movie. The story line is neither convincing nor surprising. To those audience that have some basic knowledge about Chinese history, it's even worse -- the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang (literally "the first emperor of Qin dynasty), was renamed as "Emperor Han" (Han is actually a dynasty that right after Qin)!
The new writer seems to have focused on the dragons and zombies only, and thrown out of the window those funny conversation and small tricks from the previous two episodes. Come on, this is summer, blockbuster season! We have had more than enough CGs, robots, explosions, etc., adding one more doesn't look that interesting. I happened to watch the first "The Mummy" last week, really miss the laughters that Rick, Eve and Jonathan can bring me.

Rachel Weisz is wise enough not to get involved with this movie. The replacement, Maria Bello, seems to have more interests in becoming the next Lara. But as far as we remembered, Eve was just a cute little girl, the brain of the threesome in the adventure, and always need some rescues from Rick (and such rescues are always the most attracting scenes). We do not like Eve because of her kick-ass techniques; we like Eve because she is Eve.

Brendan finally gets back to fit. But this movie seems to be a big waste of his muscles. Hope he could get some more luck in the next "Journey to the Center of the Earth", at least that one has a genius writer.

Luke Ford, as the son Alex, is just too normal. Without a memorable name like Shia LaBeouf (I still cannot pronounce it!), or the shining and killing smile of Freddie Boath (who plays the role Alex in "The Mummy Returns"), he just couldn't make us excited.

Oh BTW, there are some other people in this movie, namely, Jet Li, Michelle Yeoh and Isabella Leong. In this movie, they could be replaced by anybody.