I miss Rachel Weisz. This thought was not only the first to pass through my head as I awoke to yet another sad and lonely day of my Rachel-free existence this morning but also returned mere minutes after sitting down to watch the latest entry in The Mummy series, Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. And while it's hard to fault director Rob Cohen for the Rachel-free nature of the film - if she doesn't want to do the film she doesn't want to do the film, such is life - it is symptomatic of larger problems in Mummy-land.
How so? Well, in its first incarnation, The Mummy was a rollicking action adventure film in the spirit of the old 1930s serials, the most likely successor to Indiana Jones for this era. It was about spectacle, sure, but more than that it was about the characters and relationships and giving a cast of talented actors the chance to be in on the wink, to allow them to play everything larger than life and camp it up a bit. And camp they did.
The first film made a very deserving star of Brendan Fraser, who was seemingly born to do this sort of thing, while Fraser's co-stars played everything to the hilt and Rachel Weisz, in particular, proved to be Fraser's more than capable equal both as a slapstick foil and a believable love interest. The effects were big and splashy but it was the characters that pulled the audience into the film and they did so brilliantly. Not so much anymore.
The Mummy franchise, it seems, has fallen victim to sequel-itis: that sad belief that everything has to be BIGGER than it was last time out, even if the size of the thing wasn't the charm of it in the first place. Tomb of the Dragon Emperor practically oozes bigness - you're never more than a moment away from the next effects-laden action set piece - but the size comes at the cost of the characters, none of whom are really given the chance to breathe.
Even worse, other than Brendan Fraser, John Hannah and new addition Anthony Wong - an inspired bit of casting in a key villain role - none of the major players seem to understand what sort of film they're in. Sorry, Maria Bello, but you aint no Rachel Weisz. And Luke Ford? The less said the better, really. And Michelle Yeoh? Isabella Leong? So many people are trying so hard to be serious in this, somehow failing to realize seriousness may not be entirely appropriate when acting opposite CGI yetis. And what's with Fraser and Bello both playing characters twenty years older than they were last time out without anybody in the makeup department even trying to make it believable? That was just weird.
On a story and character level, Tomb of the Dragon Emperor is little more than a big budget version of a small budget martial arts film: a bare minimum of character and plot designed to do nothing but get you from one action sequence to the next. It's disappointing when previous entries in the franchise have been significantly more than this but the film is not entirely without its charms.
CGI yetis have a certain appeal, after all, as does John Hannah leaning out of an airplane door with machine gun blazing shrieking "Die you mummy bastard!". I'd actually pay decent money to see an entire film of nothing but John Hannah leaning out of airplane doors blasting away at a variety of creatures. Jet Li makes a fun villain, though he's actually only in the film for ten minutes or so with the rest of 'his' screen time taken up entirely with CGI replacements. Wong not only chews the scenery as only Wong can but he's also really good acting in English, good enough that I hope this opens some doors for him as he's arguably the most charismatic actor working in Hong Kong today and has been for years.
My hunch is that Tomb of the Dragon Emperor will spell the end of the Mummy franchise. Not because it's horrible, which it isn't, but because it's only okay and Fraser is too good an actor to keep making movies that are just okay, particularly now that the franchise is losing some of its key cogs.