Scorpion King movie review
Content
Scorpion King
(2002)
It's entirely possible there isn't a single person on the planet who enjoyed Mummy Returns as much as I did. Certainly it's in my top five films of all time, and that's even if you count the Star Wars movies separately. So naturally I had a vested interest in seeing Scorpion King, because it ostensibly ties in with that wonderful film. Plus, I more or less like the Rock, he seems like a good guy, and Kelly Hu has been overlooked by Hollywood for too long. It's about damn time they stopped fixating on the barely talented Lucy Liu and realized there are other Asian actresses out there. Anyway, it's apparent from the very first scene that this movie will be a letdown -- not a horrible "Oh Jesus, why did I do this??" letdown (like, say, Tomb Raider), but a letdown nonetheless. I tried not to compare this film to Mummy Returns going in because I knew that would be setting the bar too high. But it's not hard to avoid that comparison, because Scorpion King doesn't aspire to be anything like its progenitor; actually, all this movie really wants to be is Conan. And it is. Problem is, it's not the good first Conan film; it's the crappy second one. As usual these days, the action is too quickly performed to register (maybe that way they can have heads rolling and people getting butchered and still leave it PG-13?) and most of the fight scenes pass in a blur, with either rock music or worse, orchestral music trying to be rock music blaring away in the background. But that's a mostly forgivable sin, because I know unlike Conan they didn't send the Rock off to learn to sword fight (Schwarzenegger, Lopez, and Bergman all spent months becoming proficient with a blade, and it paid off huge time in the final product), and I knew, from the first line of dialogue that a) it wasn't a movie where reality would loom all that large, and b) the film wasn't going to take itself all that seriously, which to me is the kiss of death in a genre film. As you may have read, Scorpion King busies itself with the story of one Mathayus (the Rock), one of the last of the Akkadians (along with his brother played by the American Indian guy from 'Renegade' and a third ‘I'm-here-to-die’ unnamed guy) who hires himself to a nameless king trying to resist the overwhelming advance of one Memnon (Steven Brand, with an out-of-place English accent), a powerful warlord who can't be stopped. If this all sounds familiar, it should; it's the plot of the first Conan film, except there, Max Von Sydow did the hiring and James Earl Jones was the enemy. Anyway, Mathayus and his pals venture off to kill Memnon's sorcerer, who is the real power behind the rampaging conqueror; he can see the future (and you're gonna surprise him how, exactly?). Well, when Mathayus finally does break into Memnon's castle (there's never really any doubt), he discovers that the musty old sorcerer is actually uber-babe Cassandra (Kelly Hu), that she wears even less then he does, and that she isn't all that crazy about Memnon. End act one. The problem is not that the plot is so simple, or even that it's swiped whole-handed from Conan, it's that writer Jonathan Hales (the guy who supposedly helped Lucas write the next Star Wars film, which is not a good sign) manages to use every cliche in the genre character book for this sort of thing. You can actually see the checklist he uses as the plot unfolds: comedy relief coward, check. Lovable thief kid, check. Crazy old scientist/inventor, check. Rival who ends up being best friend, check. It's as if Hales didn't even bother to flesh these people out to two dimensions, let alone three. They all of them enter the film wearing their plot roles hanging from their necks like giant albatrosses, so obvious in their inception and
intent that it was almost painful to watch. That bastard son of a sequel Conan the Destroyer should have taught us the lesson about comic relief buddies, and Short Round and Alex O'Connell aside, kids have no damn business being in these types of films. The other major problem I had was the tone of the film. It was played far too lightheartedly and ended up being impossible to take seriously. Once or twice the Rock stops just short of winking at the camera, and there are way too many attempts at getting us to laugh. Conan, dark film that it was, still had humorous moments, but they grew from the plot, not from situations contrived to be funny. I guess maybe they were intending this film for the Rock's big fanbase of young teenagers, but still. Scorpion King is not all bad -- there are some nicely realized visuals (like at the beginning, when they are explaining how Memnon created his empire, and the brief scenes blend in and out of a map) and most of the sets, especially for a movie of this type, look pretty good (several cityscapes are shown, and it's a testament to the growing power of CGI that you really can't tell that it's not real even when you know it isn't). Costume design is hit and miss (it's hard to base your costumes on anything we know when the film is set to take place "two thousand years before the pyramids") with some of it working really well and some of it looking silly. And, let's face it, the Rock has the charisma to pull off his role, mostly. He looks the part and plays the part acceptably, and he's very easy to root for. If he can get himself attached to better material, he just might have a career in Hollywood. Ditto Hu, whose job, like the Rock, is mostly to stand around and look good; but she has a few nice moments in it as well (at least she isn't 'helpless girl'). The rest of the cast is forgettable. One final note; for those who remember their Mummy Returns, it can be difficult to reconcile the Mathayus shown here with the power-hungry warlord who leads a seven-year campaign to conquer the world at the beginning of that film (and worse, signs his life away to Anubis so that he can accomplish his goals). Yeah, maybe, bad things can happen to good people (and Lucas is hoping that us known that cherubic Anakin turning into Darth Vader won't spoil his story too much), but I don't know, if I was some bad-ass warrior with a hottie babe at my side, I think I'd kinda let the world take care of itself, thank you. Scorpion King is, in the end, mostly harmless, but mostly forgettable. You could more or less skip this (unless you really like the Rock) and you wouldn't miss much. I just hope this teaches them the lesson not to make Mummy 3. April 20, 2002
(2002)
It's entirely possible there isn't a single person on the planet who enjoyed Mummy Returns as much as I did. Certainly it's in my top five films of all time, and that's even if you count the Star Wars movies separately. So naturally I had a vested interest in seeing Scorpion King, because it ostensibly ties in with that wonderful film. Plus, I more or less like the Rock, he seems like a good guy, and Kelly Hu has been overlooked by Hollywood for too long. It's about damn time they stopped fixating on the barely talented Lucy Liu and realized there are other Asian actresses out there. Anyway, it's apparent from the very first scene that this movie will be a letdown -- not a horrible "Oh Jesus, why did I do this??" letdown (like, say, Tomb Raider), but a letdown nonetheless. I tried not to compare this film to Mummy Returns going in because I knew that would be setting the bar too high. But it's not hard to avoid that comparison, because Scorpion King doesn't aspire to be anything like its progenitor; actually, all this movie really wants to be is Conan. And it is. Problem is, it's not the good first Conan film; it's the crappy second one. As usual these days, the action is too quickly performed to register (maybe that way they can have heads rolling and people getting butchered and still leave it PG-13?) and most of the fight scenes pass in a blur, with either rock music or worse, orchestral music trying to be rock music blaring away in the background. But that's a mostly forgivable sin, because I know unlike Conan they didn't send the Rock off to learn to sword fight (Schwarzenegger, Lopez, and Bergman all spent months becoming proficient with a blade, and it paid off huge time in the final product), and I knew, from the first line of dialogue that a) it wasn't a movie where reality would loom all that large, and b) the film wasn't going to take itself all that seriously, which to me is the kiss of death in a genre film. As you may have read, Scorpion King busies itself with the story of one Mathayus (the Rock), one of the last of the Akkadians (along with his brother played by the American Indian guy from 'Renegade' and a third ‘I'm-here-to-die’ unnamed guy) who hires himself to a nameless king trying to resist the overwhelming advance of one Memnon (Steven Brand, with an out-of-place English accent), a powerful warlord who can't be stopped. If this all sounds familiar, it should; it's the plot of the first Conan film, except there, Max Von Sydow did the hiring and James Earl Jones was the enemy. Anyway, Mathayus and his pals venture off to kill Memnon's sorcerer, who is the real power behind the rampaging conqueror; he can see the future (and you're gonna surprise him how, exactly?). Well, when Mathayus finally does break into Memnon's castle (there's never really any doubt), he discovers that the musty old sorcerer is actually uber-babe Cassandra (Kelly Hu), that she wears even less then he does, and that she isn't all that crazy about Memnon. End act one. The problem is not that the plot is so simple, or even that it's swiped whole-handed from Conan, it's that writer Jonathan Hales (the guy who supposedly helped Lucas write the next Star Wars film, which is not a good sign) manages to use every cliche in the genre character book for this sort of thing. You can actually see the checklist he uses as the plot unfolds: comedy relief coward, check. Lovable thief kid, check. Crazy old scientist/inventor, check. Rival who ends up being best friend, check. It's as if Hales didn't even bother to flesh these people out to two dimensions, let alone three. They all of them enter the film wearing their plot roles hanging from their necks like giant albatrosses, so obvious in their inception and
intent that it was almost painful to watch. That bastard son of a sequel Conan the Destroyer should have taught us the lesson about comic relief buddies, and Short Round and Alex O'Connell aside, kids have no damn business being in these types of films. The other major problem I had was the tone of the film. It was played far too lightheartedly and ended up being impossible to take seriously. Once or twice the Rock stops just short of winking at the camera, and there are way too many attempts at getting us to laugh. Conan, dark film that it was, still had humorous moments, but they grew from the plot, not from situations contrived to be funny. I guess maybe they were intending this film for the Rock's big fanbase of young teenagers, but still. Scorpion King is not all bad -- there are some nicely realized visuals (like at the beginning, when they are explaining how Memnon created his empire, and the brief scenes blend in and out of a map) and most of the sets, especially for a movie of this type, look pretty good (several cityscapes are shown, and it's a testament to the growing power of CGI that you really can't tell that it's not real even when you know it isn't). Costume design is hit and miss (it's hard to base your costumes on anything we know when the film is set to take place "two thousand years before the pyramids") with some of it working really well and some of it looking silly. And, let's face it, the Rock has the charisma to pull off his role, mostly. He looks the part and plays the part acceptably, and he's very easy to root for. If he can get himself attached to better material, he just might have a career in Hollywood. Ditto Hu, whose job, like the Rock, is mostly to stand around and look good; but she has a few nice moments in it as well (at least she isn't 'helpless girl'). The rest of the cast is forgettable. One final note; for those who remember their Mummy Returns, it can be difficult to reconcile the Mathayus shown here with the power-hungry warlord who leads a seven-year campaign to conquer the world at the beginning of that film (and worse, signs his life away to Anubis so that he can accomplish his goals). Yeah, maybe, bad things can happen to good people (and Lucas is hoping that us known that cherubic Anakin turning into Darth Vader won't spoil his story too much), but I don't know, if I was some bad-ass warrior with a hottie babe at my side, I think I'd kinda let the world take care of itself, thank you. Scorpion King is, in the end, mostly harmless, but mostly forgettable. You could more or less skip this (unless you really like the Rock) and you wouldn't miss much. I just hope this teaches them the lesson not to make Mummy 3. April 20, 2002
