The Rockuary: The Mummy Returns

Ahhhhh!  Kill it with fire!

So as promised, today is the first day that I'm starting a whole month of movies that Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson has been in.  And while "The Mummy Returns" is not the first movie that he has been in ("Beyond the Mat" being a wrestling Documentary in 1999, and "Longshot" where he had a very brief cameo in 2000), this is the first movie where he gained notoriety beyond his then-WWF career.  Here, he plays The Scorpion King, who in a later movie would be named Mathayus.  In this movie, Dwayne Johnson has little more than a cameo, and the CGI didn't exactly lend to be on par with the Great One, but considering that most of the CGI technology was headed by New Line with the creation of Gollum for the Two Towers... Universal Pictures could have done a little better with their CGI.  But I get ahead of myself.

The budget of "The Mummy Returns" was about 98 million dollars, and had a box office return of just over 433 million dollars, so all in all I'd say that this was a pretty successful movie.  But now that I'm watching this movie again in preparation of "The Rockuary," I'm not sure it was as successful as it should have been.

So the movie begins in the year 3067BC... because... sure why not?  Here we get to see the Brahma Bull, as the at this time unnamed "Scorpion King" while he's leading his armies on a campaign to conquer the Earth.  But apparently in seven years of warmongering things don't exactly go his way, and to the desert of Ahm Sher.  I don't exactly know where that is, so to bullshit through we'll just say present-day Egypt... otherwise the rest of this movie is pretty much putting its head up its own ass.  Soon enough after walking through the desert, and all of his men dying... which makes me wonder how the Scorpion King just happened to be the last survivor... (save through contrived plot device) he vows to sell his soul to Anubis (God of Death) for the power to defeat his enemies.  Apparently in doing so, Anubis decides to give him a pyramid, an oasis, nigh-immortality, and an army of undead jackal humanoid like creatures.  I mean shit... I would sell my soul for a ham sammich.  Anyway, so that happens, and once the Scorpion King finishes his task, Anubis takes his soul and the world pretty much falls under a deux ex machina effect.

Fast forward to 1933AD, because again, that's a perfectly sensible year for the rest of the movie to take place.  We reunite with Rick O'Connell (played by the always talented Brendan Fraiser) and his now wife (from the previous movie, "The Mummy" played by the underrated, yet beautiful Rachel Weisz) Evelyn O'Connell searching a ruined mortuary structure in the ancient city of Thebes.  And they bring their snot-nose brat of a child named Alex played by who the fuck cares.  Rick and Evelyn are horrible people bringing their child to a place that most likely will kill all three of them if not for Hollywood magic.  Anyway... that bothers me less than just how much this kid annoys the ever-loving shit out of me.

While there, they come across a mystical bracelet said to have been worn by the Scorpion King, and here we have our McGuffin.  When they get back to London, the kid learns that the wearer of the bracelet would immediately become cursed and will have seven days to reach the Scorpion King's pyramid or else die when the sun's light touches the pyramid.  So it's one of those seven day curses.  Gee, that's not original or anything like that.  But whatever, we have a sense of direction for this movie now.

Evelyn gets captured by some Egyptian cultists who want to resurrect Imhotep who was the villain from the last movie, in a sort of uninspired way for the purpose of killing the Scorpion King who is said to be resurrected this year though how or why this is isn't really even properly explained.  But apparently killing the Scorpion King would allow Imhotep to control that jackal army.  So that's sort of neat.

Anyway, after all that, a whole bunch of shit happens, there's an air chase that most people seem to remember and a lot of missed humorous moments.  And then Evelyn has apparently a flashback to a previous life where she was apparently some sort of Egyptian priestess warrior, or some crap like that.  And finally after very little payout from the whole movie... we get to see the Rock as an actual big ass Scorpion.

Okay, okay, okay, okay... what the fuck is this shit?  Why is he a big fucking scorpion?  Does this movie actually explain anything?  And why is this one of the worst things anyone has ever done, ever?  Fine, I'll go with this.  Eventually, through an even less important McGuffin, the Scorpion King dies pretty much like a bitch, Imhotep is swallowed up by the souls of the dead, and I'm sitting in the theater saying "What the fuck is this shit?"  And I have to hear from my friends how this is a great movie.

No.  The reason why this was a great movie was that this was the Rock's movie "debut."  This movie explained nothing, and while cinematically it was pleasing to look at, I felt that the movie felt tacked on and stupid.  But ohhhh... this is certainly not the worst movie the Rock has ever been a part of.  Don't believe me?  You'll just have to wait for more from "The Rockuary."  If you Smell-ell-ell-ell-ell..... what the Rock... is cookin'.  o.ô