The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008): written by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar; directed by Rob Cohen; starring Brendan Fraser (Rick O'Connell), Maria Bello (Evelyn O'Connell), Luke Ford (Alex O'Connell), John Hannah (Cheaplaughs Johnson), Jet Li (Wasted), Michelle Yeoh (Also Wasted), and Isabella Leong (2000-year-old Hottie): This attempt to restart The Mummy 'franchise' seven years after The Mummy 2 is pretty dumb. It also steals shameless, almost obsessively, from the Indiana Jones movies rather than its own mediocre franchise self.
Former female lead Rachel Weisz had something better to do in 2007, so Maria Bello, a good actress who neither looks nor sounds like Rachel Weisz, fills in. Set about 15 years after The Mummy 2 so that the son of the characters played by franchise leads Brendan Fraser and (now) Bello can be grown up and possibly continue the franchise for another decade despite the simple fact that the actor playing the son, Luke Ford, is a terrible actor with no charisma. To top things off, we leave good old Egypt because Universal was pioneering the idea of co-financing blockbusters with China.
Yes, we go to China. The movie completely wastes Jet Li as the Emperor and Michelle Yeoh as his ancient witchy karate nemesis. It stretches the concept of 'mummy' to include 'terracotta warriors' and 'evil Emperor trapped alive inside a regenerating clay exoskeleton' and 'strangely unrotted people buried under the Great Wall of China for hundreds of years without any mummification procedure being intentionally tried on them.'
Honestly, a bunch of British bog-men could be the features of some nightmarishly goofy fourth movie, though this movie ends ominously with a brief bit about Peruvian mummies. Thankfully, The Mummy: Fitzcarraldo the Right Thing has never appeared.
There are some Yetis here, good guys for once. Some CGI stuff happens, none of it convincingly. The bad living people are transparent stand-ins for the right-wing, post-war Chinese Nationalists (it's 1947), though no mention is made of the Communists or Mao or really anything in actual Chinese history around the time of the 'War of Revolution.' The lead human villain does look an awful lot like Chiang Kai-Shek, though. Tom Cruise can be seen waiting in the shadows waiting for the Curse of the Mummy to fall upon him. Not recommended.
