The Scorpion King (2002)

Chuck Russell

USA

94 min, color, English

If there's anything that this prequel to the sequel of The Mummy shows, is that Armageddon is clearly around the corner. It is written in the Bible (and other holy books) that when a movie borrows from Rambo, the end is near.

This movie will surely go down in history as the classic example of the what is becoming the new Hollywood business model, tentatively dubbed "From money to movie" or M2M. Here's how it works. The studio hires a moderately talented director (Stephen Sommers) to revamp an old classic, then, following a pretty good test run at the theaters, they rehire said director to make a sequel, whose only ostensible purpose was to introduce the household name 'The Rock' (well, at least he's a household name in some households) as the CGI-ebattled Scorpion King. I am ready to bet that as the sequel rolled out, stores were already stocking the action figures for said Rock's appearance as the conquering Scorpion King. I am also pretty sure Disney will soon be unveiling a new theme park (naturally minus the wonders of Kelly Hu).

This business model works backward from the now obsolete film making. The studio airheads get together and --- this is what happens when you get a bunch of zeros together... another round zero --- decide on a bankable set of toys, action figures, and chewing gum. This is then followed by a brainstorm session, or rather a rather timid braindraft, that ends with the triumphant slapping of a title on at least three screenwriters who never made it out of grammar school. After a gruelling one hour of writing (which mostly revolves around how to combine a pretty face with the tone of muscle that is the Rock), they FedEx the result to some guy, who begins filming almost the same day. The result is a vehicle for toy sales but hardly any cinema.

The Scoprion King is so bad, it is not even good. Forget the lame references to the guy being Akkadian (which, according to the unholy screenwriting Trinity, is very different from Babylonian or Mesopotamian), forget the implausible natural landscape of said Mesopotamia, foget the pathetic dialogue (Live freely or die well), forget even the compelete lack of imagination in the fighting department. These can be swallowed, no matter how hard. What really undid the film was the truly uninspired directing, cinematography, writing, music, and acting. Oh wait... I think that's pretty much all a film has.

I won't even bother with the plot, but here's a summary for the curious. The Rock gets paid a couple of million of our very own greenbacks to wear a bunch of fur and make out with one of the prettiest faces around (Kelly Hu). Having paid so much to get The Rock to do what he does for a living as a wrestler, the movie-makers rummaged through the prop department of Xena: WP and rescued all post-punk negligees from deserved oblivion. According to these series, and this film as well, the ancient Egyptians looked like rejects from the set of Mad Max. Whoever started this pitiable trend should cover his head in shame and a lot of sand.

The unbelievbly bad costumes cannot hide the unbelievably bad acting, although in the case of Kelly Hu, there was not much trying. All I can say is that she can no longer claim, as she once did, that "I've managed to keep my clothes on for everything I've done so far." This is not a bad thing. In fact, this was the only thing that kept me from running out of the theater, pulling at my hair, and demanding a full refund plus damages for suffering the idiotic banter of "comedic" relief Grant Heslov and the pompous Michael Clarke.

It would be remiss not to mention the healthy doze of feminism, at least of its modern variety. When our heroes decide to attack the unstoppable Memnon, they set about this formidable task by gathering the least clad but best looking women (surely fierce warriors). The Boob Brigade then penetrates the walled city through a ruse that would have even toddlers yawn (not to mention that the ruse conveniently forgot the comedic sidekick's supposed popularity in Gommorrah that they made such a big deal of in the beginning). Then they battle many turbaned red shirts until the real army arrives, and for some reason it looked like a Roman legion, at which point everyone is saved by the Deus ex Machina, an explosion! In the confused aftermath, the Rock forgets that he is mortally wounded and is hailed by everyone. The script continuity guy must have noticed that the back wound should have killed the guy and, in lieu of explanation for his recovery, they had him appear the next day... with a abandaged hand.

I also hope the said airheads have really deep pockets for Spielberg and Lucas have probably already phoned their lawyers to check on the copyright issues involved in aforementioned unholy Trinity's liberal "borrowing" from Indiana Jones. We were treated to the main character hiding behind a rolling gong from a barrage of bullets (arrows, bullets, same thing), we also had the spunky kid, and the turbaned red shirts to die needlessly by the dozen while navigating a booby-trapped cavern; hell, there was even a "borrowing" from Rambo when the Rock emerged from a sand wall to slice the throat of one of those turbaned red shirts. Shudder.

I had hopes for this film. It could have made a decent story: a basically good guy gets stung by a scorpion, and when defeating his rival, succumbs to the lure of power to become the evil we saw in The Mummy Returns. Of course, such a treatment is taboo in Hollywood and I should have seen this crap coming. Instead, we got a pointless, badly made film that does not relate to the film it was supposed to be prequeling. In fact, I do not even understand why he had to be stung by the scorpion (okay, okay, pinched with a poisoned arrow). Maybe that was just an excuse for an early straddling by Kelly Hu?

October 28, 2002