The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor


The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor is a 2008 American action adventure fantasy film directed by Rob Cohen, written by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, and produced by Stephen Sommers, Bob Ducsay, Sean Daniel, and James Jacks. The film is set in China rather than Egypt and focuses on the Terracotta Army's origins. It is the third installment in The Mummy series. It stars Brendan Fraser, Jet Li, Maria Bello, John Hannah, Luke Ford, Anthony Wong, and Michelle Yeoh.
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor premiered in Moscow on July 24, 2008, and was released in the United States on August 1, 2008. The film was a commercial success, grossing $405.8 million worldwide, though it was the lowest-grossing film in the trilogy and received generally negative reviews from critics. Universal Pictures rebooted the Mummy franchise with a 2017 reboot film, in an attempt to start a cinematic universe under the name Dark Universe. A sequel is in development.

Plot

In ancient China, a warlord unified Qin and became the founder of the Qin dynasty, known as the Dragon Emperor. However, fearing his death would end all he had accomplished, the Emperor summoned the sorceress Zi Yuan and sent her to a monastery with his second-in-command, General Ming, to find the long-lost Oracle Bones, which hold the key to immortality. When Zi Yuan and Ming fell in love, the Emperor had him executed out of jealousy. In retaliation, instead of giving him immortality, Zi cursed the Emperor and his army, turning them into the Terracotta Army.
In 1946, thirteen years after the deaths of Imhotep and the Scorpion King, Alex O'Connell, Rick and Evelyn O'Connell's son, and his archaeology professor, Roger Wilson, find the Emperor's tomb. Though attacked by a mysterious woman, they bring the sarcophagus to Shanghai. Meanwhile, the British government entrusts Rick and Evelyn to retrieve a gemstone called the "Eye of Shangri-La" and return it to China. During the Chinese New Year in Shanghai, the reunited O'Connells learn that Wilson works for a rogue military faction led by General Yang and his assistant, Colonel Choi, who provided the financial backing for Alex's expedition. Yang believes the Emperor can lead China out of the chaos following World War II and the Chinese Civil War, resurrecting him using the "Eye of Shangri-La," which contains mystical water. The revived Emperor accepts Yang's services but kills Wilson. The O'Connells try to stop him with the help of Lin, the woman who earlier attacked Alex, but he escapes. Lin reveals that she possesses the only weapon that can kill the Emperor—a cursed dagger.
Along with Evelyn's brother, Jonathan Carnahan, the O'Connells and Lin travel to a stupa in the Himalayas that will reveal the path to Shangri-La. With help from yetis summoned by Lin, the group holds off Yang's forces, but the Emperor discovers Shangri-La's location. The Emperor gravely wounds Rick while Alex triggers an avalanche, slowing the Emperor's pursuit. Lin takes them to Shangri-La, where Zi Yuan still lives and can heal Rick's wound. Lin is Yuan's daughter, both rendered immortal by the mystical waters. The Emperor and Yang arrive, and he bathes in the waters, restoring his human form and granting him supernatural power. Morphing into a three-headed dragon, he steals the dagger, kidnaps Lin, and flies back to his tomb. The Emperor revives the Terracotta Army for world domination and directs them to breach the Great Wall, after which they will be invincible.
The O'Connells and Zi Yuan pursue the Emperor to the Great Wall, where Yuan, using the Oracle Bones, sacrifices her own and Lin's immortality to raise an undead army of the Emperor's enemies, led by a revived General Ming. As the two undead armies clash, Alex rescues Lin. Yuan fights the Emperor and steals the dagger from him before he mortally wounds her. While dying, she gives the blade to Rick and Alex. The Emperor retreats into the Great Wall, where Alex and Rick confront him while Evelyn and Lin fight Yang and Choi, killing both. Meanwhile, Rick and Alex overpower the Emperor and kill him with the dagger, which destroys the Terracotta Army. Ming and his army celebrate before entering the afterlife.
The O'Connells and Lin return to Shanghai, where Alex and Lin start a relationship. Jonathan takes the Eye of Shangri-La and moves to Peru. However, it is soon later revealed that mummies were found in Peru.

Cast

  • Brendan Fraser as Rick O'Connell, a retired adventurer, Evelyn's husband and Alex's father.
  • Maria Bello as Evelyn Carnahan-O'Connell, Rick's wife and Alex's mother, also a retired adventurer/librarian turned novelist. She was previously portrayed by Rachel Weisz.
  • John Hannah as Jonathan Carnahan, Evelyn's elder brother.
  • Russell Wong as General Ming Guo, the Emperor's former second-in-command, Zi Yuan's lover and Lin's father.
  • Liam Cunningham as Mad Dog Maguire, a pilot and old friend of Rick who helps the O'Connells make their way to Tibet on their journey to Shangri-La.
  • Luke Ford as Alexander Rupert "Alex" O'Connell, Rick's and Evelyn's son, now twenty-one years old, who develops romantic feelings towards Zi Yuan's daughter, Lin. He was previously portrayed by Freddie Boath.
  • Isabella Leong as Lin, Alex's love interest, Ming Guo and Zi Yuan's daughter, and the protector of the Emperor's tomb.
  • Michelle Yeoh as Zi Yuan, an immortal sorceress who the Emperor sought in order to obtain the secret to eternal life that she possesses.
  • Jet Li as Qin Shi Huang, an evil warlord who desired immortality. Though he becomes immortal, he and his army were mummified alive. Once revived, he seeks to enslave the world.
  • Anthony Wong as General Yang, a rogue Kuomintang general who becomes the Emperor's supporter.
  • Jessey Meng as Colonel Choi, Yang's assistant.
  • David Calder as Professor Roger Wilson, Alex's supporter in his expedition of the Emperor's tomb, but secretly a collaborator with Yang and Choi.
  • Albert Kwan as Chu Wah, a worker at the initial dig site who is killed by an acid trap.
  • James Bradford as Jameson, Rick and Evelyn's butler.
  • Michael Sherer and Scott Taylor as the motion-capture of the yetis that aid the O'Connells in the Himalayas.
  • Freda Foh Shen as the Narrator.

    Production

Development

In November 2001, director Stephen Sommers, who directed the previous Mummy films, said about directing a third film, "There is a demand for it, but most of the gang would only be up for it again if we could find a way to make it bigger and better." In May 2004 during the release of Van Helsing, he expressed his doubts about having the energy to make a third film, though the cast of previous films had expressed interest in returning. In December 2005, he reviewed a script written by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, about a Chinese mummy.
The idea of The Emperor and his army is based on the real-life Qin emperor Qin Shi Huang, who was buried amidst thousands of crafted and fired terra cotta soldiers, called the Terracotta Army.

Writing

An early version of Gough and Millar's script contained many callbacks to the previous films that went unused. The original prologue had Zi Yuan going to Hamunaptra and making a terracotta copy of the Book of the Dead, featuring the puzzle box key from the first film. Instead of the Oracle Bones, Zohora uses the book's terracotta copy to curse the Emperor and his army. The book would also have been used to resurrect the Emperor instead of the Elixir of Life. Jonathan not only named his nightclub after Imhotep but styled the barmaids with Anck-Su-Namun's bodypaint. The Bembridge Scholars that Evy frequently mentioned in the first film would have returned in a minor role. The character Sir Colin Willoughby, the head of the society, would play a role in the Dragon Emperor's resurrection in Wilson's place. In the second film, Meela says three men will "receive their just rewards." The Emperor Mummy says Yang will get his reward when the Emperor conquers the larger world. During the final battle, Alex's slingshot would return to play a vital role in defeating the Emperor. At one point, the producers wanted Imhotep to be in the script where he would have joined the protagonists in defeating the dragon Emperor.
Like the previous films, this early draft contained more body horror elements, including a crocodile eating Okumura's arm, and maggots, bone fragments, and fossilized guts seeping through the Emperor Mummy's wounds. After becoming immortal, the Emperor forms a new brain, eyeball, and skin grafts over his cracked body. In his mummy form, the Dragon Emperor shared a few similarities with Imhotep: they both drain people's lifeforce to heal themselves, after draining one character, the Emperor Mummy inherits his victim's blue eyes, like Imhotep did in one scene of the second movie, Just as Imhotep made impressions of his face in sand and water in the first and second films, respectively, the Emperor Mummy similarly forms his face in the snow during the avalanche. The mummification sequence was also more graphic as the Emperor's heart would've become visible through his chest, pumping black blood through his veins and out of his pores. Then molten clay covers his clothes and body before being superheated and hardened by intense white light beams from within him.
The script showed the Emperor as having a more ruthless personality. He sends Zohora to Hamunaptra under the threat of killing her lover Ming Guo if she fails to return within 90 days, only to present her with his head in a box when she does. When he becomes immortal, the Emperor puts a searing finger on Okumura's forehead, and makes him kneel and pledge his loyalty. He kisses Zohora to simultaneously spite and curse her by turning her and the other immortals in Shangri-La into terracotta statues. The curse doesn't affect Lin because she's already sacrificed her immortality before the Emperor arrives in Shangri-La. Then, as he takes Lin, the Emperor tells her she will pay for her mother's sins by sharing his bed as his queen. During the climax, the Emperor punishes Okumura for his failure by encasing him in a giant brass lantern.
The script took place in 1940 during World War II instead of afterward. Rick and Evy are introduced in Agra, India, acting as spies for the British government, observing Okumura, believing he has a secret weapon for the Japanese to win the war, later revealed to be the Emperor. With the backdrop of the war, the script shows the tensions between the Chinese and Japanese, with one scene in Imhotep's where Jonathan calms a dispute between the O'Connells friend and Chinese resistance member, Chang, and Japanese Major Suki. Another later had the O'Connells reluctantly forced to stand back and watch Chang get captured by Japanese troops, who collect insurgents and send them on trains to work camps, as Lily previously told Alex. It's revealed that despite Rick and Evy sending Alex to Yale to protect him, he left his first year without their knowledge and failed to enlist in the army before being called by Willoughby to work with him. Unlike the film, the O'Connells learn the Emperor has five days to become immortal after he's awakened, or he'll turn to dust. Later, at a monastery in the Himalayas ransacked by Japanese soldiers, they encounter a Tibetan monk they dub Tequila, who joins the group, leading them to the Temple of Whispering Skulls and accompanying them to the Great Wall. Rather than the Emperor Mummy mortally wounding Rick, Alex would've taken the hit to save his dad.
Other notable differences between the script and film include Shangri-La depicted as a lush utopia filled with people from various eras. The Dragon Emperor showed more of his mastery over the five Chinese elements: he freezes and unfreezes a river to escape, rapidly shoots fireballs from his hands, makes "snow arms" to drag enemies underground, and makes a raincloud with water from the Spring of Eternal Life to raise his army. Unlike in the movie, he doesn't become a shapeshifter. Many Chinese slave workers and other prisoners the Japanese took, including Chang, ward off the Emperor's Terracotta Army instead of undead warriors. Instead of the one-on-one fight between Rick and the Dragon Emperor, the O'Connells try to complete a ritual involving the five elements to unlock the "River of Spirits," the Emperor's enemies' souls beneath the Great Wall, to defeat the terracotta soldiers as the Emperor tries to stop them. Rick tells the Emperor to give Imhotep his regards after delivering the killing blow. The terracotta curse upon Shangri-La ends with the Emperor's death, freeing its inhabitants, including Zohora.