The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008)

Brendan Fraser saved the world from mummies twice. How can someone follow up success like that? By saving the world from mummies a third time! When he signed on for another Mummy sequel, he was working with a new director and new writers. Some of his co-stars were recast. Some were absent. But his task remained the same: stop the rampage of a power-hungry walking corpse. That’s what he set out to do in The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor… and it’s time to figure out What Happened to This Horror Movie.

Fraser played treasure hunter Rick O’Connell in the 1999 reboot of the Universal Monsters classic The Mummy and its 2001 sequel The Mummy Returns. Both movies were written and directed by Stephen Sommers – but Sommers had no intention of directing a third Mummy film. After making the second one, he was ready to work on smaller projects. Universal convinced him to make the monster movie Van Helsing instead of the little comedy he was hoping for… but when that was done, he still counted himself out of any further monster action. As he told Sci-Fi Wire, “I’ve done my Mummys. There may be a third Mummy, but I need to do a small movie about two girls chatting on a beach. A lot of people have been talking about sequels, but what they forget is that I’m the one who has to make it. I’m just tired right now.”

So, while Sommers remained attached as a producer, Universal had to find someone else to write their next Mummy sequel. They turned to the writing duo of Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, the showrunners of the Superman TV series Smallville and writers of the Jackie Chan movies Shanghai Noon and Shanghai Knights. Their Shanghai movies had blended the martial arts, Western, and comedy genres, and the idea was to do something similar here: mix martial arts fantasy elements with the established Mummy elements of horror, comedy, and action adventure. Like Sommers drew from Egyptian history when writing scripts, Gough and Millar drew from Chinese history, basing the bad guy on the first emperor of China. Their story begins in ancient China, when the country was torn by civil war. A ruthless king conquered his adversaries to become emperor. He enslaved his enemies and forced them to build the Great Wall. Mystics taught him how to master the five elements; fire, water, earth, wood, and metal. But even with all his power, he couldn’t stop himself from aging. Seeking the secret of eternal life, he enlisted a witch named Zi Yuan to find the Oracle of Bones, a collection of mystical secrets. Including the secret to immortality. The emperor planned to make Zi Yuan his queen, but she fell in love with his second-in-command, General Ming Guo. When the emperor found out about this, he had Ming killed. So Zi Yuan placed a curse on the emperor and his army, turning them into terracotta statues.

In early drafts, the emperor’s story was more closely tied to the story of the mummy in the previous films. He sought the secret of eternal life in the Egyptian city of Hamunaptra and the spells came from a copy of the Book of the Dead, not the Oracle of Bones. But rewrites distanced the story from its predecessors and simplified some of the action, weakening the Dragon Emperor’s supernatural powers. While adding in an ability to shape-shift. The writers initially envisioned the story as taking place in 1940, seven years after the events of The Mummy Returns, in the midst of World War 2. Rick and his wife Evelyn were going to be working as spies for the British government when they stumble into the story of the Dragon Emperor. But the setting was pushed back to 1946. Just after the war. Rick and Evelyn did work as spies, but we missed that part of their lives. Now Evelyn is an author, writing romantic adventure novels that feature villainous mummies. And Rick is struggling with a boring life of domesticity. Their adult son Alex is the adventurer now. Tossed out of college, he’s participating in an archaeological dig in China that unearths the tomb of the Dragon Emperor.

Rick and Evelyn catch up with Alex when they’re asked to take an artifact called the Eye of Shangri-La to China. This contains water from the mystical valley of Shangri-La and can be used to point the way to the Pool of Eternal Life. Believing the Dragon Emperor is what China needs in the wake of the war, a rogue military general resurrects the mummy and they set out for the Pool of Eternal Life. Rick, Evelyn, and Alex have to stop the Dragon Emperor from gaining immortality and using his Terracotta Army to conquer the world. They’re aided in this mission by Evelyn’s brother Jonathan, who runs a mummy-themed nightclub in China; a pilot called Mad Dog Maguire; and a mysterious woman named Lin, who wields a cursed dagger she says can kill the Dragon Emperor. She’s also able to communicate with the yetis that live in the Himalayas. So we get some Abominable Snowman action in this movie, too.

Universal’s biggest franchises are the Jurassic films and the Fast and Furious series, so they turned to Jurassic and Fast and Furious directors when they needed to replace Sommers. Their first choice was Joe Johnston, who had made Jurassic Park 3 for them. But he passed on The Mummy 3. Soon after, he did agree to direct a reboot of The Wolfman. The next choice was Rob Cohen, director of The Fast and the Furious. When Cohen first heard what he was being offered, he was skeptical. He doesn’t even direct sequels to his own movies; why would he want to make a Mummy sequel? But then he saw what Gough and Millar had written – and this turned out to be the right script at the right time.

Cohen had been developing a new version of The Eighth Voyage of Sinbad for Columbia Pictures. It was set in eighth-century China, with Sinbad – to be played by Keanu Reeves – searching for the Lamp of Aladdin. On this quest, he would meet a beautiful empress, battle fantastical creatures, and face off with a rebellious Chinese general who had supernatural powers. That project fell apart. And The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor was so close to what Cohen wanted to do with The Eighth Voyage of Sinbad, he couldn’t turn it down. He took the job – and, as the Dragon Emperor, he cast the actor he had in mind for that supernaturally powered Chinese general: Jet Li. Who Gough and Millar had written for when they worked on Lethal Weapon 4.

Brendan Fraser was locked in to reprise the role of Rick O’Connell, with John Hannah returning as Rick’s brother-in-law Jonathan. Luke Ford was cast as Rick and Evelyn’s son Alex, and he signed a contract for multiple films. There was a possibility that this movie could serve as a passing of the torch from Rick to Alex and Alex would be the lead in future sequels. Isabella Leong was cast Lin, who becomes Alex’s love interest as the story plays out. Liam Cunningham was cast as Mad Dog Maguire, Russell Wong as the ill-fated General Ming Guo, and Anthony Wong, Jessey Meng, and David Calder as the villains who conspire to resurrect the Dragon Emperor. To cast the emperor’s nemesis Zi Yuan, Cohen chose another superstar of Hong Kong cinema to take on Jet Li: Michelle Yeoh. Speaking with Fangoria, Yeoh revealed, “What drew me to the role was Rob’s respect toward Chinese culture, the Mummy series, and the fun-loving adventure this film was presenting. … I read the script and it was about the terracotta warriors, and them coming back to life. I like the way the film uses history, and these kinds of stories can appeal to the younger generation. I’d love to pique their curiosity with something like this, where they can say, ‘Wow, how cool is Shanghai or China, and how cool is the Great Wall and the emperor who could do this.’ Hopefully, this movie will make them want to know more about these parts of Chinese culture and history.”

Rachel Weisz was asked to return as Evelyn. Some reports say she didn’t like the script. Others say she didn’t want to spend months filming in China when she had a child at home. Whatever the reason, she chose not to play Evelyn a third time. She was replaced by Maria Bello, fresh off her role in A History of Violence. Many fans were disappointed that Weisz didn’t come back. Bello has a very different look and vibe than the actress she was replacing, so it is jarring to see her in the role. As Bello has said, this Evelyn “has the same name, but she is quite a different character. (Rob Cohen) created a new Evelyn.”

Cohen was not a fan of goofy humor or slapstick, both of which had been prevalent in the previous films. So he allowed the film to have a sense of humor, but removed some of the jokes and silliness. He was aiming to make something that was still exciting, but more grounded, with an emotional family story at its core. The tone of Raiders of the Lost Ark was his guide. While some scenes were shot in England and Canada, much of the production took place throughout China. And the cast and crew had to deal with some intense conditions while working there. But Cohen named the script revisions and the special effects as the biggest challenges. The movie has over nine hundred visual effects shots, with most of those coming in the climactic sequence. Two months before the release date, there were still three hundred effects shots left to complete.

But the effects companies got the work done, and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor was released in August of 2008. It was a bit less successful than the previous movies. The Mummy had cost eighty million dollars and made four-hundred and seventeen million at the box office. The Mummy Returns cost ninety-eight million and made four-hundred and thirty-five million. The budget for this one was substantially higher; one hundred and forty-five million. But its box office haul was lower; just under four hundred and six million. Still, it did well financially. Where it really fell short was in the reception from critics and movie-goers. Rotten Tomatoes reports that only sixty-two percent of the first movie’s reviews were positive, but the audience score was seventy-five percent positive. Just forty-six percent of The Mummy Returns reviews were positive, but the audience score was still at sixty-three. Tomb of the Dragon Emperor fell short in both categories. Only thirteen percent of the reviews were positive, while the audience score fell to thirty percent. Fans were let down.

Universal considered making another sequel for a while. Brendan Fraser might have battled Antonio Banderas in The Mummy: Rise of the Aztecs… but it wasn’t to be. That idea was scrapped in favor of the 2017 reboot starring Tom Cruise. Which turned out to be a bigger disappointment for the studio, even though it also made four hundred million at the box office. As far as fans and critics were concerned, the Rick O’Connell era of Mummy movies came to an underwhelming conclusion… But there are still some holding on to hope that Fraser will return to the franchise someday. So they can follow Rick on another mummy-filled adventure. They might get their wish. But for now, at least we have an entire Rick O’Connell trilogy to turn to any time we want to see some crazy mummy action.

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