Made in China: “Mummy 3”

While its attendance dropped again by nearly half, Batman sequel “The Dark Knight” held onto its first place boxoffice ranking in its third weekend of release, narrowly outgrossing the only new release to open in the top five, the third installment of the revived “Mummy” series.

Coming in a distant third and fourth were “Step Brothers” in its second weekend and “Mamma Mia!” in its third. The latest “Journey to the Center of the Earth” remake kept its fifth place ranking in its fourth week of release (no doubt aided by its spectacular 3-D presentations), making Brendan Fraser one of the few stars to have starring roles in two top five movies playing at the same time (both of them action fantasies).

Summer Hollywood release schedules are noted for action films, sequels, and remakes (some films often fitting into all three categories), usually packed with flashy computer-generated visual effects. This summer seems to be especially heavy with titles that strain their utmost to dazzle viewers and give the appearance of hip trendiness, but ultimately provide only minor variations on proven formulas.

Audiences simultaneously feed and undermine this cycle with their insistence on preferring something they’re already familiar with (rather than take chances on an unknown genre, style, or star) combined with their deep-seated desire for something new (rather than searching out “old” movies or simply watching favorite movies over again forever). As a result, Hollywood attempts to appease them by repackaging what seem to have been the most popular elements from various previous hits into new movies.

“The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor” is a perfectly adequate action-adventure that follows its likeable heroes from one peril to another through exotic locations, with spectacular visual effects and breathlessly-edited battle sequences. The Chinese setting is no doubt calculated to cash in on interest in China due to the Olympics (and possibly work in some highly ironic political subtext). For people who have never seen another movie released before, say, two months ago, “Mummy 3” should be a fresh, exciting, and involving supernatural fantasy-drama that is more than satisfying.

Viewers who remember the 1999 version of “The Mummy” and its 2001 sequel “The Mummy Returns” will probably be disappointed that beautiful and talented Rachel Weisz does not reunite with co-stars Brendan Fraser and John Hannah in this episode of the series. However, the latest story takes place in 1947—roughly 15 years after the second film’s early 1930s plot, which had been about 7-10 years after the mid-1920s setting of the first Fraser-Weisz mummy film. With that in mind, the 40-year-old Maria Bello appears closer to the 40-something Evie than the still-youthful 36 Weisz would have.

Bello does a good job with the British accent and while their on-screen chemistry takes a while to kick in, she and Fraser both have fun playing action heroes and parents to a now-adult son with a mind of his own (Luke Ford taking over for the little boy who played Alex in “The Mummy Returns”).

This is where reasonably observant viewers will start to notice distinct similarities with films outside the latest mummy franchise (since none of these films bears much relationship to the original 1932 “The Mummy” or its 1940s sequels other than the title). Actually, part of the fun in this movie (as it was in the 1999 and especially the 2001 mummy film) is trying to spot all the homages to and ripoffs of earlier films.

The estranged family fighting supernatural adversaries was the central structure of this May’s “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.” The subplot of a romance dealing with immortality in the lost valley of Shangri-La is a blatant reworking of Frank Capra’s “Lost Horizon.” The court intrigue and high-level betrayal in ancient China is borrowed from countless Hong Kong action films, complete with slow-motion martial arts involving none other than Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh themselves!

Some might also notice how many times “Mummy 3” redresses virtually identical plot devices from its own two predecessors, taking a popular incident or dialogue exchange and expanding it in a new context. And like most sequels, it tends toward increased action and decreased character development, to keep its far from original plot moving as fast as possible while showing off ever more elaborate computer generated crowds, settings, and battle sequences.

In short, like so many movies of the genre, viewers who like this sort of thing should find that “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor” is the sort of thing that they like. Any reasonable boxoffice success will guarantee another installment, hinted as moving to South America next time around.