The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor moves the franchise out of Egypt and into China, swaps Rachel Weisz for Maria Bello, and hands the villain’s chair to Jet Li. It is the third film in the series, directed by Rob Cohen from a script by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, and it runs 112 minutes. It is also the worst of the three by a wide margin.
Trailer, via Universal Pictures.
Qin Shi Huang and the Terracotta Army
The premise has real promise. In ancient China, the warlord Qin Shi Huang unifies Qin and founds the Qin dynasty, taking the name Dragon Emperor. Fearing that death will end everything he has built, he sends the sorceress Zi Yuan and his second-in-command, General Ming, to a monastery to find the Oracle Bones, which hold the key to immortality. Yuan and Ming fall in love. The Emperor has Ming executed and wounds Yuan out of jealousy. She curses him and his army, turning them into the Terracotta Army.
That is a strong opening. Grief, betrayal, a curse with a cause. The film then jumps to 1946, thirteen years after the deaths of Imhotep and the Scorpion King, and the trouble starts.
Alex O’Connell, now twenty-one, and his professor Roger Wilson find the Emperor’s tomb. They are attacked by a mysterious woman, and they bring the sarcophagus to Shanghai anyway. Meanwhile the British government asks Rick and Evelyn to retrieve a gemstone called the Eye of Shangri-La and return it to China. At Chinese New Year in Shanghai, the family learns Wilson works for a rogue military faction led by General Yang and Colonel Choi, who funded Alex’s expedition.
Yang wants the Emperor to lead China out of the chaos after World War II and the Chinese Civil War. He resurrects him with the Eye of Shangri-La, which contains mystical water. The Emperor accepts Yang’s service and kills Wilson.
A Cast Doing Work the Script Does Not Deserve
Brendan Fraser returns as Rick O’Connell. John Hannah returns as Jonathan Carnahan. Both are fine. The recasting is the loudest problem. Maria Bello takes over Evelyn, a role Weisz played in the first two films. Weisz declined, citing “problems with the script” and having just given birth to her son.
- Jet Li as Qin Shi Huang, the Dragon Emperor
- Michelle Yeoh as Zi Yuan, the immortal sorceress
- Luke Ford as Alex O’Connell
- Isabella Leong as Lin, Ming and Yuan’s daughter
- Anthony Wong as General Yang
- Russell Wong as General Ming Guo
- Liam Cunningham as Mad Dog Maguire, the pilot
Li and Yeoh are the two best reasons to watch this film and the film does not know it. Yeoh gets a backstory worth a movie. Li spends most of his screen time as a creature built in a computer or a man standing very still. Russell Wong’s Ming Guo is dead before the plot properly starts and is more vivid than anything in the 1946 half.
The Dagger, the Stupa, and the Yetis
Lin turns out to be the woman who attacked Alex at the tomb, and she carries the only weapon that can kill the Emperor: a cursed dagger. She is also Ming and Yuan’s daughter, which means the film has a blood feud sitting in its lap and mostly uses it for a romance with Alex.
The O’Connells and Lin travel to a stupa in the Himalayas that reveals the path to Shangri-La. Mad Dog Maguire, a pilot and old friend of Rick, flies them toward Tibet. Yetis help them in the Himalayas. The yetis are played by Michael Sherer and Scott Taylor in motion capture. That detail is more entertaining than the sequence.
Here is the running order of how the film spends its 112 minutes:
| Act | Setting | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Prologue | Ancient China | Qin Shi Huang, Zi Yuan, the curse |
| Act one | 1946, tomb and Shanghai | Alex finds the tomb, the Emperor rises |
| Act two | Shanghai | Yang’s faction, Wilson’s death, Lin’s dagger |
| Act three | Himalayas | The stupa, Shangri-La, the yetis |
| Finale | China | The O’Connells against the Emperor |
That structure should work. It has a tomb, a curse, a dagger, an immortal sorceress, and Jet Li. It does not work.
Why the Third One Is the Hardest
Stephen Sommers, who directed the first two films, did not return. He said “the first two really came together” and that “third ones are just very hard.” He was right, and he was right to sit this one out. Universal offered the job to Joe Johnston first; he declined. Cohen took over.
The film premiered in Moscow on July 24, 2008, and opened in the United States on August 1. It grossed $406 million against a $145 million production budget. That sounds like a hit until you notice it is the lowest-grossing film in the trilogy. The reviews were negative. The math agrees with them.
The title was once The Mummy 3: Curse of the Dragon. The final title is more honest about what the film actually is: a dragon emperor, a Terracotta Army, and a franchise that has stopped being about mummies in any meaningful sense.
What matters here is not the box office. It is the trade the film makes. The first two films worked because they were about a curse with a person inside it. This one has a curse, an army, a dagger, an oracle, a gemstone, a stupa, two immortals, a rogue general, a double agent professor, and a pilot, and it never slows down long enough to let any of them land. The Eye of Shangri-La, the Oracle Bones, the cursed dagger — three magical objects competing for the same job. The film treats them as interchangeable, and so the audience does too.
Bello is not the problem. The script is. Evelyn in this film is a novelist and a wife, and the film gives her almost nothing to do with the dagger, the gem, or the Emperor. Weisz’s stated reason for leaving was the script. She was not wrong.
The one real loss is Yeoh. Zi Yuan is the only character in the film with a complete arc — love, loss, vengeance, immortality, a daughter she barely gets to raise. Yeoh plays all of it. The film keeps cutting away from her to watch Luke Ford and Isabella Leong flirt near a stupa.
A direct sequel to the previous film is set for October 15, 2027. That is the more interesting story. The franchise is treating this installment as a detour to be walked back. Given what is on screen, that is the correct read.
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor is a film with a good premise, a good cast, and no idea which of them to trust. Li and Yeoh are wasted. The yetis get motion-capture credits. The trilogy’s lowest gross is also its lowest point.
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