Scorpion King 2: Rise of a Warrior

Directed by: Russel Mulcahy

Starring: Michael Copon, Randy Coutre, Simon Quarterman, Karen David

Synopsis:

Set 15 years before “The Scorpion King”, we follow a young Mathayus (Copon) fresh from 6 years training to become one of The Black Scorpions, the King’s personal guard. However in his absence, the King has been usurped by Sargon (Coutre), the man responsible for the death of Mathayus’s father. Mathayus embarks on a quest to The Underworld to retrieve the Sword of Damacles, which he hopes will help him defeat Sargon.

Review:

Yeah, I know –a sequel to a spin-off of the Mummy series. I held it in as much contempt as the rest of you when I discovered the title. But then I caught sight of the trailer and thought the production design looked quite decent for a straight-to-video effort; it looked like someone had taken some time and care with this. Then I saw that the director was Russell Mulcahy (Highlander, Resident Evil: Apocalypse) and my interest was officially piqued.

And, as it turns out, this is actually quite good overall. My only real criticism with the movie was that I wished Universal had thrown just a little bit more money at it to make the creature fx halfway decent. The tone of the movie is similar to the previous – lots of fighting, not too much bloodshed, which should make it perfect for pre-and early teens.

I thought the overall plot was well handled and didn’t feel like a re-tread of the previous movie, nor did it ignore it completely - a pitfall of many dtv sequels. The trip to the Underworld is the movie’s highpoint, utilising some good cgi and a very creepy atmosphere. The production design as I mentioned was of a high standard (I imagine Universal has a number of generic “ancient times” sets that can be easily fine-tuned to suit a number of movies) and the score seemed to be original, rather than rehashing the previous soundtrack.

The acting overall is pretty average, but serviceable. British actor Simon Quarterman has the thankless role of narrator as well as playing a Greek poet called Ari, who aids Mathayus on his quest. UFC champion Randy Coutre gets top billing amongst a cast of near-nobodies. He’s not the most interesting of bad-guys but he does manage a certain screen presence. He’s done a fair bit of tv work over the last couple of years, including a couple of episodes of The Unit, and looks comfortable in front of the camera. Michael Copon used to be a blue power-ranger and is able to utilise his acrobatic fight skills here. Unfortunately he only has about an ounce of the charisma that The Rock has, and I would have liked to see him try “The People’s Eyebrow” to give a bit more continuity between him and The Rock. His character does develop though – as a child he wishes to be a great warrior like his father, and has to learn some hard truths along the ways as to what being a “great warrior” actually means in reality.

As I mentioned, the only area I felt was truly lacking was in the creature fx. Midway through the movie Mathayus confronts the legendary Minotaur in his maze (historical coherence is not a concern for this type of movie), and considering how much build-up it’s given, the revealed creature is a bit of a clunky mess. The finale suffers from a similar problem during Mathayus’ fight with Sargon. Luckily there is a secondary, race-against-time battle going on which actually achieves a certain level of intensity and urgency.

One of the nice touches was the fact you get to hear minor characters muttering in the background, either having their own conversations or commenting on the action at hand. It reminded me a lot of Richard Lester's Three Musketeers movie from the 70's (check it out - it's still the best adaptation.

The movie ends quite open-ended: someone is obviously hoping to develop this into a series of DTV movies. I actually hope this movie is a hit, as I’d like to see more DTV movies of this quality being developed by the big studios.

Verdict:

It’s good to see Universal look after their franchise in this way. I enjoyed it and hope to see another.

6 out of 10 (MikeOutWest)

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