Once upon a time there were a Mr & Mrs Rock who decided to name their son "The". Having a definite article for a Christian name, however, proved no drawback to young The, and he went on to become a well-known wrestler, as well as an occasional actor.
"The Scorpion King" is a spin-off from "The Mummy Returns", in which The played a relatively minor character called the Scorpion King. In the earlier film, however, this character was a villain, a tyrannical, power-crazed warlord; here he is a hero, a freedom fighter trying to overthrow a tyrannical, power-crazed warlord. The film does not have much in common with "The Mummy Returns"; it bears a much closer resemblance to the sort of sword-and-sorcery epics that the current Governor of California was making in the early eighties.
The film is supposedly set somewhere in the Middle East in the far-distant past, thousands of years before the Pyramids were built, although there are a number of anachronisms. The earliest Egyptian pyramids were built around 2,600 BC, but we see horsemen using stirrups, not invented until more than 2,000 years later. Gunpowder (said to be a secret formula from China) plays an important part in the plot; the Chinese did indeed invent gunpowder, but not until the time of the Tang dynasty, around 800 AD. There are characters with Greek names such as Philos and Cassandra, even though the supposed date of the film long antedates the rise of Greek culture.
The basic idea is that civilisation as we know it, or as we knew it several millennia BC, is being threatened by the evil tyrant Memnon, who is set on conquering the entire world. Memnon is assisted in his conquests by a powerful Sorcerer who can foretell the future. Mathayus, a professional assassin, is hired by Memnon's enemies to kill the Sorcerer, but then discovers that she is actually an attractive young woman, certainly far too attractive to kill. Mathayus decides that his best plan of action is to fall in love with her, get her to fall in love with him and enlist her help in the battle against Memnon. (Was Mathayus a distant ancestor of James Bond? He has made use of a similar plan of action on numerous occasions). You can easily work out the rest of the story from here.
The film is not quite as awful as some of the sword-and-sorcery films from the 1980s, but that is because of the advances in technology during the intervening period. The special effects are still fairly ropey, but they are not as hilariously bad as they were in something like "Red Sonja". The art of acting, however, has not advanced at all; The Rock is every bit as wooden as early-period Schwarzenegger. The beauteous Kelly Hu is rather better than the ghastly Brigitte Nielsen, who played the equivalent role in "Red Sonja", but then it would be difficult to be worse. Stephen Brand as Memnon is weak and Grant Heslov as the horse-thief Arpid who reluctantly becomes Mathayus's sidekick is simply annoying. Bernard Hill can be a very good actor, as he showed in "Lord of the Rings" and "Titanic", so it was a disappointment to see him in sorry trash like this.
The plot is no more than a succession of clichés and the dialogue is frequently ponderous and stilted. (Sample: "May the gods have pity on you, for my brother will not"). Notwithstanding the success of Peter Jackson's brilliant "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, "The Scorpion King" proves that, even in the twenty-first century the art of making bad fantasy epics has not been lost. 3/10
"The Scorpion King" is a spin-off from "The Mummy Returns", in which The played a relatively minor character called the Scorpion King. In the earlier film, however, this character was a villain, a tyrannical, power-crazed warlord; here he is a hero, a freedom fighter trying to overthrow a tyrannical, power-crazed warlord. The film does not have much in common with "The Mummy Returns"; it bears a much closer resemblance to the sort of sword-and-sorcery epics that the current Governor of California was making in the early eighties.
The film is supposedly set somewhere in the Middle East in the far-distant past, thousands of years before the Pyramids were built, although there are a number of anachronisms. The earliest Egyptian pyramids were built around 2,600 BC, but we see horsemen using stirrups, not invented until more than 2,000 years later. Gunpowder (said to be a secret formula from China) plays an important part in the plot; the Chinese did indeed invent gunpowder, but not until the time of the Tang dynasty, around 800 AD. There are characters with Greek names such as Philos and Cassandra, even though the supposed date of the film long antedates the rise of Greek culture.
The basic idea is that civilisation as we know it, or as we knew it several millennia BC, is being threatened by the evil tyrant Memnon, who is set on conquering the entire world. Memnon is assisted in his conquests by a powerful Sorcerer who can foretell the future. Mathayus, a professional assassin, is hired by Memnon's enemies to kill the Sorcerer, but then discovers that she is actually an attractive young woman, certainly far too attractive to kill. Mathayus decides that his best plan of action is to fall in love with her, get her to fall in love with him and enlist her help in the battle against Memnon. (Was Mathayus a distant ancestor of James Bond? He has made use of a similar plan of action on numerous occasions). You can easily work out the rest of the story from here.
The film is not quite as awful as some of the sword-and-sorcery films from the 1980s, but that is because of the advances in technology during the intervening period. The special effects are still fairly ropey, but they are not as hilariously bad as they were in something like "Red Sonja". The art of acting, however, has not advanced at all; The Rock is every bit as wooden as early-period Schwarzenegger. The beauteous Kelly Hu is rather better than the ghastly Brigitte Nielsen, who played the equivalent role in "Red Sonja", but then it would be difficult to be worse. Stephen Brand as Memnon is weak and Grant Heslov as the horse-thief Arpid who reluctantly becomes Mathayus's sidekick is simply annoying. Bernard Hill can be a very good actor, as he showed in "Lord of the Rings" and "Titanic", so it was a disappointment to see him in sorry trash like this.
The plot is no more than a succession of clichés and the dialogue is frequently ponderous and stilted. (Sample: "May the gods have pity on you, for my brother will not"). Notwithstanding the success of Peter Jackson's brilliant "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, "The Scorpion King" proves that, even in the twenty-first century the art of making bad fantasy epics has not been lost. 3/10