The Scorpion King

In this movie, he didn't have that yet. Wrestling fans will swear by The Rock's charisma, but it's not evident in this early film. And that's actually not too surprising to me. The more pleasant surprise is that Johnson eventually gained that onscreen magnetism at all. Many wrestlers who tried to make the transition to acting don't.

How is the film? I didn't like it. But it had good points along with bad points. Let's talk about the bad first.

The movie isn't as exploitative as Game Of Thrones. But with the amount of scantily clad women and "jiggle", it IS at least as exploitative as the Fast & Furious franchise. And it's something I really didn't dig. It was present in The Mummy films for sure, but never this blatant.

Let's talk about some of the good. Regardless of whether the movie is good (it isn't) or if the script is bad (it is) something I want to give the movie proper credit for is the tension of the climax was built and timed absolutely properly. It's weird I didn't compliment either Mummy film for this, simply because it's often a luxury for action films (not even present for many of them). This isn't as good as the second Mummy film. And the budget is clearly much lower. The climax being firmly set into place like a stack of dominoes about to fall impresses me more for that reason.

I like that the thing with the Sorceress's power being taken when her virginity was was an old wives' tale and untrue. I hate whenever that trope is used, and I like it being subverted here.

I pointed this out in my review of the second Mummy film, but it's also interesting and impressive to realize this spin-off movie means the 1999 Mummy came closer to actually building a Universal Monsters Cinematic Universe than Dark Universe ever did. I mean, I know Brendan Fraser was a bit long in the tooth by the time Dark Universe was created, but if I were Universal and looking to get into the Cinematic Universe game, I'd have simply expanded this one to include Frankenstein and Dracula. An entire rebooted Universe felt unnecessary, and once the first movie flopped, that meant it was dead. I would have piggybacked on this iteration of The Mummy if I were Universal.

It's not very good. It's early in Dwayne Johnson, excuse me, THE ROCK'S, career, and he seems a little green. But if I am being completely honest, I think a movie produced by Vince McMahon would have turned out worse than this did. My expectations were admittedly low. And it still somehow met most of them. **1/2.