Spin Off With the Scorpion King

Hello there…

Dwayne Johnson’s time as The Rock is so far back it’s pretty easy to memory hole it, but all of a sudden the guy was an actor instead of a WWF fighter, and one of the first instances of this was when he played the Scorpion King in the Brendan Fraser Mummy movies. In short order, the Scorpion King had his own movie, entitled The Scorpion King, naturally, and, funnily enough, produced by the WWF with distribution by Universal.

It’s ancient, ancient Egypt. No pyramids. No Sphinx. No Valley of the Kings. What we do have, though, is an invading baddie from the East, Memnon (Steven Brand), is conquering cities and tribes. His ace is a beautiful sorceress, Cassandra (Kelly Hu) who can see the future.

No one wants to challenge Memnon except for Mathayus the Akkadian (Dwayne Johnson) and his two brothers, but soon it’s just Mathayus going after Memnon. We know this because we see Mathayus knocking off a bunch of people and this two brothers getting executed. It’s a little bit confusing and not exactly important from a character standpoint except that we get to see what a brave strong fella Mathayas is.

The first moment of clarity comes when we see Mathayus and Arpid (Grant Heslov), a horse thief, buried up to their chins in sand while they wait for fire ants to come and snack on their craniums. The scene takes on an almost Looney Tunes flavor as Arpid somehow frees himself by digging a tunnel.

Mathayus hops on his trusty camel and he and Arpid shuffle off to Gomorrah (!), where Memnon has set up his palace for he and Cassandra, who keeps reminding him she can’t lose her virginity because she’ll lose her powers. Memnon smoulders, but there’s nothing he can do.

Fortunately Mathayus has an ally in court magician Philos (Bernard Hill), who tells him Memnon is in the palace garden. This dude is like a Leonardo Da Vinci because he’s always inventing things. He even invents gunpowder three thousand years before the Chinese.

Yeah, The Scorpion King is not long on reality, but why quibble, right?

Anywhoo, Mathayus and a street kid he meets on the way in get into the palace, where unfortunately the kid gets noticed by the palace guards and hauled over to a chopping block in the palace garden where presumably he will lose his hand (He’s been accused of stealing a loaf of bread). Meanwhile, Memnon sits blissfully nearby being fed grapes by slave girls. The fact that he would have a chopping block in what should be a tranquil and peaceful setting is a little weird, but maybe it’s supposed to be illustrative of how bloodthirsty and sleazy Memnon really is.

Our hero, who climbs a wall with his bow trained on the garden, now has to decide if he’s going to save the boy from losing his hand or take out Memnon, and he’s got a clear shot at both. In the end he chooses the boy, although he gets off a shot or two at Memnon. Long story short, Mathayus absconds with Cassandra right after she pops out of the bath like Ariel in The Little Mermaid, including the hair flip, and no, he doesn’t wait for her to get dressed. It’s not by design, though, because the soldiers are rushing through the door.

Mathayus, Cassandra, and Arpid take out on Mathayus’s camel with Memnon, in hot pursuit. or more like Memnon’s goon, Thorak (Ralf Moeller) is in hot pursuit. Meanwhile, Cassandra, who’s not at all sad to be away from Memnon as she’s been his captive for years, heals Mathayus when he’s wounded and the two of them fall in love. She thinks Mathayus is the only one who can take out Memnon even though her visions tell her the outcome could possibly be bad.

So. What have we got? A ruthless warrior. A beautiful sorceress. A wisecracking sage. Plenty of fight scenes. A few light brushes with death. A few hints at romance. Wisecracks a la The Princess Bride, only they’re too slangy to come off very well (William Goldman, where art thou?).

In other words, The Scorpion King is pretty flimsy.

This movie searches for a plot for the first third of its running time, and then runs away from its bit of a plot for the last two thirds. For the first half, nothing happens. It’s very highly choreographed and in most cases pretty contrived. At least it’s funny, and it was one of the first time Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson got a chance to be something more than just a tough guy with a cocked eyebrow.

That’s not to say, again, that the thing is a great movie. It’s just lightweight and not exactly memorable. Kinda like a WWF fight, which I’m not exactly a fan of, but those bouts seem pretty forgettable. It’s mainly showbiz, and The Scorpion King is no different, except that there’s obviously a lot more dialogue and something slightly resembling a story.

I’ll lay odds if anyone sees this movie and then tries to remember it a day or two later, not much of it will have stuck. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, and movies like The Scorpion King definitely have their place. This one just happens to be of the Big Bucket of Popcorn variety.

For more Barbarians At the Gate, please see Rachel at Hamlette’s Soliloquy and Quiggy at The Midnite Drive-In. Thanks for hosting this, Rachel–it was a pleasure, as always. Thanks for reading, all, and I hope to see you on Tuesday for a new “During World War Two” post…

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The Scorpion King is available on DVD and Blu-ray from Amazon.

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