Here we go again, with another Mummy Movie!

While I really didn't expect much reality from this production company, and while it was a generally entertaining farce, here again Hollywood doesn't even bother to try to get anything right.

In the first Mummy movie, it gave us a fantastically fun adventure with some plausibility, and invoking a huge number of myths from Ancient Egypt.  It even got a few things right!  The story hung together well, and is considered something of a classic now - not at the level of the first Indiana Jones movie, but solid in its own right.

Then they did a cheap sequel, which wasn't as good as the first, but it was still fun and adventurous - though the science was just thrown away.  Of course, how much science can there really be when we are talking about walking talking mummies?  The second film though stayed in the same realm of Egyptian mythology that carried the first film - though more inaccuracies than could ever be counted.

Now we have a third installment, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, and this tomb is full of  well... crap! 

Let's examine the central or foundational element of this latest movie:  The Mummy.  The problem here is that it's NOT a mummy.  Mummies are produced by a few different processes, from artificial mummification (as in Egypt), to natural mummification (as in Peru).  The Dragon Emperor was cursed (per the story), and transformed in mud, along with his whole army.  And while there were plenty of undead to shake a stick at in this movie, where were the mummies?

Another central piece of this movie is the Great Wall itself.  The film shows a single emperor building the Great Wall.  Yet the truth is that built over thousands of years over innumerable building campaigns.  And the film could have performed a substantial public service by drawing attention of the fragile state of the wall. 

According to Scott de Brestian "While most of us have a mental image of a solid, stone wall stretching off into the distance, a product of stock photos and tourist itineraries, the Wall is actually a complex work, built over thousands of years over innumerable building campaigns. Substantial sections were built in more fragile mud brick. Now, although not as sturdy as stone, this in itself is not necessarily a problem for conservation. After all, much of the wall has survived for millennia. However, unrestrained farming in north-central China has resulted in conditions approximating the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. This is bad not only for the inhabitants of the region, but for monuments such as the Great Wall. Already more than 25 miles of wall have been completely eroded by sandstorms in the last 20 years, but much of the rest of the 'standing' wall has been reduced to little more than stubs on the landscape, as the picture above shows. Archaeologists are trying to protect the remaining sections by burying them in dirt, but this can only be a stopgap measure. At the current rate of degradation, this entire portion of the Wall will be gone in 20 years. "

I won't even go into the invented mythology of Shangri La, since that was a total waste in this movie.  Nor the Yeti, though I enjoyed how they were shown.  Interestingly, yetis are claimed to have or still exist, and there is aledged proof in the form of a purported scalp at Khumjung monastery in Tibet. The name Yeti is derived from the Tibetan "je-tiet" - the full name meaning "rock bear".  If The Scorpion King sequel is anything to go by, though, those Yetis will probably get their own spin-off movie - The Return Of The Yeti.

Ironically, the film was supposed to be based upon supernatural and mythical characters, yet I have to say there really was nothing particularly supernatural, except for landing a small British fighter-bomber on an ice-shelf.  What was especially interesting was how they used quantum physics to double the inside volume of this aircraft, and fly it well above its operational ceiling.

Of course I haven't really ranted about how archaeology is represented by this miscreant collection of looters and grave robbers calling themselves archaeologists.  But it's just more of the same from an industry that just doesn't care.

The rest is just not worth the words to trash it.  It's a 10 year old boys view of archaeology, adventure, and not much more!

Related Links:

• Shangri La

• Yeti

• The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

• Great Wall completely eroded

• The Great Wall of China

• More on the Great Wall and Chinese Archaeology

  • Chinese Archaeology

  • Silk Road

• Great Wall of China on the Internet

  • Great Wall of China (China Guide)

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