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Case studies
What was it about the concept and screenplay
that attracted you to The Mummy: Tomb of
The Dragon Emperor?
In a word: China. Ever since I made
Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story and lived
in Hong Kong, I have been fascinated with
the immense culture and historical sweep
of that land. I’ve read extensively over the
past fifteen years and, in the process, took
up the study of Buddhism that has become
my guiding belief system and source of
spiritual nurture. I have a home in Bali,
Indonesia, so I am in Asia all the time.
When producers Stephen Sommers, Bob
Ducsay, Sean Daniel and James Jacks sent
me the script, I was surprised as I had
never done a sequel to my own films, but
when I heard the new Mummy was to take
Rob Cohen
place in China, I was intrigued.
The film combines adventure with a Emperor Han, who is raised to rule again, I particularly liked the first Mummy film.
swashbuckling sense of humour, much like that they must stop. The humour is more I went to a theatre not knowing what to
the first film. Was that intentional? mine, but all three films share the love of expect and thought Stephen had hit on a
Yes, I have kept the cluster of winning adventure, exotic locales (here we go from visually inventive cocktail of good fun and
characteristics that made the franchise such London to Shanghai, all over China through some considerable scale. It turned me into
a popular hit interpreting each aspect in the Himalayas to Tibet and back) and a boy with a bag of popcorn at the movies
my own way. The action is more intense, examine the cultural quest for life after death. on a Saturday afternoon.
larger, and contains more physical jeopardy
to the O’Connells. This is largely due to the Do you like the first two Mummy films and Did you want The Mummy: Tomb of The
menacing presence of Jet Li as the ruthless the Scorpion King spin-off? Dragon Emperor to have a different look
and feel to the previous films or did you
want to maintain some of the same stylistic
Brendan Fraser, Luke Ford and Maria Bello
as the O’Connell family elements?
No, my film has an entirely different visual
approach. The sets, costumes and
cinematography have a whole other palette.
The stunts Vic Armstrong and I did have a
different feel; a little… shall we say, more
violent, with more consequence. There
would be no reason for me to do another
film in a franchise, mine or not, unless we
were giving the audience something new.
How did you approach the Oriental
elements in the film as opposed to the
traditional Middle-Eastern influences in the
previous Mummy films?
The first Emperor of China (Qin Shi Huang)
became obsessed with finding the secret to
immortality. It might have killed him in
his mid-forties drinking all these concoctions
of arsenic and mercury he was given. By
depicting the world of second century B.C.,
a language of this new mythology is set up,
which informs the rest of the journey through
1946 where all these elements come back
into play. The first ten minutes of the film
are done in an ancient Mandarin with
subtitles while narrated by Michelle Yeoh,
who plays the witch who cursed the Emperor
into becoming encased in terracotta and
baked alive for his terrible deeds. So too
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