The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor: Movies about Writing

Hey, anyone remember that third Mummy movie that recast Evie? No? Okay, fine. I’ll make this semi-short then. I do have to say that I this movie a lot of fun despite it’s flaws. No one knows how too make a good adventure film these days.

It’s been a decade since a terrible CGI Dwayne Johnson attacked Rick (Brendan Fraser), Evelyn (Rachel Weisz), Jonathan (John Hannah), and little Alex (Freddie Boath - wonder what he’s doing with his adult life?). Now Rick spends his time fishing, Jonathan owns a casino that screams opening sequence of Temple of Doom, and Alex (Luke Ford) is on a dig halfway around the world sans his British accent. Meanwhile, Evie (Maria Bello) is -

Wait, wait, wait. Let’s address the elephant in the room. I really love Maria Bello as an actor and normally I’m excited to see her in a movie. I also am glad that they recast the character when Rachel Weisz wasn’t going to do it instead of writing the character out. But Bello was such a weird decision. She played the character in a completely different way and it pulled it me out of the story. Okay, I’ve said my peace. Back to the blog.

Meanwhile, Evie (Maria Bello) is using her downtime to write pulp novels based on their adventures. She’s doing a reading in a London bookstore where main characters Dash and Scarlet are reliving the end of the previous film. This scene did annoy me because she does voices for her characters that make them silly, like she’s making fun of her own life. Still, love the covers featured in the background. Her books are extremely popular with adult women who love the adventure and romance. They ask her questions about how exciting her life was before and during World War II, making her depressed. However, of course, Evie promised her publisher a third book and she’s completely blocked. Her and Rick’s new life of retirement is not helping as the pair of them struggle to pretend that they are happy.

They are sent to Shanghai on a goodwill mission for the British government where they discover that Alex left school to find the tomb of a lost Qin Dynasty emperor (loosely based on Qin Shi Huang and played by Jet Li). They receive help from Rick’s old friend Mad Dog Maguire (Liam Cunningham) and guardian Lin (Isabella Leong) who knows the only way the new Mummy can be defeated. Enter in adorable, yet fierce yetis (I want to be best friends with one), another army of the undead, and Michelle Yeoh as the woman who has lived an eternity in order to stop the emperor. That’s right. Michelle Yeoh. This movie should be highly rated just for her presence. Then again, I did see Crouching Tiger in theaters multiple times and she was my favorite Bond girl so not really sure I’m unbiased.

Anyway, this new adventure gives Evie her plot for the third book the publishers asked for, but yet another adventure gets in the way

Also, can I have a Yeti?

Secret Window: Movies about Writing

Let’s do one more Stephen King adaptation this October. I know I watched Secret Window once before (probably around 2005 or 2006 when it would have been played on TV), but I remember not being all that impressed with it. Not that it’s a full out bad film, just that I didn’t feel like I really needed to hold onto it in my memory or ever watch it again. Yet here I am, watching it again.

Since this is another based on a Stephen King short story about a writer - it is very much a movie about writing. Johnny Depp plays Mort Rainey, a depressed novelist who is in the midst of a divorce and writing a book based on his experiences of his wife (Maria Bello) cheating on him. He decides to do this in a remote cabin by a lake. So imagine his surprise when a man dressed like an Amish reject shows up at his door claiming that Rainey “stole his story”. Mort ignores the man named John Shooter (John Turturro), yet does end up reading the original manuscript and realizes it’s almost identical to something he wrote called “Secret Window”.

Shooter starts to terrorize Mort and Mort starts collecting evidence that he wrote the story first. However, Shooter continues to threaten him with murders and arson, wanting Mort to republish the story with Shooter ending and name. All of this causes Mort to constantly flashback to the time leading up to his wife’s infidelity and lose his grip on reality. There is also some guilt there being pushed down by a haze of cigarette smoke and Doritos. Mmm. Product placement.

Oh! I remember why I blocked this movie out! IMPORTANT SPOILER ALERT: The dog dies! The cute, personality-full dog dies!

Other SPOILER ALERT: Shooter and Mort are the same person. Oh come on! This movie came out in 2004. You can’t tell me someone didn’t spoil the ending by now. But I’m bringing it up for a reason. The best scene is when the audience discovers that when Mort talks to himself, it’s a moral version trying to get him to admit to doing wrong and protect people. That Mort apparently is the weakest of his personalities because when Shooter shows up, everything becomes a full blown horror story. It all stems back to Mort’s anger at his wife, his own writer’s block, and the fact that he actually DID plagiarize a story early in his career (this is hinted at throughout the movie, but stated outright in the original King story). If anxiety ever caused me to have Dissociative Identity Disorder, I would hope my other personality would have a better accent.

I do like the scenes where Mort is actually trying to write. He talk to himself the way we all do (admit it, you do) with the usual distractions around him like a slinky and comfy couch. I especially like when he re-reads a paragraph and tells himself, “Bad writing”. He then deletes the little bit he’s actually written. I can’t help agreeing with him on this. I’m constantly told that the important part is to get it on the page then go back and edit, but that drives me insane! Clearly (SPOILER ALERT), it was something else that drove Mort insane in the film, but maybe bad writing was a factor.

Okay, let’s talk about the John Turturro - shaped elephant in the room - plagiarism. King’s story is actually based on the unfounded accusations that he stole some of his story ideas. Here’s the problem: some authors get so hung up on the nit-picks of plot development and character creation that they forget that time their English teacher told them that there are finite types of stories. Look at Shakespeare! He was a great wordsmith, but all of his plots came from mythology and history. What drives me nuts are the writers who try to copyright a common word, a phrase, or a genre. You can’t stop people from having ideas and coincidences happen. Even King found out after he published Under the Dome that it was the plot of The Simpsons Movie.