http://chud.com/nextraimages/brendCHUD.jpgYou could
be forgiven for thinking that Brendan Fraser’s involvement in the Mummy
franchise was a wra—no, I won’t do it. Let’s just say, it seemed reasonable to
think he had moved on and all indications for the latest installment pointed to
the focus being on his somewhat grown-up son and the new adventures he would
have against the world’s shortest, most acrobatic mummy, Jet Li. Everything
from the appointment of Rob Cohen as director to the script provided by the Smallville
writing team smelled of a passing-the-torch flick along the lines of Blade:
Trinity
. But apparently Universal realizes the name brand of the
franchise, having been out of commission for many years, is only but so strong,
and they decided they had to have some original flavor for The Mummy 3 in order to
lure people back into seats.

Even
better for Fraser, Rachel Weisz was virtually guaranteed to distance herself
from the franchise like it was
Sodom and Darren Aronofsky’s nickname was Lot. Thus, in a somewhat rare occurrence
these days, he’s able to command a huge, huge dollar deal in order to return to
the franchise and he’s done just that. Oddly enough, the latest draft still had
Rachel’s character in it in some significant fashion, but those hopes and
dreams have been shattered now that she formally declined it once and for all. With
Fraser aboard, the Smallville scribes, Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, will simply
crank out another draft that presumably makes the most out of the kajillions
they’re paying him and probably has his wife dying of a brutal bout of scurvy
or restless leg syndrome.

I wasn’t
crazy about these films under Stephen Sommers’ reign, and I have absolutely no
faith in Rob Cohen being able to turn out even an entertainingly bad film with
this third one. It disappoints me that with the gaping hole for global
adventure flicks these days the best
Hollywood can come up with is more National
Treasure
films and another go at the dead horse that is the Mummy
franchise. And this particular flick is still set for summer 2008, where it
shall somehow try to survive the arrival of Indy 4, which will
hopefully expose the Mummy films once and for all for the
watered-down RC Cola they’ve always been.

Scratch that. They’re more like
Crystal Pepsi. Yeah, I said it.