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Released by: Universal Studios
Released on: 8/19/2008
Director: Russell Mulcahy
Cast: Michael Copon, Karen Shenaz David, Simon Quarterman, Tom Wu
Year: 2008
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The Movie:
Did we really need a second Scorpion King film? The first was moderately entertaining thanks to Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnsons' ultra macho and uber oily performance but was it such a hit that a second film was really necessary? Particularly one without The Rock in the lead? In short, no. Absolutely not. But The Mummy: Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor was a big budget release this year and so it maybe kinda-sorta made sense to shoot this puppy straight to video and cash in on the bigger film's assumed success? That must have been the reasoning behind this turkey.
The movie follows Mathayus (played this time around by former Mighty Morphin Power Ranger Michael Copon) before he became the Scorpion King. As a young man, we witness his quest to avenge the death of his father at the hands of a cardboard thin bad guy named Emperor Sargon (played by UFC/MMA dude, Randy Couture). In order to stop Sargon, Mathayus teams up with a hot chick from his past named Layla (Karen Shenaz David), a Greek dude named Aristotle (Simon Quarterman), an acrobat/martial arts type named Fong (Tom Wu) and a bunch of generic guys who wind up as little more than cannon fodder.
Together, this rag tag gang of walking cultural clichés decides that they can make their way into the underworld where they'll hopefully defeat a bunch of monsters and find a sword that promises invulnerability. Making things tricky for the crew, aside from the aforementioned monsters, is an evil sorceress named Astarte (Natalie Becker), but seeing as this is a prequel and all we kind of know how it all ends and can't get too worked up over things.
Blech. This film is a mess. From the absolutely horrible CGI animation used to create most of the monsters that Mathayus and company have to defeat in their quest to the poor pacing to cliché after cliché after cliché in the storyline, The Scorpion King 2: Rise Of A Warrior is a bad movie even by the 'big dumb popcorn movie' standards of The Mummy films that Universal has churned out over the last ten years or so. Say what you will about Sommers entries in the series but at least they were entertaining - sadly, this film can't even claim that. The characters are so thin and one dimensional that we can't care about them and the acting is wooden and uninspired pretty much completely across the board. There are few interesting pieces of set design and costume work but that's not enough to save the picture, particularly when the film tends to recycle a lot of these sets in turn giving it a cheap feel. This one is seriously tough to sit through. What a bad, boring, film.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Scorpion King 2: Rise Of A Warrior arrives on Blu-ray in a 1.78.1 anamorphic widescreen 1080p VC-1 encoded transfer and unfortunately the results are all over the place. To say this transfer is inconsistent is a bit of an understatement. For every scene that looks nice and crisp and bright and detailed there's another that looks soft and even a tad muddy. Color reproduction looks fantastic in some scenes and drab in others. Black levels run the gamut from rich and deep to murky and flat while skin tones will look nice and lifelike in one scene and a little too pinkish or orangish in the next. Thankfully there aren't any problems with mpg compression artifacts or noticeable edge enhancement, but it is a shame about the inconsistencies in the colors and the detail levels. As it stands the movie looks 'okay' where it should have looked great.
The English language 51. DTS-HD Master Audio lossless surround sound mix does a decent job of bringing the action scenes to life even if it is far from a sterling example of just how sweet HD audio can sound. There's a lot of rear channel activity during the action scenes as well as plenty of boom from the subwoofer whenever it's called for. There times where the dialogue gets a little buried in the mix but this is the exception and not the rule, thankfully. That said, the sound design work used in the movie is far from great - sometimes the sound effects just flat out don't work, they sound inappropriate and obviously canned. While the clarity and direction are all fine, the effects themselves are a little underwhelming. An optional and less impressive Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound mix is included and removable subtitles are available in English SDH, French and Spanish.
For better or worse, none of the extras that are included on the SD release of the film can be found on this Blu-ray release - in fact, aside from menus, chapter selection and a bookmarking feature this release is completely barebones.
The Final Word:
The movie looks and sounds alright but the barebones presentation doesn't help to spruce up a pretty dire straight to video sequel to what was a mediocre film in the first place.