Can we even consider a film that stars Kimbo Slice as a quality film? I asked myself this question upon learning about The Scorpion King 3. As you can tell, my expectations going into the film were very low, and what I was expecting was exactly what I got. The Scorpion King 3 was very difficult to watch (can I have the last hour and forty six minutes of my life back please?) between the atrocious acting, the overtly scripted action sequences and the tacky special effects. A film like this should be direct and have a straight forward plot, rather, it had a convoluted plot, making it even more to difficult to watch. My interest was waning after the first half hour.
The once mighty Mathayus (Victor Webster) aka The Scorpion King, has fallen from grace and resorts to a life as an assasin whose sole motivation is to get paid for his work with gold or treasures. He is hired by King Horus (Ron Perlman) to help combat his evil brother Talus (Billy Zane), who is motivated to amass a large army to take over the world. In order to do that, Talus needs the Book of the Dead, which is held by Horus’ last ally, King Ramusan (Temuera Morrison). Horus hires Mathayus and another assasin to protect Ramusan in return for gold. A ‘Cobra’ figure who is the leader of the tribal resistance, is supposed to help Mathayus and his fellow assassin help defend King Ramusan’s army. Upon saving Ramusan and his people, Mathayus and the other assasin (who I will not even name as the character was so poorly acted) both discover that Ramusan cannot pay them for their services. In return, he offers the vows of his daughter Princess Silda (Krystal Vee) to Mathayas who is only motivated by a valuable piece of jewelery she wears. What makes matters confusing is Silda is actually’Cobra’, who is trying to get the valuable piece of jewelery back from Talus. The aforementioned Kimbo Slice (MMA fighter) is one of the dead raised along with David Bautista (professional wrestler). I realize Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was a wrestler turned actor, but at least he can act. Kimbo Slice resorts to grunting and groaning in his appearance during the film.
As usual, Universal delivers in the video quality department. The film uses an anamorphic widescreen 1:78:1 aspect ratio and is quite visually appealing. The contrast appears a little dull but the colors are solid and vivid. The film lacks grain completely which lends to a picture quality that shows exact detaiils like hair strands and fire embers for example. I could not notice any obvious imperfections throughout the film.
Again, the audio quality is quite excellent much like the video quality. Universal uses a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 audio track which works very well among all speakers. The LFE is superb in the film at times, and the overall bass is quite nice even when I switched my sub off. Part of the reason I love Universal releases is because they rarely fail in the audio department. This disc performs on both the audio and video level, but it’s not enough to save the film unfortunately.
Deleted Scenes-I can’t believe this film was actually edited, meaning that it was longer than it already was. The scenes that were deleted were insignificant, and portrayed some acting that was even worse than the acting that made it to the film. I found the deleted scenes, in some instances to be regurgiated from what actually made it to the film.
Deleted Shots Montage-A montage of action shots from the film. No dialogue just the soundtrack playing in the background.
Gag Reel-Wasn’t the film a gag reel?
Swords and Scorpions: A Making Of-The production crew and cast talk about filming in Thailand. Listening to director Roele Reine talk about the great characters in the movie was quite humourous.
Preparing for Battle-The actors talk about their preparation in preparing for the fight scenes. They make mention of their un-choreographed methods but in reality, they come off very choreographed throughout the film.
Feature Commentary with Director Roele Reine.
The two most famous actors in the film were Ron Perlman and Billy Zane. This film may possibly be the worst films of their theatrical careers. Talus was over the top and acted like a child who did not get his way. It could be that he was scorned and lived in the shadows of Horus, but Zane’s rendition of Talus was unbearable. Ron Perlman was not much better, but I could at least somewhat respect his performance better than Zane’s.
The action sequences were so scripted that they were practically un-believable. The use of slow motion was just bad. The special effects were even worse. There is a scene where Talus rips a soldier’s ear off that looks like it came right out of a cheap magic trick. The use of fire/flames as a special effect looked so adulterated and un-real. What was the impetus behind the making of the film? It apparently is a sequel to The Scorpion King: Rise of a Warrior that serves as a prequel to The Mummy Returns, which was obviously a sequel to the Mummy. Can you wrap your mind around that? The fact that Steven Sommers was one of the producers has to be an all time low for him. It’s either that, or his career is definitely in a downward spiral. I just don’t get why this film needed to be made. Given that it was made, it could have been better but it felt that it was just slapped together. Universal, please do us all a favor and let this be the end of the Scorpion King franchise. Can they even recover the franchise after this? Do yourself a favor and do not purchase this film. As a matter of fact, don’t even waste your money renting it. Heck, you’ll be better off not even wasting your time on it. I usually like to find an upside to bad films so at least I can find some redeeming value in my time and money spent, but I cannot for the life of me see any bright side to this film.
That looks like goro in the last screen shot lol.