Hey, everyone. “Moriarty” here.
I remember when the idea of a post-production visit for a reporter was a fairly unusual thing, at least for online writers. But in the last few years, many of the studios have embraced the idea of doing very controlled “editing bay” visits, where you sit down with the director or the producer or both or the star or whoever, and they show you a clips package on a soundstage. It’s like what I did for THE INCREDIBLE HULK a few months ago. And it’s an interesting way of giving the filmmaker a chance to sort of lay out his version of what film he thinks he’s making. It’s part of the marketing plan now, with more and more sites being invited to the visits. What it’s not is spontaneous, and despite them calling them “editing room visits,” it’s pretty rare to ever see anyone editing.
So I was a little surprised by the approach that Rob Cohen and Universal took when they invited me out to Santa Monica to the sound mixing stage where they were tweaking the opening reel of Cohen’s new MUMMY sequel. And while I was there, he did indeed go through the reel with his sound mixing and effects mixing teams, tweaking and fine-tuning, listening to this effect or that hiss or that pop in the dialogue track, making sure everything was sugar-sweet.
It’s the same sound mixing stage where I saw the first rough assembly of the opening to TEAM AMERICA, while Matt and Trey were still shooting. It’s a pretty great space, and I’ve got a list of about 50 movies I’d like to screen a Dolby surround print of in there. The first reel of the film deals with the legend of the new villain, Emperor Han, based on the legends about the first real Emperor of China and his quest for immortality. Here, he makes a deal with a witch named Zijuan, played by the eternally-elegant Michelle Yeoh. When he crosses her, she curses him, and thus is born the Terra Cotta army, as every man under his command shares his fate. One thing I’ll say for the opening legend... a lot of it is location work, and Cohen’s absolutely crazy for China. He’s got a love for what he’s shooting, and it’s pretty obvious in how he shoots it. It’s a greatly romanticized take on the Far East, and a sharp left turn from the Egyptian theme that defined the first two movies and the SCORPION KING spin-offs.
“But I got some Egypt in there,” Cohen insisted. “John Hannah’s got a club now. Imhotep’s. Egyptian-themed, so it’s in the film, but we’ve been able to really exaggerate it.” If you think it might be vaguely reminiscent of Club Obi-Wan, you would not be wrong. But don’t think Cohen’s unaware of the looming presence of that other archaeologist this summer. I told him how strange it was to see a post-MUMMY movie starring Indiana Jones, and how much it felt to me like Spielberg knew he was making a new Indy film in a digital Hollywood, and he made a really unhip version of one. And in doing so, I’m sure he looked at some of the movies that have really embraced it, like the two MUMMY movies. Going into this summer, I’m sure Universal and Cohen were hoping they could just make their movie well, release it well, and hope no one screamed at them for trying to steal Indy’s thunder. Now, though, since the general response to IJ&TKOTCS has been so tepid, it almost feels like the right end to the summer would be another version of the same film (old bull/young bull, a theme shared by both the Indy film and the Mummy film) that actually delivered on the fun and the thrills.
And I’ll be damned, but it looks like that just might be the case.
I am on the record as being a big, big fan of Rachel Weisz, both as an actress with a great deal of range, able to play dramatic roles of complexity and depth and also sweet silly comedy roles and even overly-sincere studio SF/action fare, and also as an all-around super-hottie. I absolutely miss Weisz in the footage I saw, although I am glad, having seen THE BROTHERS BLOOM, that she opted to do that film instead. It’s some of her best, most enjoyable work in any film. Besides which, Maria Bello may turn out to be an inspired replacement. Once I got my head around Rachel being gone, about halfway through Maria’s first scene, I realized how glad I was they picked another substantial actress to pick up the part, someone who does consistently interesting and real and challenging work. Even if I don’t love every film she’s in, Bello has always struck me as someone with real taste and who makes the most out of anything she’s given to play. She’s also strapping enough to be able to stand toe-to-toe with Brendan Fraser, who is really the one returning headliner. They’ve done their best to subtly age him up, but he’s still the perpetually youthful Fraser.
In the reel-one stuff I saw, they make an interesting couple, having reached a point in their marriage where they are together out of habit rather than passion, and both of them are itching for the sort of adventure that brought them together in the first place. Rick (Fraser) spends his days pursuing one new hobby after another, abandoning each as soon as he starts, while Evelyn (Bello) has managed to become a romance novelist. Her two books, THE MUMMY and THE MUMMY RETURNS feature lurid covers and breathless descriptions of the life she left behind as a mother. The first MUMMY film was a mere nine years ago, but in the movies, over 21 years have passed. Their son Alex has grown up and is away at college when the film begins...
... or at least, that’s what they think. Truth is, Alex (series newcomer Luke Ford) is actually on a dig of his own, uncovering the tomb of The Emperor (Jet Li) and setting events in motion that eventually return his parents to the field, reconnect his family, resurrect two full armies of the dead, and somehow include some serious Yeti action. All of which sounds big and pulpy and fun. I’ve seen some design work for the Yetis and the other monsters in the film, some of it scratching an itch that was left when Cohen dropped out of Sony’s SINBAD project. Aaron Sims may not have the same namebrand cachet as Rick Baker or Stan Winston, but he studied under both of those guys, and he’s a pretty outstanding creature designer and creator in his own right now. I’m happy to admit that I’m most interested in the monster sequences in this film. That’s what THE MUMMY does differently than the INDY films... the supernatural is overt from frame one. They live in a world where the dead can walk the earth and curses work and magic is real and love is this giant thing that plays out over centuries. Like I said... pulp. I’ve only seen the first reel, like I said, which was all set-up. Fourteen minutes. The legend of the Terra Cotta Army takes up a good chunk of that reel, too, so I’ve seen very little of the rest of the film. No more than you guys have with the trailers. I was sent the ART OF book, which basically walks you through the whole movie in images, but with this much kinetic action, it’s ludicrous to think you’ll get any idea how the film works by looking at still photos. I like the look, the choices they made about how much CG to use. I want to see this stuff in motion. I hope the chemistry between Bello and Fraser works in the film, and even more importantly, I hope the chemistry between Ford and Fraser works.
When Cohen and I stepped out of the editing room to take a seat for a few minutes and talk, the first thing I wanted to ask about was shooting in China with a film that leans on Chinese mythology so heavily. He told me how Universal co-produced the film with Chinese money, and how he hasn’t felt any direct pressure from China regarding the content of the movie, but how the real trick is getting a Western film approved for general release in China, which is something that only happens with a handful of movies a year. That sent us chatting about the burgeoning Chinese cinema industry right now, and how international film movements seem to erupt in different countries every few years, and next thing you know, we were chatting about Italian neo-realism and modern Korean cinema, and this guy, so roundly lambasted by fanboys sometimes, demonstrated a real casual, relaxed way of setting his Big Popcorn Movie into a context that is both deeply self-aware of what people expect from him as a director (he never once tried to sell me on this film as anything more than a big adventure film, and he didn’t dodge the notion of this as a sequel) and also determined to pay suitable tribute to something that’s very near and dear to his heart: China.
Like I said, he’s a practicing Buddhist, and his time spent in China when shooting DRAGON, the Bruce Lee biopic in the ‘90s, not only left a mark on him but on his son, who is now studying abroad in China. Cohen has a home in Bali now, and he has to fly through Asia to get there, so spends much of his year in that part of the world. The first question I had for him about how much of the film is drawn from real Chinese mythology, sent him off on a (no-joke) 17 minute explanation of the real Terra Cotta warriors and the story of the First Emperor of China and his quest for immortality, and the way he told the story to me, the sort of intensity with which he recounted it and filled in the details that interested him the most... this is a guy who’s got a serious love of the subject.
And say what you will about Cohen’s filmography, but it strikes me that his best-liked movies are films that have real passion behind them. DRAGON: THE BRUCE LEE STORY was so obviously, amazingly in-love with Bruce Lee that the affection rubs off on the viewer. And when we talked about shooting the racing sequences in FAST AND THE FURIOUS, Cohen revealed his inner gearhead, the motivation to actually get inside an engine during a race.
More than that, though, that movie was a Hail Mary pass. “I really thought that was gonna be my last movie,” he confessed. “I had just turned 50. I was making this little car movie in the Valley. The studio didn’t pay any attention to us because no one cared.” And that realization set him free. He figured if he put every idea he had up on the screen and it failed, at least he put it all in the movie. He was obviously pleased with the way people responded to the movie, to the fact that it sparked a franchise for the studio that couldn’t even be bothered to visit the set when he was shooting, although he doesn’t sound like he was particularly pleased with either sequel to his film.
That’s one of the things that’s sort of bizarre about him doing a sequel to someone else’s film for Universal. Then again, STEALTH was a setback for him. He was supposed to make SINBAD, but as he put it, “Amy lost faith in me after STEALTH, and she cancelled the movie.” He was already working with Keanu Reeves, who was going to star, as well as his effects and design teams. When he was offered THE MUMMY 3, one of the first things that attracted him was the chance to use some of the prep he’d just done, turn that energy into something similar, something that dovetailed neatly with his own interests. Stephen Sommers handed this film off to him pretty much entirely. Sommers and his partners are producers on the movie, but they didn’t push their vision of the film on Cohen. Instead, they let him make his own movie.
Cohen’s been an early adapter for CGI, using it extensively in photo-real sequences in FAST AND THE FURIOUS and STEALTH, but on this film, he’s pushing back in the other direction, trying to do things on-set, practical as much as possible. He was desperate to shoot live stunts and real locations and giant sets for this film, and CGI is more of a finishing tool, something to augment what can’t be done for real. More and more, we’re seeing filmmakers take this stance, push in this direction. It was the same thing when I was on the set of TERMINATOR: SALVATION last week. “Practical” has become an industry buzzword, and that’s exciting. Cohen pushed Fraser to do as much of his own stunt work as possible, and then really pushed the sleight of hand to sell the idea that Fraser was the guy doing everything. He’s particularly proud of the six-minute chase through Shanghai, which he says was done by only the real actors for the entire sequence.
His secret weapon on the film may surprise and shock INDIANA JONES fans. His second-unit director was the legendary Vic Armstrong, the guy who helped define the action sensibilities of the Indy films. He was Harrison Ford’s stunt double, for god’s sake. He’s a huge name in this business, and the way Cohen tells it, Armstrong wasn’t invited to work on INDIANA JONES & THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL, and was actually quite hurt by the slight. When Cohen was looking for a second-unit guy, he just assumed Vic was booked for the year until he was told, “Not necessarily.” The result is an emphasis on finding new ways to shoot physical gags that you could combine with CG elements to create scenes that feel like they’re genuinely dangerous, even with unreal elements involved. I’m excited to see how the scenes came together, because it certainly sounds like they’re trying some radical, wild things.
One of the last things ahead of Cohen when we spoke was the PG-13 dance he was in the midst of, and he was definitely having to lose some of the details he enjoyed in the film. There’s a moment in the first part of the movie where someone gets drawn and quartered by horses, and in the first cut, you actually saw the limbs come loose and bounce away along the dirt. Not in the version I saw, though. Cohen was irritated to have lost it, but he was also well aware that the eventual DVD release will feature any footage he has to lose in these last weeks before the theatrical release.
I have to say... if nothing else, I walked away from my morning in Santa Monica with a new respect for Cohen’s love of his job. I’ve met filmmakers who are much more “geek approved,” and they struck me as guys who were almost tortured by the job. Cohen’s the opposite. He’s thankful for every single time he’s allowed behind the camera, and I think he’s throwing everything he’s got at this movie. I’m seeing it Sunday night so I can interview the cast next week, and I’m genuinely looking forward to it. It’s got to be an improvement from the second film, which was wretched. I figured that was a given when I walked into this conversation with Cohen, but walking away, it sounds like he feels like the film he made stands on its own, and I find myself curious to see if he’s pulled it off. In a summer this good, with this many good films out there right now, I hope this becomes one more pleasant surprise.
Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles
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