| The Scorpion King | |
|---|---|
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| Directed by | Chuck Russell |
| Produced by | Vince McMahon Stephen Sommers James Jacks Kevin Misher Sean Daniel |
| Written by | Stephen Sommers (story/script) Jonathan Hales (story) William Osborne (script) David Hayter (script) |
| Starring | Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson Kelly Hu Bernard Hill Steven Brand Michael Clarke Duncan Grant Heslov |
| Music by | John Debney |
| Cinematography | John R. Leonetti |
| Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
| Release date(s) | April 19, 2002 (USA) |
| Running time | 93 min. |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Followed by | The Scorpion King: Rise of the Akkadian |
| Official website | |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
The Scorpion King is a 2002 film starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Michael Clarke Duncan, Kelly Hu, Steven Brand, Ralf Moeller, and Grant Heslov, and is directed by Chuck Russell. It is a spin-off prequel to The Mummy series, following the story of Mathayus the Scorpion King, the character who was featured in The Mummy Returns. The events of The Scorpion King take place 5000 years before the events in The Mummy Returns, and shows Mathayus' origins and how he rose to power as the Scorpion King. The name itself is a reference to an indisputably real king during the protodynastic period of Ancient Egyptian history, Scorpion II. The Scorpion King was the first film where The Rock played a lead role, following on from his big-screen debut as a peripheral character in The Mummy Returns. The Godsmack song "I Stand Alone" featured in this film, which is heard in the credits. A prequel to the film, The Scorpion King: Rise of the Akkadian, began filming on October 1, 2007. [1]
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Plot
Mathayus, the last true Akkadian mercenary, is assigned to kill Memnon's sorcerer, whose prophetic powers allow Memnon to rule his empire with an iron fist. He sneaks into Memnon's camp and finds his way to the sorcerer's tent. However, his plans change when he discovers that Memnon's sorcerer is actually a beautiful sorceress called Cassandra. He shoots one of the guards and is about to kidnap her, when he is discovered and his brother is killed right in front of him. Just as he is about to be killed, Cassandra protests, saying it wouldn't be wise because the gods favor him and to kill him would bring misfortune. Now free again, Mathayus decides to avenge his brother and kill Memnon. He gets into Gomorrah with the help of a thief who earlier on saved him from a gruesome death by fire ants. With the help of the thief and a little boy, Mathayus sneaks into Memnon's castle. He gets into Cassandra's tent and kidnaps her. He discovers he can use her as bait to catch Memnon. During one of Memnon's attempts to kill Mathayus, he is stabbed by an arrow dipped with scorpion venom, thus the term Scorpion King. Mathayus faints from the venom, but his life is saved by Cassandra, who believes he can save the people and free them from Memnon's tyranny. As their journey continues, they meet up with Balthazar, the leader of Memnon's enemies, and the two join forces. During a celebration at Balthazar and his people's camp, Cassandra has a vision of Memnon destroying the people and killing Mathayus. After a romantic night of sex with Mathayus, Cassandra loses her powers along with her virginity. Now powerless, Cassandra returns to Memnon to keep him from attacking the camp. Mathayus and Balthazar go after her and a huge battle between Memnon and his armies and Mathayus and Balthazar and his people takes place. At one point in the battle, Mathayus gets shot by another arrow but miraculously recovers, and uses the same arrow to kill Memnon. The battle ends in victory for Balthazar and his people and Mathayus is crowned king with Cassandra by his side as queen. Tagline: Warrior. Legend. King.
Cast
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| The Rock | Mathayus (The Scorpion King) |
| Steven Brand | Memnon |
| Michael Clarke Duncan | Balthazar |
| Kelly Hu | Cassandra Hooey |
| Bernard Hill | Philos |
| Grant Heslov | Arpid |
| Ralf Moeller | Thorak |
Historical inaccuracies
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The plot is supposedly set in the pre-historical Middle East but events, people, places and circumstances are in sharp contradiction to actual history. Its portrayal of ancient history is in the tradition of fantasy literature and film, which proliferated following the success of the Conan films. Nevertheless, The Scorpion King refers to real locations and cultures of the pre-dynastic Egyptian phase. The following is a brief summary of some gaps and errors:
- The actual King Scorpion (Serqet, not Mathayus) is a shadowy historical figure. He is one of many Pre-Dynastic Egyptian Pharaohs who is credited as uniting upper and lower Egypt. The mysterious Scorpion, Narmer, Menes, and Hor-Aha, may be the same person.
- In the beginning of the film, a narrator describes the events of the film occurring "before the time of the pyramids." Historically, most of the pyramids of Egypt were constructed during the Old Kingdom; however, a scene from The Mummy Returns depicted Mathayus leading an army against Thebes, which was the capital of Egypt during the New Kingdom, even though the movies had nothing to do with each other.
- Mathayus is suspiciously similar to Ματθαίος, Matthaios, Greek for Matthew.
- Everyone uses what seem to be steel or at least iron weapons, millennia before they were available.
- If one accepts as historically accurate the Bible's location of Sodom and Gomorrah in a valley plain, then the film's Gomorrah must be another namesake place.
- Memnon is a Greek name, more than a thousand years before the Greeks reached the Mediterranean. It was used later, and erroneously, for the Pharaoh Amenhotep III.
- Cassandra also has a Greek name, but is East Asian.
- The film incorrectly depicts Canaan as a semi-desertic place which is nonsensical: It is widely accepted that that region had a milder climate, with more rainfall allowing more permanent rivers, thriving wildlife and productive agriculture. This view harmonies quite well with the advancement of civilization that was found there (without modern technology a city cannot exist in a desert).
- Mathayus is made king of a city in Canaan, instead of Egypt. This is because at the beginning of The Mummy Returns, the Scorpion King is trying to conquer Egypt.
- The inventor claims to have bought the recipe for "Chinese Powder" or gun powder. Gun powder was in fact not invented until several thousand years after the film takes place.
- The bandits Mathayus kills at the beginning boast, "We have killed Babylonians, Mesopotamians, Assyrians, Mycenaeans... but we have never had the pleasure to kill an Akkadian". In reality, the Assyrians, Babylonians and Akkadians were all Mesopotamian (the same way French, British and Russians are all Europeans), but they existed in different time periods. Also, the Mycenaean civilization existed in Greece roughly 1500 years before Christ. The movie is set "before the time of the pyramids", which were built roughly 3000 years before Christ.
Trivia
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Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines. The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones. |
- Some of the scorpions depicted in this film were computer-generated; however, others were live emperor scorpion (Pandinus imperator) specimens, which are commonly kept as exotic household pets.
- This film is a spin-off prequel of a sequel of a film that was a remake of another film that was made 75 years ago.
- More scenes had to be shot due to the film being around 70 minutes long after being edited.
- Dwayne Johnson has said that he intentionally shied away from using any trademarks of his WWE character The Rock, in order to give the Scorpion King character a life of its own. The only exception was "The People's Eyebrow," which he does in response to another character's reference to a harem. He said he included the People's Eyebrow to acknowledge the "millions and millions" of The Rock's fans.
- The sorceress's name, Cassandra, is a reference to the daughter of Priam, king of Troy, who was given the gift to see the future by the Greek god Apollo. He gave her the gift with the hopes that she would become his lover, however, when she refused to bed with him, he placed a curse on her, condemning her to never be believed when she gave a prophecy.
- In a scene where Mathayus falls into Cassandra's bath house, Kelly Hu was actually naked in that shot.
- The Rock uses a rolling gong as a shield; Harrison Ford did the same thing in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
- The "Gomorrah Bazaar" sequences were filmed on a re-dressed Spartacus set on the backlot at Universal Studios.
- Marissa MacMahon, Vince MacMahon's daughter-in-law, has a small scene as the woman selling birds of paradise in the Bazaar.
- While filming the fight scene between Mathayus and Balthazar, Michael Clarke Duncan accidentally leaned too far forward, allowing The Rock's elbow to make direct contact with his jaw, knocking him to the ground. Later, Duncan used makeup to make the injury seem worse than it actually was, as a prank on Johnson (The Rock).
- The cave that the Rock and the bandits come out of is the bat cave from the 1966 Batman film.
- The Rock's salary of $5.5 million made the Guinness Book Of World Records for the highest salary for a first-time leading man.
- Early in the production the villain role was written for Chow Yun-Fat. But Chow's manager vetoed this saying that Chow never plays villains and that doing so would betray his fans. However recently Chow starred in the third film in the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, as Sao Feng, the Pirate Lord of the South China Sea. Neither a traditional villain nor a classic hero. Chow would also play an anti-hero in the film The Corruptor where he played a dirty cop.
- It was filmed in the California desert to save on production costs.
- There is no sign of Mathayus turning to evil, or at least wanting to conquer Egypt. This would have presumably been addressed in a future movie had not the franchise ended.
- The guttural screams made by Dwayne Johnson were provided by heavy metal vocalist Max Cavalera
- In one scene, The Rock hit Kelly Hu upside the head, enabling the understudy to do a couple of scenes. This can be seen when the two are in the city after Kelly Hu rises from the fountain in the city.
Prequel
A prequel is now underway, and filming began on October 1, 2007. [2] The official title is "Scorpion King: Rise of the Akkadian" and it will be directed by Russell Mulcahy. [3]
Soundtrack
| The Scorpion King | ||
|---|---|---|
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| Soundtrack by Various Artists | ||
| Released | March 26, 2002 | |
| Label | Universal | |
| Professional reviews | ||
Track listing
- Godsmack - "I Stand Alone"
- P.O.D. - "Set It Off (Tweaker Remix)"
- Drowning Pool - "Break You"
- System of a Down - "Streamline"
- Creed - "To Whom It May Concern"
- Nickelback - "Yanking Out My Heart"
- Hoobastank - "Losing My Grip"
- Flaw - "Only The Strong"
- Rob Zombie featuring Ozzy Osbourne - "Iron Head"
- 12 Stones - "My Life"
- Mushroomhead - "Along The Way"
- Lifer - "Breathless"
- Sevendust - "Corrected"
- Injected - "Burn It Black"
- Breaking Point - "27"
- Coal Chamber - "Glow"
See also
References
External links
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| Original pentalogy: The Mummy (1932) The Mummy's Hand (1940) • The Mummy's Tomb (1942) • The Mummy's Ghost (1944) • The Mummy's Curse (1944) Remake trilogy: The Mummy (1999) • The Mummy Returns (2001) • The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008) Characters: Rick O'Connell • Evy Carnahan-O'Connell • Mathayus (The Scorpion King) • Ardeth Bay (Medjai) • Characters related to The Mummy Spin-off prequel: The Scorpion King (2002) The Scorpion King: Rise of the Akkadian (TBA) Spin-off television: The Mummy: The Animated Series (2001) Video games: The Mummy (2000) • The Mummy Returns (2001) • (2004) • Scorpion King (2002) • The Scorpion King: Rise of the Akkadian (TBA) Attractions: Revenge of the Mummy (Florida) • Revenge of the Mummy (Hollywood) |
