The Scorpion King 3: Battle for Redemption

Remember that Conan ripoff star vehicle for Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson? Be honest with yourself and know that it was NOT "A" grade cinema. Nothing beyond a fun but shallow summer blockbuster. It was enjoyable, had great fight scenes, good humor and Dwayne Johnson himself as Mathyus the scorpion king, but far from what is normally considered "award winning". Then came a prequel with Mathyus as a kid which felt like a pilot movie for Young Hercules. So bad it was that It could only have tanked. Now for some reason, Universal has gone back to the franchise and given us the very appropriately named "Scorpion King 3: battle for Redemption". Hoping to redeem the franchise, this film only buries it deeper.

Promising to bridge the gap between The Scorpion King and the prelude to "The Mummy Returns", Mathyus looses his kingdom and his queen. No, he does not becoming a wandering warlord out to exact bloody vengeance upon the world (as implied by The Mummy Returns). Instead he returns to his old mercenary ways and takes a contract from King Horus (Ron "I need the cash badly" Perlman) to stop his brother Talus (Billy "ham who doesn't give a crap" Zane) from conquering a kingdom in the far east and possessing the fabled "Book of the Dead".

Now the main gripe with this film is that not only does it not provide a proper bridge between The Scorpion King and The Mummy Returns, it fails to develop its own story into anything remotely like the first Scorpion King film. For starters, there's Mathyus who is now played by Canadian actor Victor Webster. While he does have the build, he lacks the presence of personality that Dwayne Johnson brought to the role. Furthermore, his Mathyus seems to be wholly unaffected by his tragic past. Did not the narrator say he was a broken man longing for a glorious death? Instead he's the same sarcastic, cynical, smiling idiot he's always been.

In scraping the bottom of the creativity barrel, the writers present one of the most confusing plots. They have Mathyus team up with the warrior Olaf (played by Bostin Christopher looking like a bad Jack Black impersonator) and travel to Thailand to save king Jango Fett (actually King Ramusan, but really he is played by the same dude who played Jango) and his daughter. While in Thailand, they have to fight Talus' army of what looks like Roman legionnaires, a resistance group of ninjas, and a demonic trio comprising of Voodoo Mcbruiser, a Shao Khan wannabe and a white haired witch from Chinese wuxia movies.

This movie lacks everything that the first Scorpion King film had. Even the prequel Scorpion King 2 at least had Russell Mulcahy as director; his tracking shots and wide crane panning sequences lending a dynamic feel to an otherwise insipid movie. Roel Reine's directing is standard action movie fare; lots of quick cuts, close ups, half body shots and the mandatory slow motion.

Billy Zane's character makes a nice quote that sums up the Scorpion King franchise at this point, "I will rise again like a bad idea.". Yes, this is an actual quote from the film. Thank you scriptwriters. Thanks to yet another bad idea, we have a wholly unnecessary entry to a dying franchise that never delivers on what it promises. The battle for redemption ends in utter failure.

Considering I didn't rate the big Hollywood blockbuster The Scorpion King (2002) I sure as hell didn't expect I'd think much of the straight to DVD sequels.

The second surprised me and was actually really quite fun, a great take your brain out fantasy outing.

This one, was closer in quality to the first but still better than you'd expect all things considered.

Starring Ron Perlman, Billy Zane, Temuera Morrison, Kimbo Slice and Dave Bautista it's straight to DVD status is blatant but it's not entirely awful.

Set after the 2002 outing it tells the story of our Scorpion King protagonist fallen on hard times and becoming a mercenary. Sadly The Rock by this point had become too big a star to return so Victor Webster stepped in. Now I do hate characters being recast but under the circumstances I think he did a decent enough job both in his performance and appearance.

With an odd level of comedy Battle for Redemption delivers the goods to a degree but not the ones you'd be seeking from a movie like this. The fight sequences are poor, the story is cliched to hell and the likes of Perlman are barely on camera at all.

Not bad, not good, just passable stuff.

The Good:

Couple of great characters

Billy Zane

Some surprisingly good comedy

The Bad:

Selina Lo

Action scenes are underwhelming

I do hate recasting

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

This film is a sequel to a prequel to a prequel of a sequel of a remake (No seriously!)

Last time I saw Olaf he was called Donald Gibb

After seeing the Mummy films, from which i loved, i was excited at the first Scorpion King film to show show his story. Then they had a sequel showing the upbringing of the SK, which had mixed reviews, but was watchable. This had me thinking - they should've left it at that.

Watching this new sequel to the scorpion king films, I wouldn't recommend to anyone. The acting is appalling, the fighting was very poor. Their attempt at keeping the storyline entertaining failed miserably, you would think an Arcadian would be able to fight. The main character Mathayus, was played by a non action star in an action film - don't make sense. Avoid at all costs!!

Since his rise to power developed in Scorpion King I¨ , Mathayus' (Victor Webster) kingdom has fallen and his sweetheart The Sorceress (Kelli Hu) has deceased by pest . Nowadays , drifter Mathayus is a bounty hunter and a hired killer , then he have to defend a kingdom governed by Horus (Ron Perlman) from his rogue brother (Billy Zane) , a nasty tyrant who has convoked dark forces by reading The Book of the dead : as three ghost warriors with incredible power suddenly appear to defeat them . Mathayus assisted by a German barbarian hunk named Olaf (Christopher) has to rescue a princess , daughter of Ramusan (Temuera Morrison) from the claws of the feared Talus who kidnapped her.

Thrilling and fantasy movie with lots of action , fights , adventures and swordplay . Here Mathays/Victor Webster must face off some fantastic enemies and tyrants for the chance to regain the glory and power he once knew . This passable actioner is more in Sword and Necromancy vein than an epic movie. Yes , it is cheesy , at times, but it doesn't actually strive for any more , and it results to be entertaining and amusing enough . In terms of milking a cash cow being really inspired by the original ¨Scorpion King¨by Stephen Sommers that at the same time was a spin-off to ¨Mummy¨ saga also directed by Sommers . Here all the men have the ordinary requisite amount , boasting themselves as well as showing muscles and strength , while women are all scantly clad. This one has a better cast than the second outing that were unknown actors , here stands out a nice cast as Victor Webster , Ron Perlman, Bily Zane , Temuera Morrison and Dave Bautista , furthermore a young gorgeous newcomer Kristal Vee.

The motion picture was professional, though with no originality , directed by Roel Reiné . He is a good Dutch filmmaker who has directed some good films , and with success enough . This Netherland filmmaker has directed a number of films and many of them are sequels . Roel has directed all kinds of genres with penchant for action movies . He has shot remakes and sequels as Hard target 2 , The condemned 2 , The Man with the iron mask , 12 rounds , Seal team eight , Redbeard , The Marine 2 and decent movies as The Admiral , the lost tribe, The Bear . As well as many episodes of notorious TV series as Black sails, Knightfall , Redball legend , Inhumans , among others.

This Scorpion King saga is formed by the following films : Scorpion King 2002 by Stephen Sommers with Dwayne Johnson The Rock, Steven Brand , Kelli Hu, Grant Heslov , Bernard Hill , Michael Clarke Duncan . Scorpion King The rise of a warrior 2008 by Russell Mulcahy with Michael Copon , Karen David , Tom Wu, Randy Couture , Natalie Becker . King Scorpion 3 Battle for redemption 2012 by Raoul Reine with Victor Webster , Billy Zane , Ron Perlman, Selina Lo, Keli Hu. The Scorpion King The lost throne 2015 with Victor Webster , Ellen Holliman , Will Kemp, Barry Bostwick , Rutger Hauer , Michael Biehn , M. Emmet Walsh. The Scorpion King , Book of souls 2019 by Don Michael Paul with Zach McGowan , Mayling , Peter Mensah, Nathan Jones .

With each sequel to Scorpion King the movie gets worse and worse. I'm not sure if it's because of the shrinking budget, but there's definitely something wrong with this. The script was just plain and cliché, like you can see in any exotic movie or video game of this type (like Prince of Persia) or all the previous Scorpion Kings. Other than this the film offers a lot of muscle and skin without any noticeable acting and handpicked women from Asia and some men from W.W.E. Championship to spice it up a little bit. Of course there are also some jokes which could make a 5th-grade-kid smile. Directing becomes rather trivial behind all these so I'm skipping it. So if you're looking for something to kill your time go ahead, but if you're in it for the art or cinematography this is not for you, keep away.