The Scorpion King: Book of Souls

So this afternoon the recent abominable reboot of Conan the Barbarian was on broadcast tv, so, against my better judgement, I watched some of it. Every bit as terrible as I remembered. I love the Milius Conan, of course, even though it's about different guy named Conan, apparently. So I ran across this thing on Netflix, and I thought can't be worse that what I just saw, so why not? And what a pleasant surprise! A perfectly serviceable sword&sandals&sorcery film! Obvious these people love the Schwartz Conan, several sly references. Handsome production, good art direction, far better than the recent Conan, better fight choreography. In fact, pretty much a Conan adventure, with a different lead.

To be honest, this production could have only just held its head above the B. Luckily its head is safe, despite a low budget. Brilliant casting, with stars from Black Sails and Spartacus continuing in similar sword-fighting roles. Plenty of muscle, beautiful strong and magical women, flying in the air fights and a really crazy huge original offsider (possibly a stand out here). The plot was faithful to the genre and the franchise. Not too many effects but tastefully done (this is not Gods of Egypt). This is probably the best Scorpion I've seen, great for teenagers (though there is quite a lot of killing though not much blood), or fantastic for a Saturday arvo lazy if you are into fantasy.

Loovvvveee it!!!! SK is back and better than ever. Gone is the camp and the cheese and in comes the action adventure. This is what SK should be, and I'm glad they've rethunk it!!! Very good movie, impressively directed, especially at this budget level!!! Kudos!!! Keep slaying, SK!!!

The Stephen Sommers Mummy franchise, for all intents and purpose, is dead. There hasn't been a decent installment since 2008's Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, and the direct-to-video sequels to it's Scorpion King spin-off have been nothing short of terrible and unnecessary.

Yet, I'll concur that Book of Souls is an improvement over the last two Scorpion King sequels in terms of plot and cinematography, capturing the feel of The Mummy films. But not enough to revive long-term interest in a franchise that has since been relegated to the DTV ghetto. Especially when these films shuffle lead actors like it shuffles cards.

It does have a slow pace, but the fight scenes are well choreographed. I think the writing had it's moments, but was not much dialogue. Direction was slow, and the scenes were choppy for a quest oriented film.

The acting was moderate to ok Pearl Thusi did a great job of carrying the film. Graphically not bad at all, and the camera work was very well done. I don't think I would watch it again, but was entertaining.