| The Scorpion King DVD Release Three out of five blings | 
| I hate pro wrestling. Sorry America, I just can't stomach the pompous over-acting no matter how tongue-in-cheek it's meant to be. But… For all it's faults, I forgive wrestling because its brought us a lot of big personalities that make the world a lot more interesting once they break out of the ring. | One such pleasant surprise is The Rock. When he appeared in "The Mummy Returns" I thought I saw some promise there as an actor. I actually missed the theatrical run of The Scorpion King, so I had to pick up the DVD on the very first day it was out. What I saw made me an instant Rock fan.
The Scorpion King could have been a phenomenal picture. Think about it - Michael Clarke Duncan: Oscar nominee, Steven Brand: seasoned, renowned stage actor, an epic story based on a real-life archeological mystery. And in all fairness, it was a pretty cool adventure film. But the performances from the so-called "great actors" were actually kinda lame. Or maybe it was just that they lost some of their natural shine when held up against the shockingly wonderful blaze of The Rock. Okay, so why am I getting so geeky over this guy? Because he's everything Schwartzeneger was and is, but somehow more articulate. As I watched the DVD on my Powerbook, I kept finding myself comparing this flick to the Conan movies. Its such a natural thing to do. Two muscle-bound half nekkid warriors scaling zigguraut walls, bedding exotic women, beating off evil guys with scimitars - on many levels, The Scorpion King is just a Conan knockoff. But the Rock's Mathias was no Conan. Any other actor might have played the role as a strong, silent psychopath - like Conan. But The Rock's Mathias was played as every bit of a combat master Conan was - but smart and cunning. I always got the picture that when Scwartzenner's Conan became king, he'd end up becoming a hated tyrant, because he was too stupid and violent to rule properly. The rock's Mathias becomes a king too(through a somewhat corny plot device), but his performance throughout the movie invests a lot of elements that lead you to believe he will be a strong ruler, loved by the people. The script's development of Mathias' romance with Kelly Hu's Cassandra was stupid and forced, but when it came time for The Rock to deliver his romance lines, there was a lot of sincerity in them. It almost saved the whole romance element. Okay, let's leave it at this - The Rock was awesome - I really wanna see him in other movies. Now on to the rest of the review: I was pretty impressed with the production design. After watching the bonus material on the DVD, I learned that a lot of it was just re-dressing of old sets from titles like Spartacus and believe it or not, the Batman TV series. I was doubly impressed after learning this, because I didn't even notice. I wasn't impressed with the costuming and makeup. For a genre movie with hardly any major effects, you would think that Universal would have had enough budget left to pay for enough spirit gum to keep the tribal scars properly stuck to Michael Clarke Duncan's face. I also had a problem with the musical score (not to be confused with the soundtrack). Most of the time, it was a straight-up symphonic score, but every now and then, it would jarringly cut into some Monday Night Nitro rock guitar. I'm certainly not against mixing rock with symphony - but it could have been woven together better. The DVD contains an average amount of bonus materials, some of it interesting, some of it not available to me. I make it a point of watching some DVD's on my laptop computer to take advantage of the internet connectivity some of them offer. The Scorpion King had Universal Axcess on it and I would have loved to try it, but it only worked under the Windows environment. A company as large as Universal could have certainly made this feature platform independent - that is after all one of the premises of how the web works. So to sum it up - The Scorpion King was a fun movie with a few minor problems. It was certainly no classic, but its worth renting and even buying if already collect this genre of film. The highlight of the whole thing was The Rock's performance. I'd love to see someone give him a better role though. -Jason Prentice Ahlquist | 
