Movie Review: Looking Back at 'The Scorpion King'

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is arguably the biggest movie star on the planet these days, but back in 2002, he was just "The Rock," a professional wrestler who was making the jump from the wrestling ring to the big screen. With the release of Dwayne Johnson's latest blockbuster, Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs and Shaw, it's as good a time as any to look back at when The Rock became Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, movie star.

The Scorpion King is the backstory of the character of the Scorpion King which was created for the 2001, big money sequel, The Mummy Returns. Granted, while this movie makes very little sense in the history of the story given in The Mummy Returns, it nevertheless used that movie as a springboard while also disowning it entirely.

In The Scorpion King, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is Mathayus, an ancient warrior assassin hired to kill the evil lord Memnon's sorcerer, the source of Memnon's evil power. So, Mathayus goes to Memnon's castle to kill the sorcerer and finds the sorcerer is actually a sorceress, played by Kelly Hu. After the sorceress helps Mathayus escape, Mathayus kidnaps her and, in the process, the two fall in love.

The story of The Scorpion King is full of unsurprising surprises like Mathayus teaming up with a funny sidekick, Aspid (Grant Heslov, a future, at the time, Academy Award nominee) and joining forces with one of his fiercest enemies (Michael Clarke Duncan, fresh off of an Academy Award nomination at the time). So based on what you already know from this review, do you think the film will culminate with a sword fight between Mathayus and Memnon? Well, yes, yes it does, and the outcome is never in doubt.

Okay, so The Scorpion King is endlessly predictable. The story is dull and illogical but the important thing is that the Rock looked cool right? Yeah, The Rock looked kind of cool in The Scorpion King, that's a fair and truthful thing to say. Though he was left with little dialogue, The Rock was able to underscore his few lines with a little knowing wink to the audience saying, I know this is ridiculous but it's also kind of funny right. Even in his first starring role, The Rock was demonstrating the kind of charm that makes someone the biggest star on the planet.

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson has always had charisma and good looks, and back in the day, if something wasn't clicking, like the plot of The Scorpion King, he could always use his wrestling trademarks like his "People's Eyebrow" and a few wrestling maneuvers to provide the wrestling-loving audience with a couple of good laughs and a reason to stay awake during the movie.

Sadly, The Scorpion King did not feature The Rock dropping Steven Brand's Memnon with a Rock Bottom or People's Elbow, that would definitely have improved this movie. Unfortunately, no matter how much I like the Rock, I couldn't find a way to like The Scorpion King. The Scorpion King is simply not bad enough to provide the unintentional laughs that might make it a fun sit, nor is the action of the movie strong enough even to stand next to the rest of The Mummy franchise as something at least marginally, passably entertaining.

No, The Scorpion King is just forgettably bad, a drab exercise in bad effects and dimwitted, action storytelling. Director Chuck Russell is and always has been a hack who every three or four years gets plucked from delivering straight to video Ice-T movies to direct a big budget studio film and completely botch it. So where is he now? A check of his wikipedia entry finds Russell directing in India these days. Meanwhile, his star, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, has gone on to become a massive, global superstar.

It just goes to show that even the most humble beginnings can mark the beginning of something brash and epic. The Scorpion King appeared to be bad enough to stunt the ascent of WWE wrestling's biggest star of that time, but he survived and, more than that, as we will see with the box office success of Hobbs and Shaw, The Rock has more than thrived.

As for The Scorpion King, it will always be that forgotten and little, $160 plus million dollar grossing, debut movie that people skip over when they go to revisit The Rock's remarkable career.