The most complex thing about this movie is trying to reconcile it as a spin-off to "The Mummy."
At what point did we allow ourselves to reach a “Scorpion King 4?”
Was the “Scorpion King” name so revered and powerful enough amongst bored middle-Americans with access to TNT that we needed to see this turn into a quadrilogy? The world may never know but thank god for whatever Universal studio executive greenlit this mystery of the studio system because “Scorpion King 4: Quest for Power” is the best bad movie that I have seen in years.
The titular warrior Mathayus this time around find himself in a race against time to find the crown of an ancient sorcerer before Drazen, a corrupt king and former ally that has betrayed him to seize power. The only reason I refuse to elaborate any further on the story is because associating the idea of screenwriting with this film is inducing giggling fits that I’m having trouble escaping even as I am writing this very paragraph.
There really is no beating around the bush on this one. The best and worst thing about “Scorpion King 4” is that it truly is everything that you would think it is upon a single glance of the box.
Dwayne Johnson may have moved on from this series a long time ago but trying to connect that the protagonist on screen that was once portrayed by The Rock, after 12 years and a budget slash of over 90%, has now been reduced to looking like a second rate comic-con Khal Drogo cosplayer is an idea that could carry its own entertainment independent of the shoddiness of the actual movie itself.
Nobody involved in this film had any pretentions of making this more than it actually was, which oddly lends itself to the enjoyment of the final product. Despite “The Scorpion King” being steeped in Egyptian mythology, the setting of the actual film is very blatantly European.
This wouldn’t be bad in and of itself accept that the traveling montage of Mathayus taking to the foreign kingdom in question from the very Egyptian setting depicts him exclusively on camel back, right down to his arrival. This is all within the first 10 minutes.
From the cheap sets that look like repurposed warehouses and school buildings, to the special effects that are basically CGI photoshop filters placed over footage of completely unaffected environments, down to even the acting which feels more like pseudo-professionally improvised “Dungeons & Dragons” LARPing, every second of this movie is honestly and joyfully terrible. Even Lou Ferrigno, in his single glorious minute of screen time, had no illusions of what he was acting in, giving a cameo that comes so out of nowhere, you’d swear he just stumbled onto the set looking for a restroom while the cameras were rolling.
What you see is what you get. “The Scorpion King 4” is about every bit as dumb as its very existence implies but because of the film crew’s willingness to accept this fact, the movie keeps pushing forward with an infectiously joyful energy akin to watching an acquaintance with no sense of rhythm, pitch, tone, or volume horrendously botch a karaoke performance while taking a gracious bow and laughing with his jeering audience.
It’s far from the best specimen of its kind but it’s the standard of everything to seek for a drunken Friday night around the television.
3 Shatners
Bottom Line: Like a waiter that drops clean plates in the middle of a crowded restaurant, “The Scorpion King 4” proudly owns its mistake and bows to the sarcastic applause of a laughing public.
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