The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

The third film in the Mummy series moves the action from Egypt to China, where Rick and Evelyn O'Connell are drawn back into adventure after the Second World War. Their grown son Alex, now an archaeologist himself, accidentally awakens a cursed emperor who was entombed with his army of terracotta warriors two thousand years earlier. The revived ruler, able to shift shape and command the elements, sets out to reclaim power, and the family must join forces with a young archaeologist named Lin to stop him.

Rob Cohen directed the film, which sits between Stealth and Alex Cross in his filmography. Brendan Fraser returns as Rick, with Maria Bello taking over the role of Evelyn, John Hannah back as Jonathan Carnahan, Luke Ford as Alex, Isabella Leong as Lin and Jet Li as the emperor. Miles Millar and Alfred Gough wrote the screenplay, and Stephen Sommers, Sean Daniel and James Jacks produced.

Made for about 145 million dollars, the film took roughly 403 million dollars worldwide, a return that outweighed its cost but came with weak word of mouth: on IMDb it holds 5.2 from around 179,000 votes, and on TMDB 5.5 from a much smaller pool of voters. A critics' rating of 3.8 from 174 reviews places it below even those modest audience scores.