The Scorpion King 2: rise of some guy who looks like a girl

The Scorpion King 2 is a "prequel" to The Scorpion King, which in turn is a spinoff of the "The Mummy" franchise. Despite my disappointment that in The Scorpion King the main character does not sell his soul to Anubis and become a horrifying monster like he supposedly did in The Mummy Returns, it's still a fun movie with The Rock trying to be the new Arnold Schwarzenegger (although he's still not as good at delivering one-liners as Arnie is). The Scorpion King 2, however, takes the original movie and craps all over it.

Compare and contrast.

• In The Scorpion King, we have an opening scene with the last three Akkadians - The Rock (Mathayus) and his brother among them. In the Scorpion King 2, Mathayus's brother eats it in like the first 20 minutes.
• In The Scorpion King, as it is sort of a "thousands of years ago" prequel for The Mummy Returns, there is a heavy influence of ancient Egyptian culture. After all, Mathayus is supposed to, at some point we don't get to fucking see ever, sell his soul to Anubis, Egyptian lord of the dead, and become a freaky half human/half scorpion monster. In the "prequel," although they say they are going to Egypt, they end up going to Crete instead (unless King Minos and the Labyrinth got magically transported to Egypt or something) and meet some goddess of the underworld named Astarte, who according to actual mythology is a precursor of Aphrodite, who never had anything to do with the underworld anyway. So why she's even down there is beyond me. I think they just decided there weren't enough women in the cast so they decided to make Anubis a hot chick. To be fair there IS an Astarte in Egyptian mythology, but so far as I can find out, her main power is breastfeeding.
• In the Scorpion King, Mathayus gets his crazy scorpion link because The Bad Guy poisons him with a scorpion and then when he survives he now has scorpion in his veins or something. Which means that anyone ever stung by a scorpion could turn into a giant half man/half scorpion monster. In the "prequel" the "younger Mathayus" gets attacked by the worst CGI scorpion ever and that's how it happens.

I could go on but you get my point. If discrepancies like this will bother you, then do not watch this movie. Also if you want any sort of mythological accuracy don't bother either (the Mac Guffin of this story is the "Sword of Damocles" which is actually not any sort of special magic weapon at all. Google it if you care.)

Also I think the young actor who plays Mathayus looks like a girl. He has full lips, flowing curly locks, thick lashes, no facial hair whatsoever, and he kinda walks like a girl too. I wasn't totally convinced until he finally took off his chest coverings and there were no boobs.

you're making me blush...

From the perspective of cheesy action movies, however, this film does put out. You have the scary magical bad guy (who is a terrible actor - wait til he gets his head tattooed, it looks like a bad combover), the witty sidekick (Greeks have English accents), the "I may be a girl but I can fight like a man" tomboy, and even for no reason whatsoever a Chinese guy. You get a trip to the underworld with some neat effects, although you can tell they couldn't afford any of the really good CGI. They also tend to overuse the slow-motion effect a bit.

But it starts with fighting, has crazy sword battles, some nice martial arts, pretty decent fight choreography, some chuckleworthy jokes, and expendable characters to die in interesting ways. The plot doesn't have huge, gaping plot holes in it (provided you don't compare it to The Scorpion King AT ALL) and with the exception of the bad guy, the acting isn't too bad. Also the main villain's crappy acting is pretty funny.

On the scale of cheesiness, this one is pretty damn high. It is predictable as hell, even the twists are predictable. The main villain is the kind that goes "no don't kill him yet I have this entire complicated plan" and then when it gets foiled he's all BUT HOW!? But if you want to see a movie that has some decent action scenes that do keep a fair pace, and enjoy laughing at terrible acting and stupid plot points, this is the movie for you. It does drag occasionally, especially in the underworld scene with Astarte goddess of whatever the crap, but you can just fastforward or go get a snack when she's doing her crazy weird voice thing. This movie is great for MST3K-style riffing as well, so grab some friends and drink whenever someone does a flying spinning kick.