The Rock Collection
Page 2
Memnon captures Mathayus and kills his brothers but Cassandra tells Memnon he cannot kill Mathayus nor can he order anyone to do this. He cleverly has his men bury Mathayus up to his neck in a ring of fire ant hills and his men place burning rags down the holes to swarm the ants on Mathayus and the horse thief also sentenced to death.
The horse thief escapes and frees Mathayus after he agrees not to kill the horse thief and the two start an adventure to avenge the death of Mathayus’ brothers. With the help of the horse thief they do capture Cassandra who over the course of days sees the efforts of the last free people of the land trying to survive by hiding from Memnon.
She decides to help Mathayus and the people he is helping only to see a vision of Memnon and his soldiers killing everyone so she goes back to Memnon to trick him. Mathayus uses her return to Memnon as a time to attack him using the fighters that they have both befriended and they do end up killing off Memnon after a city wide fight.
The Scorpion King Mathayus and Cassandra live happily ever after to rule the lands that had belonged to Memnon in peace and prosperity according to a vision Cassandra has but Mathayus just says the kingdom will make its own destiny. The Scorpion Kling is a pretty good movie in the same vein as Conan and other sword and sorcery or Dungeon and Dragons type movies with plenty of action but a little light on the overall well made movie.
I enjoyed the movie due to its more down to earth fighting and special effects that were kept to a minimum with more use of physical prowess and cunning for the actor’s characters instead of magical abilities. The movie has a good storyline and they did well with the overall production but it just has a certain something that is missing to make it great.
The Scorpion King will of course appeal to a certain audience over The Rundown but it does not contain much of anything for extras, only a commentary on the film track so there is nothing to talk about other than the film itself. The Scorpion King is good but there are no extra features for the Blu-ray edition other than the commentary by the director which is a shame.
Doom is the third movie in the Rock Collection and one of those films based on a video game which typifies this genre. The Rock does a good job for his part but the story is just so out there in the first place and they did not do well overall with the movies story other than follow it to its logical, lame, conclusion.
This is science fiction at its typical height of gaming goodness; humans find a device that transports them across the solar system to Mars. There they discover some creatures very human like that have died off thousands of years ago but before scientists can discover more the team is attacked and killed.
A distress call is sent out by the last surviving scientist and marines are sent back to Mars to find out what is going on with the Rock in the lead. Dwayne Johnson plays Sarge with Karl Urban playing John Grimm who go to Mars to find out what is going on.
Of course they find the scientists who are turning into zombie like monsters along with other animals kept as lab experiments turning into unspeakably hideous creatures due to a blood agent found in the bones on the planet. The agent either transforms people who are basically good into super humans or bad people into monsters so while the team of marines search the facility the “bad” scientists are attacking them and taking them out one by one.
When the attack came the facility where the transportation device, the Ark, was locked down but there was a group of scientists and support people there as well. The infection spreads to this facility as well and people are transformed either as monsters or huddle together to hide from the monsters.
In the end the Rock, or Sarge transforms into a monster and John Grimm fights him using the Ark to send him back to Mars when he tries to escape on Earth. Grimm sends a grenade through the Ark right after tossing Sarge through to seal the transportation device and keep anything from reaching Earth again.
During the movie one longish scene involves the point where Grimm starts to transform into a super human because of his good nature and uses a first person view just like the video game to fight against several of the monsters. This scene that is basically a video game sequence is pretty lame and one of the big reasons the movie had such a bad reception from reviewers.
The film did not do well and was basically not well received by both movie goers and fans of the video game for several reasons but basically it was pretty lame. The extras on the Blu-ray edition are pretty good and about the only reason to buy the movie after it has been out for this many years.
There is not any usual commentary which is actually a surprise but there is a few making of features with the monster creatures and how the actors buffed up for the film. The Basic Training feature shows how the actors worked out for the movie and the Rock Formation is another making of feature showing how they did makeup and effects on Dwayne Johnson.
The Blu-ray features also include a longer version and a making of the first person shooter sequence and a couple of Doom the video game features. The Doom Blu-ray edition is a pretty decent set of extras for a Blu-ray and would be worth it for a decent movie but the movie is not that good so this may be a movie to pass on by itself.
Doom is not exactly a great movie but this is the second time I have seen it and did not mind watching it over again, but I could have lived without it. The movie is about at that 50/50 level of enjoyment that you walk away from the movie saying they could have done better but it could have been worse at the same time.
The movies in the Rock Collection range from really good to about average and are a good collection of Dwayne Johnson’s acting career. The Rundown is the best and Doom is the least enjoyable but still not that bad with extras that also range from almost nonexistent to really good for a really nice collection of movies on Blu-ray.