The Mummy: Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor [BLU_RAY]

Includes bonus material: Deleted and expanded scenes, Commentary with director Rob Cohen

The blockbuster La Momia saga completely changes course as it heads to Asia for the next installment in the magical adventure series, La Momia : Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. Brendan Fraser returns to play explorer Rick OConnell, who must face the resurrected Emperor Han (Jet Li), in an epic tale that begins in the tombs of ancient China and ends in the icy peaks of the Himalayas. In this new adventure, Rick's companions are his son Alex (newcomer Luke Ford), his wife Evelyn (Maria Bello) and her brother, Jonathan (John Hannah). The OConnell family must stop a mummy who has just awakened from a curse placed 2,000 years ago before he enslaves the entire world.

Doomed by a traitorous witch (Michelle Yeoh) to remain in apparent death for eternity, the ruthless Chinese Dragon Emperor and his ten thousand warriors have waited in their vast mud tomb, forgotten by all, for hundreds of years, like a terracotta army. . But when young adventurer and archaeologist Alex O'Connel is tricked into awakening the fearsome ruler from his eternal slumber, he has no choice but to ask for help from the only people who know more about the undead than he does: his parents.

The monarch returns to life with all his power and our protagonists soon discover that his desire for domination has only grown in all these years. Using unimaginable supernatural powers, the Mummy Emperor will cross the Far East with his legion without anyone being able to stop him... unless the OConnells find a way to do so. Now, with La Momia : Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, the excitement and spectacle of the saga will be redefined for a new generation.




Creating the most complex scenes in LA MUMMY LA TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR required an impeccable fusion of visual and special effects. Considering the astonishing array of effects in the film, from ancient creatures and avalanches to complicated battles with digital characters on digital sets and visual effects, the filmmakers faced no easy task.

The Awakening of the Mummy Emperor
To create the Dragon Emperor and his legion of terracotta warriors, the effects team designed a series of liquid-solid soldiers capable of bowing and kneeling. When they move they crack, but they are immediately put back together.
To begin designing the Mummy Emperor, the company Digital Domain carried out a cyber scan of Jet Li with three-dimensional cameras in order to generate its characteristics in a terracotta statue. Since the Emperor controls all the elements, earth, fire, air and water, he is a truly dangerous enemy. To top it off, it also has healing powers. Joel Hynek, co-supervisor of Digital Domain, explains: It's full of magma. When it cracks, it loses chunks, but the magma rises to the surface and solidifies.
The trick was to get the emperor to move without looking like a man in a rubber mask. Digital Domain conducted stress studies on fired clay objects to find out what they would look like when they expanded, cracked or broke. They then incorporated the results into the mummy and his legion of terror. Joel Hynek comments: The terracotta warriors don't get better if they don't cross the Wall, they will continue to deteriorate, but if they manage to get to the other side of the Wall, they will be immortal.

Create a legion of warriors
Although only a fraction of baked clay warriors have been excavated from Chinese soil, they all had to be resurrected. Digital Domain was responsible for creating two immense armies made up of 4,800 terracotta warriors (the Emperor's men) and 2,500 Founding Army soldiers (the men the Emperor killed).
The founding Army soldiers are the good guys, explains special effects co-supervisor Matt Butler. They are the workers who have been under the Wall for 2,000 years. They come back to life looking pretty horrible. Not all are skeletons, there are many variations, ranging from almost normal to full bone. The most difficult thing was getting a completely desiccated being to give the impression of goodness.
By studying ancient images, current embalming texts and anatomy books, the team members soon became true bone and muscle specialists. Matt Butler explains: It allowed us to design tools to transform a healthy body into an aging body, a body with only muscles and tendons, or only bones.
So that the movements of each of the characters were independent, Digital Domain used a program called Massive, developed by Stephen Regelous, and which has been used in the battles of numerous films, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, among others. The authentic warriors of Xian served as a reference since each one has the same face, body or hairstyle. After scanning their images, the team invented a system to swap body parts so that the public never sees a duplicate soldier when they go on the attack.

Create new creatures
Jet Li's character is not only the Mud Emperor, he also has the ability to transform into other creatures, especially a three-headed harpy, a mix of Western and Chinese mythology. The Image Matrix program incorporated Jet Li's movements into a digitally created creature that spits flames, grabs its victims, and flies away.
Another incarnation of the Emperor is Nian, a half-lion, half-dog creature, based on the Fu dogs, guardians of temples in ancient China. Director Rob Cohen says: We've exaggerated the animal side. Now it is a creature about three meters tall capable of grabbing a plane in the sky. Jet's character changes shape often. For each incarnation, Rhythm & Hues produced a computer-designed model with muscles and skin, which was sent to the filmmakers for feedback.
Since no one has ever seen a yeti up close and lived to tell the tale, the characters were digitally generated and the team had free rein to design the brutes. Yetis have always been a favorite, says producer Sean Daniel. We thought it was great to incorporate the yetis and Shangri-La into the film. Yetis are creatures, like the Mummy, that we all know.