Scorpion King series

(In French, On TV, April 2020) Don’t look at me like that—In choosing to watch The Scorpion King 3, I’m here to see how maximum-value director Roel Reiné can do in a fantasy adventure, not out of any specific affection for the Scorpion King series. Dwayne Johnson isn’t in this one, but Dave Bautista, Temuera Morrison, Billy Zane and Ron Perlman all are! Still, this isn’t a particularly good film—being straight-to-video label Universal 1440’s first production, and a third in an increasingly meaningless series, how could it be otherwise? The plot is soporific, the budget is clearly limited and the actors are clearly challenged by even substandard material. This being said… it’s not all bad. Reiné’s near-superhuman powers at stretching his budgets eventually make the film decent enough to watch, even when it’s not being particularly ambitious. The foreign shooting locations in Thailand add some interest, and there’s a good representation by Asian action heroines. For a straight-to-video third instalment in a series, The Scorpion King 3 could have been much worse.