The Mummy 3: Tomb of the Dragon King （神鬼传奇3）

[yersi]

Just in case you haven't noticed yet: the new Mummy movie takes place in China and a good portion of it is in mandarin.

Movies like this always cram in the stuff that's most recognizable about the country they're set in, so here you of course get the Great Wall, and then you have the Terracotta Warriors who were actually soldiers serving under Jet Li but cursed by the witch Michelle Yeoh who lives in Shangri-La which is protected by Yetis. IMO the only thing that was missing here was Chow Yun-Fat and Zhang Ziyi riding on a pair of giant pandas.

Almost none of the Chinese actors they hired were able to speak proper mandarin (sometimes even my native speaker girlfriend couldn't understand what they were saying!), and they deliver their lines in English like a text-to-speech converter. Luke Ford has a few lines in Mandarin which were... well, let me put it this way: I read a review by a Chinese girl who even with subtitles didn't understand what he was trying to say at a point. I give him credit for trying though.

All in all, this movie was pretty lame, and really wasted China as a popcorn movie setting. I'd be interested to hear what some mainlanders think of it (my girlfriend is Taiwanese and didn't like it), judging by the reviews I've read at Douban so far they hate it as well.

[skylee]

I am not interested in the film and probably will not see it. But "Almost none of the Chinese actors they hired were able to speak proper mandarin"? I suppose Jet Li didn't speak Mandarin in the film, right? And I suppose you speak excellent Mandarin if you consider Michelle Yeoh's Mandarin to be poor. IMHO hers (as in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) is not great but it is ok. But then I haven't seen this mummy film.

Jet Li is a good actor. He's superb in 投名狀.

[yersi]

I agree I could have phrased that a little better. Their mandarin is not "poor", but it isn't great either. I just don't see why they absolutely have to hire HK actors to do films in mandarin.

Jet Li is good in this film, but he is in it for only a short while and then he is replaced by a CGI mummy. He also says very little.

[bhchao]

And I suppose you speak excellent Mandarin if you consider Michelle Yeoh's Mandarin to be poor. IMHO hers (as in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) is not great but it is ok.

Cantonese-accented Mandarin

[roddy]

Yersi, where did you see it? There may be different versions depending on the market.

[yersi]

.

[Lu]

I'd watch this film just for Jet Li, but if he's CGI'd then I guess I'll just wait for it to be on tv.

why they absolutely have to hire HK actors to do films in Mandarin.

Why HK actors: because there are more famous HK actors than mainland actors, especially from a foreign standpoint. Why they still have to speak Mandarin: well, that's the official language of China. Why Hollywood filmmakers don't reconsider and realize there might be better ways to go around this: that's a retorical question.

[Outofin]

Not interested in this movie, but did you notice the increasing presence of Chinese in action movies? Shanghai in Mission Impossible 3, Chow Yun-Fat in Pirates of the Caribbean 3, Terracotta Army in Mummy 3, Hong Kong in the newest Batman movie. And I just learned that we’ll see a fictional Chinese city in Transformers 2 next year.

[Lu]

I suppose that's because China is considered more and more important, and because film makers are fishing for a Chinese audience (apparently forgetting that if they want to see those movies, they'll buy pirate versions anyway).