Needed Weisz


Would've worked SO much better if Weisz was in it, her and Frazier had much better chemistry. And it made no sense that Alex was 21, 18 would've been more believable. Plus he doesn't put off the vintage attitude or look the movie is supposed to be set in. The visuals and the story line were cool.

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Yeah bello is a fine actress in her own right, the dark is a superb film as well as her short lived NBC detective show (never should have been cancelled)

But Weisz. British charm n comedy was missing...even in the second film she was missing the original film's mystique

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I've nothing against Bello. She was an actress ding a job and probably getting paid nicely for it too but recasting almost never works, especially 2 films in and it didn't here.

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Maria Bello played the character in a likable way but different people simply can't have the same essence. Other series re-cast and get away with it to a degree but Evelyn is at the very core of this franchise. Her being different changes everything.

What might have worked is a Doctor Who approach. Where it's acknowledged to be the same soul but a different incarnation. I don't know about Chinese mythology, but in Egyptian the violent goddess Sekhmet transformed into the goddess of love Hathor. Perhaps some kind of spell could have changed Evie, leading to problems and confusion, that of course get resolved.

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I liked it alright but Bello was horribly miscast. Zero chemistry with Fraser and furthermore, it didn't even seem like the same character in terms of personality.

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Needed Weisz


Naw. Weisz was really cute in the first movie, but had noticeably lost her cuteness-edge in "Mummy Returns." I'm not saying she was unappealing, just that she had lost the edge that put her over the top for the 1999 flick.

her and Frazier had much better chemistry


Did anyone ever watch either of first two movies and say "Oh, the chemistry of Fraser & Weisz was just so phenomenal"? (It's a rhetorical question).

Weisz opted out of this third flick because she had a 1 year-old son and didn't want to leave him to shoot in China for weeks-on-end (or months). What were the producers gonna do, scrap the entire project because one replaceable actress opted out?

Maybe she thought she was too good for a Mummy sequel after shooting pretentiously dull drivel like "The Fountain," who knows? (Speaking as someone who likes pretentious art flicks, just not pretentiously dull ones).

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"had noticeably lost her cuteness-edge"....ALRIGHTY.

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I know what you mean (it sounds awkward), but I didn't know how else to put it. Let me clarify: There was a noticeable physical change in Weisz between "The Mummy" and "The Mummy Returns." After seeing "Returns" in the theater, I pointed this out to a friend who was with me and he totally agreed (so it's not just me); it almost seemed like a different actress -- she was thinner and without her roundish (not fat) cuteness observed in the first flick.

Of course she was still certainly attractive in "Returns" and it would've been great if she opted to join the cast for "Tomb of the Dragon Emperor," but she decided against it.

I'm just saying that Weisz was far from irreplaceable as she wasn't really that instrumental to the success of the first two films. There are thousands of cute, winsome actresses that can fill the bill and would kill to get it.

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Yeah, but Rachel declined to return. Given that immutable FACT, the result was not bad at all.

I know: facts—so inconvenient.

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