There’s no continuity at all between the stories in The Mummy Returns and The Scorpion King, which hardly even scratches the surface of the awfulness of the latter.

Stephen Sommers has followed an interesting career arc. The Mummy was excellent fun, and The Mummy Returns was… oh, pretty good, I guess. The Scorpion King was rotten, and the less said about Van Helsing the better. I’m not going to watch his next opus unless I’m wearing a welding mask.

Yeah, I noticed that one too. I don't get it either, unless the Scorpion King eventually became despondent as the sorcery babes left and turned to the dark side.

Those durn sorcery babes have a way of doing that...

Yeah, but what a ride! Confess - you'd risk eternal damnation for that kind of instant gratification.

Oh, and I thought Scorpion King was entertaining. It has all the elements you need for this kind of film: likeable hero, fabulous babe, band of cool sidekicks (including my personal favorite, Michael Clarke Duncan), psycho villain and perhaps most critically, a sense of humor at or near the campy line about itself.

Compare this with, say Red Sonja. Sure, you had Ahnold and Brigitte Nielson, but the thing was so dreary as to be damn near unwatchable.

I've no opinion on Van Helsing, having not seen it.

Van Helsing wasn't that awful, compared to other scifi B-list movies with plot holes big enough you could fly a dragon through.

However, the scene with the Catholic Church's version of Bond's Q Department, complete with chanting Buddist monks, completely destroyed my ability to suspend disbelief.

Robbo, I agree with you about the ingredients of a dumb-but-fun movie. The Mummy had all those things, which is why I enjoyed it. (BTW, I'll nominate Rachel Weisz as a Flash in the Pan Babe from the Very Recent Past any time). I really didn't think the same mix worked as well in the sequel, but that's a subjective call. And I saw after I saw Van Helsing, which soured me on Sommers as a director, as a human being, and even as a mental concept. I won't say any more about Van Helsing, because I'm practicing being kind.

Clearly, the galloping ecumenism of 1960s/1970s Catholicism arrived a century early in the Helsingverse. Seriously though, Sommers comes from a midwestern and, I suspect, conservative Protestant background (he optioned a chick-lit novel about a woman with such a background, and sympathetic ambivalence toward same) and all the Kewl, Freaky non-Protestant religions discreetly conspiring to fight evil is the kind of thing I could see a rebellious child of God-fearing Parents coming up with.

Anyhoo, the prologue to Mummy Returns portrays Scorpy as a somewhat sympathetic/tragic figure who, when defeated and close to death, makes a deal with the devil (well, Anubis, but Sommers can't tell the diff) that transforms him into a thing of evil. So not that big a reach for him to be sympathetic in the prequel, although it would appear that that seeress isn't getting the whole picture on his background.

"... saw The Scorpion King..."

I know, I know. PIMF.

Have you ever seen ABOUTT AND COSTELLO MEET THE MUMMY? pretty funny when costello hits the mummy over the head with a shovel