Eye Candy #283 - "The Scorpion King 2 - Rise of a Warrior"

The Scorpion King 2 - Rise of a Warrior:  A prequel to the first Scorpion King film, we get the skinny on Mathayus upbringing and training that made him so darn dangerous in the original film.  He is trained to be a member of the Black Scorpions, the elite royal guard of Akkad, but when his father is slain by a rival military commander Sargon (played by MMA fighter Randy Couture, who has all the acting ability of a tree stump), vengeance takes over and Mathayus embarks on a journey to overthrow Sargon (who also happens to have supernatural abilities, too).  That leads him on a journey that looks like it was cribbed from “Clash of the Titans” and similar genre films, mixing various mythologies together into one utterly uncompelling mish-mash (we’ve got a labyrinth plus minotaur…right beside Ishtar, the Mesopotamian goddess of nookie).  With a lower budget than its predecessor, less star power, and an obvious lower level of talent, my expectations going into this were EXTREMELY low.  And unsurprisingly, it didn’t exceed my expectations.  This couldn’t survive other than direct-to-video.  Maybe as a Sci-Fi Channel movie of the week.  Poor Russell Mulcahy, your directing career just hasn’t been the same since “Highlander”, and SK2 is just another middling entry into your unremarkable oeuvre.  Woodchuck sez, “Really pretty lousy.”