Movies - The Scorpion King

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	Movies - The Scorpion King

The Scorpion King is a 2002 movie starring The Rock (Dwayne Johnson), Michael Clarke Duncan, Kelly Hu and Grant Heslov, and is directed by Chuck Russell. It is a spin-off prequel to The Mummy series, following the story of Mathayus the Scorpion King, the character who was featured in The Mummy Returns
.

The events of The Scorpion King take place 5000 years before the events in The Mummy Returns, and shows Mathayus' origins and how he rose to power as the Scorpion King. The name itself is a reference to a quite real king during the protodynastic period of Egyptian history.

The Scorpion King was the first movie where The Rock played a lead role, following on from his big-screen debut as a peripheral character in The Mummy Returns.

It has a runtime of 92 minutes.

Tagline: Warrior. Legend. King.

Plot

Mathayus, an Akkadian soldier, is assigned to kill Memnon's sorcerer, who gives him tyrannical powers. In the first attempt to assassinate her, his brother is killed and he sets out to get revenge against Memnon. He meets the sorceress, Cassandra, in Gommorah and kidnaps her, hoping to use her as bait to kill Memnon. During one of Memnon's attempts to kill Mathayus, he is shot by an arrow with scorpion venom, thus the term Scorpion King. Their journey brings them up against Balthazar, the leader of Memnon's enemies. The two join forces and attack Memnon's capital, eventually killing Memnon. Mathayus becomes king, with Cassandra by his side.

Trivia

Some of the scorpions depicted in this movie were computer-generated; however, others were live emperor scorpion (Pandinus imperator) specimens, which are commonly kept as exotic household pets.
This movie is a prequel of a sequel of a movie that was a re-make of another movie that was made 70 years ago.
More scenes had to be shot due to the movie being around 70 minutes long after being edited.
Dwayne Johnson has said that he intentionally shied away from using any trademarks of his WWF character The Rock
, in order to give the Scorpion King character a life of its own. The only exception was "The People's Eyebrow," which he does in response to another character's reference to a harem. He said he included the People's Eyebrow to acknowledge the "millions and millions" of Rock fans.
The sorceress's name, Cassandra, is a reference to the daughter of Priam, king of Troy, who was given the gift to see the future by her lover the Greek god Apollo.
The Rock uses a rolling gong as a shield; Harrison Ford
did the same thing in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
.
The "Gomorrah Bazaar" sequences were filmed on a re-dressed Spartacus set on the backlot at Universal Studios.
While filming the fight scene between Mathayus and Balthazar, Michael Clarke Duncan accidentally leaned too far forward, allowing The Rock's elbow to make direct contact with his jaw, knocking him to the ground. Later, Duncan used makeup to make the injury seem worse than it actually was, as a prank on Johnson(The Rock).
The cave that the Rock and the bandits come out of is the bat cave from the 1966 Batman
film.
The Rock's salary of $5.5 million made the Guinness Book Of World Records for the highest salary for a first-time leading man.
Early in the production the villain role was written for Yun-Fat Chow. But Chow's manager vetoed this saying that Chow never plays villains and that doing so would betray his fans. However, Chow did play the part of a villain in The Corruptor
(1999).

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for The Scorpion King ]

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