Let me admit right off the bat, I liked Dwayne “The Rock” Johnsons first outing as a leading man in The Scorpion King.  I really didn’t think it was a bad movie at all and it was very much in line with The Mummy and The Mummy Returns, the franchise where The Scorpion King and the character of Mathayus first appeared.  Overall financially, The Scorpion King did fairly well in the box office given its budget so I always thought that a sequel would be on the way but one has never come.  Even though a sequel with The Rock hasn’t appeared we now get to take a look at a direct to DVD film featuring Mathayus as a young man.

Starring as a young Mathayus is Michael Copon; After his fathers murder Mathayus devotes his young life into becoming a fierce warrior to avenge him.  In his quest he travels to the underworld to find the only weapon that can kill the evil king Sargon.  Supporting Michael Copon is Karen David, Simon Quarterman, Tom Wu, Natalie Becker with Randy Couture as Sargon and Peter Butler as Ashur, the father of Mathayus.

• The one thing that really kept me watching The Scorpion King 2 and kept me entertained was the quality in which it was filmed, and I’m not talking about camera quality.  As I watched the film I felt like it was an episode of Hercules the Legendary Journeys or Xena the Warrior Princess.  Honestly, if this film served as a pilot to a TV show, I’d watch it.  In that respect, the story is in line with what would be an episode.  I found it fun following our heroes through the land into the underworld and back to Akkad.
• By staying in the mind set of what I noted just before, I can say I like the characters and the actors who portrayed them, our heroes at least.  Besides Copon as Mathyus, David plays Layla, Quarterman is the Greek Ari and Wu is the Chinese Acrobat Fong.  They’re all fun characters but also lame… in a fun way.
• A lot of the set work and CGI was all well done for a direct to DVD. 
• Even the costume work felt like it came from the closet of the before TV shows.

Dislikes:

• Randy Couture is simply awful.  The delivery of every single line is terrible.  If he is going to become an actor he needs to take classes.
• Most of the dialog is pretty bad but considering that this film was written by the guy who wrote Speed 2: Cruise Control, it was expected.
• Although the story is fun on a certain and small level, I have to call it what it is and say that it is not compelling and would never hold up to a big screen crowd, hence why it’s on DVD.

By no means is The Scorpion King 2 something that everyone should see but if your a fan of simple B movies, you know what, you might have fun with this little adventure.  If you can look past bad dialog, bad acting from Couture and the fact that it is a simple story you might be able to enjoy it on a certain level and mind set.  Don’t go into this expecting something amazing because you’ll just be disappointed.  If you want to avoid a bad SCI-FI Saturday film grab yourself a snack and throw this in the DVD player and just have fun.  If you feel that you can’t have fun, then there isn’t anything in this film for you to see.  On a scale of 1 to 10 The Scorpion King 2: Rise of a Warrior is a 4.5 out of 10 but if you can watch it with a certain mind set it might actually feel like a 6… but realistically it’s not.

-Phil