For the rest of us, though, this film represents everything that’s not only wrong with modern disaster films, but with American culture itself. DTESS clearly has a lofty series of goals it hopes to accomplish, yet achieves nothing more than one abject failure after another. It’s so bad that I found myself pulling my hair out, wondering why the hell I even bothered.

Surprisingly, very little of the blame can be squared against Keanu Reeves, who plays essentially the same character he’s done for the last dozen or so films. Distant and aloof? Check. Emotionless? Check. Superhero powers? Check. Acting ability? None needed. Perfect! He seems to be drawn to roles that have a not-so-subtle messianic nature to them – to the point that I’m beginning to wonder if he has a certain ego issue. Look for that oh-so-obvious walking on water. Yeah. He’s here to save the earth, but not the people on it. Hallelujah.

In this film, Klaatu (Reeves) comes to earth to warn humanity of its evil and destructive ways, and only Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly) and her stepson (Jaden Smith) stand in the way of Klaatu and his plan to wipe out humanity. Before he can say anything, he’s shot, comes back to life, and then subjected to interrogation under the watchful and suspicious eyes of Defense Secretary Regina Jackson (Kathy Bates).

Since the comparisons to the far-superior original are all-too obvious, it’s important that we understand just how seriously this film missed a classic opportunity of speaking out against some of the greatest political evils in our day. In 1951, the original DTESS was birthed during the height of the McCarthy era, and the darkest days of the cold war. Americans were conditioned to fear anything remotely communist, and the late director Robert Wise crafted a story that spoke in volumes against not only the threat of nuclear annihilation, but against the reigning communist hysteria of the day.

Not so with the 2008 DTESS. The US is at the precipice of a potential slide toward a similar xenophobic mania (where instead of communism, we have a fear of anything that isn’t “normal:” Hispanics, Homosexuals, Muslims, Democrats, Liberals, you name it). Many of us are on edge after a series of horrifying terrorist attacks over the last few years, and are told we have to be vigilant against an enemy whose face we many never really know.

As this year’s election has shown, we are a country that is more divided than we’ve been in the last sixty years. Even with a near limitless canvas of emotional and political fodder available, none of these facts ever even come to the mind of scriptwriter David Scarpa. Instead of being our own worst enemy, we’re put at the brink of extinction because we’re slowly killing the environment.

Yeah, you read that right. This film is little more than a collective orgasmic fantasy for the entire environmentalist movement.  Here, we have an alien force that’s about to wipe out humanity – to save the earth from humanity. It’s so separated from any semblance of reality that there’s no possibility of reprieve – from the script or from the story.

It’s as if Scott Derrickson, the film’s director, saw this incredibly inept script as a great way to update the “big bad robot” from the original. There was clearly no coherent thought of whether or not there should be any MESSAGE to this film, but after all, who wants to be taught anything these days?

If there’s anything at all to praise in the film, the visuals are what we’ve come to expect in today’s blockbusters, and there’s a certain glee we all have when we see major cities leveled as only CGI can deliver. However, there’s just something about how our world comes to the brink of destruction. Possibly the only person who’s really worth watching is Jaden Smith, who clearly got his acting chops from both of his parents (Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith). Quite simply, he’s brillaint, and is a breath of fresh air in an otherwise hopeless film.

Speaking of fresh air, when the giant robot (yeah, here’s an uncharacteristic-for-me spoiler because it’s just THAT bad) turns into a series of microscopic robotic baddies, it forms a destructive cloud that wipes away everything in its path. I don’t know if this would be called “Big Bad Robot Flatulence,” but it sure seems like cinematic flatulence to me. After all, it literally begins by slowly peeling away layers of glass. It’s as if the great big film deity in the sky said to its audience, “Come here and pull my finger.” Like the bored audience we are, we pull that imaginary finger, only to be be bombarded with a film that should never have been made, let alone released.

When I say that this film completely ignores the grit of the original, and that it misses the point entirely, I can think of no finer example than that of the character of Professor Barnhardt (John Cleese). Cleese’s character is little ore than a throwaway scene that only sets up another chase scene. It’s worth pointing out that his predecessor in the original film was Sam Jaffe, whose scene nearly ended up on the cutting room floor.

The cause for this potential omission? Jaffe was blacklisted, and accused of being a communist. The producers reluctantly decided to leave the scene and the actor in the film because he and his character were so essential to the story.  Because he was labeled a possible communist, Jaffe wouldn’t be in another film again until the late 1950s.

How tragically ironic that the new Barnhardt scene could have easily been discarded. Hell, the whole movie could have been discarded, and we would have been saved the temptation to pull the big bad robot’s finger. But then, there are those among us who have to pull just to see what happens. For everyone else: you have been warned.

Director Rob Cohen takes over the reins from Stephen Sommers, who helmed the first two films. Cohen’s style of storytelling clearly wanted to capture some of the apparent nostalgia of the first two Mummy films. Only there’s one big problem – it’s only been seven years since the last one, and the first two films really weren’t all that great to begin with.

SPOILER WARNING: I’ve long had a personal policy of spoiler-free reviews, but I’ll have to make an exception in this case because it’s just THAT bad.

Try to imagine, if you can, a scene where massive, overly-animated Yeti pounce on the villains only to kick one of the poor heavies over a roof in an impromptu football field goal, with the obligatory referee’s hand sign. If you think such a scene is an exercise of brilliant humor, then there’s not really much hope for you—you’ll probably love this movie. The rest of us will roll our eyes nearly out of their sockets.

Back to the faux nostalgia: The film opens a full twelve years after the events told of in The Mummy Returns with Rick O’Connel (Fraser) and his wife Evelyn (Maria Bello) in the full lap of luxury and retirement. They’re both clearly bored with life (as is the audience of the movie at this point) as they go through the ho-hum motions of reminiscing of their earlier adventures. Evelyn’s way to deal with the boredom was to write two books which “coincidentally” have the titles of both of the earlier films. Wait, that was supposed to be funny. Their one big moment of drama was an argument over how their now-twenty-year-old son Alex (Luke Ford) had just dropped out of college.

Alex, as it turns out, was actually following in Dad’s footsteps by digging up the statues of some old dead Chinese king in a quest for his own fortune and glory. In interviews, Fraser has repeatedly said that he was a fan of the Indiana Jones series, and always wanted to be Indiana Jones. Surely there’s a better way to reach for your dreams than to appear in this travesty; but I digress.

The last Indiana Jones film, as mediocre as it was, actually had a genuine (yet overblown) sense of nostalgia; after all, it had nearly twenty years to reflect on. Mummy 3, tried to capture that same sense of reflection, but ended up with little more than a cracked mirror.

One major element that the story lacks is a villain with any humanity. The first Mummy film introduced the tragic story of Imhotep as a lovestruck warlock who just wanted to resurrect his beloved. It was a fresh exploration on the age-old story of the Mummy. On the flip side, the heavy in this film is Emperor Han (Jet Li) who just wants to rule the world. Just Because. Yawn.

Mummy 3 does try to have at least one love triangle in this film, where Han wanted the witch Zi Iuan (Michelle Yeoh) for himself, and killed her beloved so that he would give him the gift of immortality. The beauty of cardboard characters is that they don’t have to have any real motivation to be “good” or “bad,” so there’s no time wasted on anything really tedious (read: important) — like characterization, plot, or plausibility.

Well, surprise, surprise, Zi Iuan doesn’t give him immortality at all, but rather curses Emperor Han and his entire army. Surprise, surprise, the whole army eventually gets resurrected (yeah, it’s a real spoiler, isn’t it?) and threatens the entire world. Of course, our “retired” O’Connell family has to save the day and the planet.

Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, the lovely (and immortal) Zi used her astronomical powers to resurrect her former lover who was the lone general who dared oppose Han in ancient times. Of course, the (un)dead general is surprisingly well-preserved for being buried underneath the Great Wall of China.

The script is bereft of any competence, and does little more than pander to the lowest common denominator in our society by offering nothing more than spoon-fed dialogue served to an audience that should feel more insulted with each passing frame. It’s a clear example of just how low a film can go before it gets regurgitated into a hash of half-chewed concepts that were bad to start with. This isn’t a movie to be avoided; it’s a movie to be shunned and discarded into the nearest incinerator.

The climactic battle is an explosive mess of CGI pandemonium that involves strafing airplanes, beheading zombies, and fiery explosions as only a Mummy can bring. Every bullet is a waste of space, as there’s only so much exploding sand that an audience will take before it becomes punishment. Even that doesn’t take long.

In an earlier scene where a crash landing is imminent, the pilot announces that the wheels are stuck. O’Connell laughs nervously in response and then asks “Why am I laughing?” The audience doesn’t know either, but the question invoked another in me: “Why am I watching this?”

Believe me, you’ll be asking yourself the same question.