The Scorpion King 4: Quest for Power (2015)

I was kind of right! Score half a point for me! In the The Scorpion King 3: Battle for Redemption post, I said I’d be pissed if Cobra/Silda and her people were killed off between movies, and they… might have been? They’re never mentioned, Mathayus’ new kingdom is never mentioned, and anything tying this to the previous movie has seemingly been scrubbed away. I mean, except for keeping Mr. Victor Webster as the Scorpion King. Like… why keep the actor if you’re not keeping almost any other form of continuity?

Everyone from the last movie is gone, replaced with a couple names that most people would hear and go, “Oh, yeah, I think I know who that is.” The love interest and main villain are actors I don’t know, but Love Interest’s dad is Barry Bostwick (I’ll get to you some day, FDR: American Badass!), Main Villain’s easily killed dad was Michael Biehn (known for Aliens and The Terminator), and we even have some even less important roles for Rutger Hauer (Blade Runner and Hobo with a Shotgun), Eve Torres (former WWE Diva was was long gone by the time I was watching), and Lou Ferrigno (The Incredible Hulk TV show). Of those, Bostwick has the most screen time and is a vital member of Mathayus’ adventuring group, while the rest are certainly sometimes there.

What’s the story this time? Does it really matter? Mathayus is tasked to find a magical artifact in some made up European-ish land and eventually travels with Love Interest, Barry Bostwick, and some other guy whose name I don’t care to remember because his entire role was just to betray the group. But Bostwick is a scientist! He doesn’t believe magic is real! Which is… certainly a thing a person could think, but it goes a step further with the movie revealing that every magical obstacle in their way was actually some bit of science (usually steampunk). The fearsome dragon? Just automated clockwork. But then Bostwick gets stabbed, and the magical crown the group was searching for literally brings him back from the dead. What the fuck?! You spent so much time trying to tell the audience that magic wasn’t real, and then you reverse it at the last minute? And that’s not even counting the fact that we the audience KNOW magic is real, because Mathayus went to the literal Underworld and fought a goddess in The Scorpion King 2: Rise of a Warrior! He tells Love Interest about his dead wife–the sorceress from The Scorpion King–who had magic powers! He was introduced to us after having made a deal with Anubis that turned him into a scorpion monster! Magic absolutely fucking exists, and it’s incredibly dumb to spend an entire movie trying to convince us otherwise only to have “the twist” be that magic fucking exists.

MUMMY FUN FACT! So I have a decorative sword. Many years ago I thought I might become a “sword guy,” but then I had sex and stopped at only one, the Sword of Darkness by Kit Rae (the original version with a brown handle and a straightforward blade). Apparently it was a popular model because I’ve seen it every so often in fantasy movies or TV shows, and sure enough, Main Villain has the same sword! That’s kind of cool, right? No? That’s fair.

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