First Teaser Online for "The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor" And It Doesn't Totally Suck!

I've never been a big fan of Stephen Sommers' The Mummy franchise (although The Scorpion King was dumb fun thanks to the Rock), but I find myself getting very intrigued by the most recent entry in the series. Perhaps it's because we're getting Rob Cohen as the director instead of Sommers, or that Jet Li could actually make this movie worth watching -- whatever it is, I'm certainly more interested in this film than I ever expected to be.

Now we finally have our first glimpse of the film in action, and while it's sorely lacking in ass-kicking via a certain Jet Li, it does give us a good idea of what to expect this time around. It looks as if Fraser's son in the film has grown up (although he strangely hasn't), and Mario Bello plays his wife instead of Rachel Weisz. The action looks suitably epic, and I think Cohen has a far better eye for it than Sommers ever did. Michelle Yeoh's presence in the film is also a good sign, and hopefully she'll be able to duke it out with Li at some point.

I'm not setting my expectations too high however. While I found Cohen's The Fast and the Furious to be a surprisingly great guilty pleasure, and I enjoyed his fantastical Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, his recent output has not been so great. XXX was a completely misguided attempt to reinvent the spy genre with more spectacle than the overblown Bond franchise -- something which The Bourne Identity's minimal style ended up doing better. And then of course, there was Stealth.

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor hits theaters on August 1, 2008. You can view the teaser trailer in HD over at MSN, or streaming below.

[Source: MSN via Aint it Cool News]