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 an indisputably real king during the protodynastic period of Ancient Egyptian history, Serket II.
The Scorpion King was the first film where The Rock played a lead role, following on from his big-screen debut as a peripheral character in The Mummy Returns.
The band Godsmack made the song "I Stand Alone" for this film, which is heard in the credits.
Mathayus, an Akkadian mercenary, is assigned to kill Memnon's sorcerer, who gives him tyrannical powers. He sneaks into Memnon's camp and finds his way to the sorcerer's tent. However, his plans change when he discovers that Memnon's sorcerer is actually a beautiful sorceress called Cassandra. He shoots one of the guards and is about to kidnap her, when he is discovered and his brother is killed right in front of him. Just as he is about to be killed, Cassandra protests, saying it wouldn't be wise because the gods favor him and to kill him would bring misfortune. Now free again, Mathayus decides to avenge his brother and kill Memnon. He gets into Gomorrah with the help of a thief who earlier on saved him from a gruesome death by fire ants. With the help of the thief and a little boy, Mathayus sneaks into Memnon's castle. He gets into Cassandra's tent and kidnaps her. He discovers he can use her as bait to catch Memnon. During one of Memnon's attempts to kill Mathayus, he is shot by an arrow with scorpion venom, thus the term Scorpion King. Mathayus faints from the pain, but his life is saved by Cassandra, who believes he can save the people and free them from Memnon's tyranny. As their journey continues, they meet up with Balthazar the leader of Memnon's enemies and the two join forces. During a celebration at Balthazer and his people's camp, Cassandra has a vision of Memnon destroying the people and killing Mathayus. After a romantic night with Mathayus, Cassandra returns to Memnon. Mathayus and Balthazer go after her and a huge battle between Memnon and his armies and Mathayus and Balthazar and his people takes place. At one point in the battle, Mathayus gets shot by another arrow but miraculously recovers, and uses the same arrow to kill Memnon. The battle ends in victory for Balthazar and his people and Mathayus is crowned king with Cassandra by his side.
The plot is supposedly set in the pre-historical Middle East but events, people, places and circumstances are in sharp contradiction to actual history. Its portrayal of ancient history is in the tradition of fantasy literature and film, which proliferated following the success of the Conan films. Nevertheless, The Scorpion King refers to real locations and cultures of the pre-dynastic Egyptian phase. The following is a brief summary of some gaps and errors:
In the beginning of the film, a narrator describes the events of the film occurring "before the time of the pyramids." Historically, most of the pyramids of Egypt were constructed during the Old Kingdom. However, a scene from The Mummy Returns depicted Mathayus leading an army against Thebes, which was the capital of Egypt during the Middle Kingdom.
Mathayus is supposed to be an Akkadianmercenary in a time before the first empires but this is historically anachronistic, unless the story is specified to take place just before the rise of the Akkadian Empire (2200 B.C.) -- but this would be too late to allow Mathayus to being the Scorpion King (who must have ruled Ancient Egypt at least a thousand years before).
Everyone uses what seem to be steel or at least iron weapons, millennia before they were available.
If one accepts as historically accurate the Bible's location of Sodom and Gomorrah in a valley plain, then the film's Gomorrah must be another namesake place.
Memnon is a Greek name, more than a thousand years before the Greeks reached the Mediterranean
The film incorrectly depicts Canaan as a semi-desertic place which is nonsensical: It is widely accepted that that region had a milder climate, with more rainfall allowing more permanent rivers, thriving wildlife and productive agriculture. This view harmonies quite well with the advancement of civilization that was found there (without modern technology a city cannot exist in a desert).
Cassandra has a Greek name but is East Asian (hard to explain in that historical context).
Mathayus is made king of a Canaan city, instead of Egypt. This is because at the beginning of The Mummy Returns, Scorpion King is trying to conquer Egypt.
The inventor claims to have bought the recipe for "Chinese Powder" or gun powder. Gun powder was in fact not invented until several thousand years after the film takes place.
The weapons used are made of iron. If the time period was before the pyramid the men in the movie would have been lucky to have copper or bronze weapons.
Trivia
Some of the scorpions depicted in this film were computer-generated; however, others were live emperor scorpion (Pandinus imperator) specimens, which are commonly kept as exotic household pets.
More scenes had to be shot due to the film being around 70 minutes long after being edited.
Dwayne Johnson has said that he intentionally shied away from using any trademarks of his WWE 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 the Greek god Apollo. He gave her the gift with the hopes that she would become his lover, however, when she refused to bed with him, he placed a curse on her, condemning her to never be believed when she gave a prophecy.
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 1966Batman 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 Chow Yun-Fat. But Chow's manager vetoed this saying that Chow never plays villains and that doing so would betray his fans. Chow Yun-Fat later went onto play one of the pirates in the upcoming film, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End.
It was filmed in the California desert to save on production costs.
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