It has been previously suggested that we can all thank Brendan Fraser for the career of Dwayne Johnson because he gave his approval for the then-WWE star to be cast in The Mummy Returns. Of course, that particular film isn’t just famous for launching the career of one of the biggest movie stars in the world; it’s also infamous for having some of the wonkiest CGI in the history of the technology.
In the recent CNN & Variety Actors on Actors between the two Mummy Returns stars, the pair talked about how they were never actually on screen together, because Johnson’s only physical scenes were set in a different era, and his later appearance in the finale was…rough, due to some famously bad CGI. Fraser said…
Then you came back as a supernatural effect, CGI effect, which, in hindsight. [Fraser and Johnson both laugh] It’s charming in its own way now. Doesn’t it remind you of early video games?
“Early video games” is probably an apt description, but The Mummy Returns was released in 2001, and the creature at the end of the movie looks like a character from an early PlayStation game. That would be fine; these were still early days for CGI effects, after all. However, this film still came out many years after Jurassic Park, which makes The Scorpion King, who more closely resembles a lobster, look mcuh worse by comparison.
Having said that, Brendan Fraser reveals that the team responsible for creating The Scorpion King was well aware, at the time, that the creature wasn’t right. The actor relays a conversation he had with the team at the premiere of the film when they said as much…
When I was at the premiere, I met the guys who were doing the CGI. After I was like, ‘Hey, congratulations, great movie.’ They were like, ‘We needed more time.’
Digital effects artist being crunched for time is apparently a decades-long problem. We know that recent Marvel movies have suffered due to the artists not having enough time to make the effects look as good as they could be. It seems the same was true almost a quarter century ago.
And to be fair, The Scorpion King's look isn’t an easy effect to pull off. While the body of the monster is something that could potentially be done with more ease, creating a digital head that looks like a real person is something that CGI still has problems with today. They would have needed a long time in 2001 to do it right, which they clearly did not get.
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