This trilogy is the equivalent of the room-temperature popcorn at the bottom of the bag. Worth eating? Probably not. Will you anyway? Without question.
The Best: The Mummy Returns
The Worst: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
I’m a big fan of adventure stories, and with all the fun that Indiana Jones brought me when I watched all three of his films – there are only three – there aren’t any more contrary to popular belief – I figured I’d give the adventuring hero of the nineties a shot. And by 'a shot' I mean 'watching through the entire trilogy'. Here's what I thought of it.
The Mummy (**)
In which a supernatural entity has enough power to knock people out of the sky but not enough sense to kill them
Brendan Fraser plays Rick O’Connell, but I think he’s a significant step down from Harrison Ford’s Indy. While he certainly looks the part, he’s really lacking in the charisma department. There are a few lines that I think could have been funny if someone else had delivered them. A lot of the time Fraser is too dry and flat for me to have any real interest in what he’s saying. And the film only gets worse from there.
I’ll quickly say that I love the aesthetic and visual appeal of this film. The set design is fantastic, and the costumes and props are so much fun. It’s a good old-fashioned treasure-hunting story, and as our characters run from mummies down dark cobwebbed corridors with a torch in one hand and a pistol in the other, it’s hard not to enjoy the ride. To that end, it might’ve been better if this had been a silent film, because once the characters open their mouths, I started losing all respect for the picture. First of all, all of the characters are totally sexist. O’Connell plants an unwanted kiss on leading lady Evelyn within thirty seconds of meeting her, and then later allows her to try and return the favor while knowing she’s flat-out drunk. At one point while the two are having an argument over what is the best course of action, he picks her up, throws her over his shoulder, tosses her onto a bed, and then leaves the room and locks her in. Really empowering moment there, buddy. The bad guys are obviously sexist as well (there’s a few mysoginistic comments and a groping moment), and you could chalk that up to “well, they’re the bad guys, so it makes sense”. But when the good guys are acting the same way, it becomes apparent that this is a problem that runs deep within the makeup of the film.
The plot is also paper-thin. There’s multiple points where the ‘bad guys’ clearly have the advantage and are within inches of killing our heroes, but then they back off at the last second. When the Mummy brought down their plane with a sandstorm, why couldn’t he finish the job instead of deciding leaving them in the desert was good enough? Why didn’t the ‘bad’ archaeologists shoot our heroes from the get-go when they had the advantage of numbers, or at least tie them up? Why did the secret magician warrior guys decide to break off their attack when O’Connell held up a lit stick of dynamite? Sure, they would’ve died if they stayed, but he would’ve died too – and then the secret they were trying to protect would’ve been preserved. And why did the warrior boss Ardeth just let bygones be bygones at the end? These stupid archaeologists almost brought about the end of the world!
Was it fun? Totally. Was it thoroughly stupid? You bet. Am I gonna watch the next one? Oh yeah.
The Mummy Returns (*1/2)
In which there is significantly more kissing than mummies
I think it’s hard to say whether this sequel is better or worse than the original. On the one hand, I think Brendan Fraser had a much better role to play. Instead of a guy who makes dry, uninspired remarks and only cares about getting his hands on some treasure, he’s now a father and a husband trying to take care of those he loves. He certainly didn’t earn those titles in the last film, but here we are anyway. Seeing him actually show some emotion for the people he cares about makes him a bit more likable, and I just felt that in general his lines were delivered better. Rachel Weisz’s Evelyn is a bit more interesting too. She’s able to hold her own in combat, she starts having visions of the past which give her an advantage in terms of furthering the plot, and she works her butt off to keep her son safe on a level at least comparable to Mr. O’Connell. That stuff, I liked.
But on the other hand, this movie is still whole-heartedly stupid from beginning to end. It’s a big budget movie that spent all of its available dollars on special effects, action sequences, and set design – and maybe five dollars on its screenplay. Just like last time, we have bad guys who stop short of ensuring our hero’s death too soon. The explanation for the return of the Mummy was so brief that I just finished the movie and I can’t remember it. The Mummy’s mistress comes back which is cool, but wasn’t the whole point of the last movie that bringing her back would basically be the end of the world? And if this Army of Anubis is so powerful, how come a couple guys on horses can stand their ground against them? You’re telling me the armies of 1930s Earth couldn’t take these guys on? I have a hard time believing that. There are just so many plot holes, it’s hard to settle on just one that I’m most annoyed with.
I’ve heard about many people criticizing the animation of Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson in his CGI likeness coming up as The Scorpion King (which, by the way, was a character that they made FIVE spin-off movies about. FIVE. Can you believe that? They made more movies about the SPIN-OFF character than they made of the original franchise. That’s like making 3 Batman movies and then making 5 movies about the Penguin because apparently that’s what the modern-day consumer really wants). Yes, the animation isn’t great, but for it’s time I think it’s forgivable. And in any case, you’ve got a guy with the body of a scorpion, and that’s pretty sweet.
I really think the only thing that makes this movie worthwhile in any sense is the amount of money they dumped into set design and action sequences. It’s still fun watching Brendan Fraser fight a giant scorpion man, or watching a massive battle between ancient Egyptian jackal-people and a mysterious warrior tribe. But what was with the tiny monkey-fighters in the jungle? And why was there so much kissing?! There was way too much kissing. We get it – you’re married. You don’t need to make out at the end of every fight scene because you’re glad your spouse survived. Just chill, for Pete’s sake.
Anyway, the visuals were super fun, but the story was garbage. Can’t wait to watch the next one!
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (*)
In which there are inexplicably mummies in China
There’s a big gap between The Mummy Returns and this flick – enough time for the O’Connell’s kid to turn into a man and for Evelyn to turn into a completely different actress. I read that part of the reason she couldn’t come back had to do with the fact that she had just had a baby, which I suppose is a reasonable excuse. I thought that I would hate this film the most out of the three because they had left Egypt behind for China. There are no mummies in China! But as it turned out, the fact that this film took place in China had nothing to do with why I didn’t go crazy for this flick. This is a classic Mummy movie – and by that I mean it’s full of the same old plot holes, paper-thin character arcs, overstuffed CGI shots and convoluted curse rules that we’ve come to expect from the other two episodes. Seriously, who comes up with the rules on how these curses work? It’s bonkers. You’ve got a guy who wants immortality, so he finds this lady who works at a library and asks her. She says she knows how to get it (but has honestly never tried before), and pulls out this secret book that has a secret key that opens a secret hatch – containing the secret of immortality. Why does this library have this just lying around? Why is she so unopposed to doing this if it’s seemingly never been done before? And then – get this – he gets her to turn him immortal, but she instead places a curse on him. At least, that’s what it looks like. Because although the curse sucks, he still seems immortal – so maybe she did both. But why give him a curse that makes him undying? Why not just kill the guy?!
So yeah, there’s a lot of weird curse stuff (more so than usual) in this one. The rules of the curses come out so fast that it’s hard to keep up. But hey, if you weren’t interested in curses, you wouldn’t be watching this thing in the first place. Curses aside, the special effects are fun as always. There’s lots of undead ghost-zombie things (really not sure how to best classify them) for our heroes to slice up, shoot at, or blow up. We get some Abominable Snowmen for a few minutes – without any formal intro or outro, mind you. They just show up all of a sudden, help out for a bit, and then disappear. Like, what? You can’t just pull in a YETI and then act like it’s no big deal! Explain yourself! And it seems like they understand English! WHAT? It’s hard to believe, but I really expected more from this franchise.
For all that’s wrong with this film, I think it only sucked about as much as the other two. I definitely don’t think it’s any better than the others, but I also don’t think it’s much worse. It’s cheap, empty thrill – nothing more and nothing less. Thanks for the memories, Rick O’Connell.
This post was originally published on February 20th, 2020.