By Chlo Hickson
You must not read from the book!
Today I’m celebrating The Mummy‘s 25th anniversary and was lucky enough to see it in the cinema for the occasion.
Firstly, I’m going to look at the origins of this re-telling before diving into my thoughts.
The Mummy was going to be a loose remake of the 1932 movie starring Boris Karloff, the remake even began with a modest £10 million and leaned towards horror with George A Romero directing with a story more like the terminator. It stayed in development hell for the rest of the 80s & 90s with different stories and directors. Luckily by the mid 90’s a director called Stephen Sommers approached Universal with the idea to make The Mummy as an ‘India Jones’ type of movie and to update the original film, which he was a fan of, for modern audiences.
As it’s something to do with Ancient Egypt I love this movie – even though it’s historically inaccurate, I don’t know if that’s to do with the knowledge they had in 1999 or if they were just focusing on making a good movie, but I’ll be discussing about this more later.
I think The Mummy is the type of movie that reminds us why we love movies, and these kind of movies don’t get made anymore. CGI was used sparingly and for a movie that’s about action and adventure that’s pretty unique, all this adds up to an experience that feels grounded but gives us spectacle when it needs too. For a 25 year old movie the CGI in this film still holds up, there are certain things that don’t but for the most part it definitely works!
When it comes to the casting and the tone that they bring to this film I think they captured something special honestly. You’ve got Rachel Weisz and Brendon Fraser who are the leads in this film, but I don’t think this movie would’ve been what it is without Jonathan played by John Hannah. He absolutely defines the quirky sidekick trope and makes it his own.
You also get a well rounded villain in this movie with Arnold Vosloo’s Imhotep. I mean he’s literally willing to go through hell and back just to be with the woman he loves. It’s not the normal bad guy backstory and I think it adds a strong sense of purpose and makes him an intimidating bad guy because love can make you do crazy things with no regard for the cost and that can be scary when you’re going against it.
The action not only holds up to the adventure films but adds its own spin to it which makes itself unique. This is done by how Sommers handles the supernatural elements of the story, normally the supernatural element is in the movie with our main characters having no way to fight against it which is done to make the villain seem more powerful, however this type of story gives the characters nothing to do until one of them gets given god-like powers to defeat the baddie, which honestly sucks – The Mummy 2017 I’m looking at you. This version of The Mummy just gives our heroes swords, guns, and dynamite to use against these threats and it’s a lot of fun.
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I think Evie is one of the best heroes we’ve had in a movie like this. She’s a perfect mixture of being brilliant in her abilities but also capable of messing up with an active role in the plot, with her motivations moving the events of the story. In an adventure movie a woman is expected to be the one rolling their eyes and taking things seriously, so I applaud The Mummy for allowing her to be a more eccentric foil for a more serious hero, without making her a punch line. They can both be funny and competent, but what about Rick?
Rick is an affectionate parody of an adventure hero, and the film isn’t afraid to poke fun at his attitudes while also calling attention to his virtues. His outdated behaviour is criticised by Evie and the movie does well to show us that we need her brains as well as his brawn to save the day. The two characters are presented as equals and they do feel like a perfect match. He brings everything to this movie from comedic timing to action charisma and romantic lead charm.
I’m giving Kevin J O’Connor’s Beni my special mention as he is one of my favourite and most memorable villain sidekicks in a movie.
We have monstrous mummies, flying locusts, man eating beatles and the ten plagues of Egypt.
Even though some people criticise it now, I think the special effects are brilliant – with only a couple of things that have dated – and they were visually rewarding and complimented the story well.
How Vosloo dealt with these should be acknowledged. He must have had to imagine quite a bit of what he was interacting with to pull it off, but he does it excellently. His resurrection scenes are both spine chilling and visually stunning, capturing the essence of classic horror while embracing (at the time) modern technology.
The idea of having the mummy (no pun intended) be faster is more terrifying than what they would’ve had in older movies as he wouldn’t stop coming after his victims in such a horrific way is a great idea.
To do a call back to the older mummy movies they had the other mummies – Imhotep’s priest – be stunt people in costume, some of them were CGI obviously or had something animatronic attached to them, but the majority of them are guys in ‘bandages’. These mummies were also there to provide some comic relief to the film, so they could keep Imhotep an intimidating threat.
The soldier mummies were the same, though I believe they were mainly CGI because of the fight scene and to make them even more of a threat than the priest mummies.
I’d actually compare this movie to An American Werewolf in London because they both have a scare factor yet they both don’t take themselves too seriously, injecting moments of levity into intense situations.
The comedy isn’t just limited to wise cracking jokes and quick-witted banter, almost every scene is riddled with small but effective visual gags that keeps the film light. As the film gets more ‘spooky’ the humour increases, and once Imhotep has been brought back from the dead it’s in full effect.
The humour in this movie is great with both O’Connor and Hannah being fantastic comedy sidekick characters that manage to actually be funny. Hannah’s one liners are bang on and Fraser has a fantastic sense of timing, Weisz’s reactions to the events around her are also brilliant.
The Mummy uses its characters and plot points to unearth a unique perspective on morality, consequence and karma. The themes might be hidden behind its fun adventure, but they are front and centre, three different characters say it at different points of the movie.
I may have use for you, and the rewards will be great.
You’re going to get yours Beni! You hear me?
You know nasty little fellows such as yourself always get their comeuppance.
All these scenes in the movie have one thing outside the idea of karma, they are all in reference to Beni. Imhotep’s sidekick and the ex-friend of Rick’s. I think he’s our theme of karma as if you engage in enough bad activity eventually something you do will come back at you. From his introduction of running from a battle and shutting Rick out of the temple when he was being chased by soldiers with guns to helping Imhotep capture Evelyn to bring back Ankhsenamun. Beni was in it for himself, constantly trying to save his own skin.
His character arc follows a simple karma structure. Beni does bad things; Beni gets eaten alive by scarab beetles.
He made a lot of bad decisions that made it so one of them would catch up to him. A simple and straight forward example of karma.
Jerry Goldsmith gives us a very creepy and atmospheric score which compliments the on-screen action, enhancing the cinematic experience.
Like I mentioned, as I love Ancient Egypt there were a few things that stuck out to me while watching this movie and though I’m no Egyptologist, I’m going to break them down:
Before I actually start correcting the inaccuracies, I recently watched an archaeologist react to The Mummy and in response to the scene where Evie is translating Imhotep’s sarcophagus – Evie says ‘The One Who must not be named’ – apparently it actually says ‘The one without a name’ which I thought was interesting for two reasons. One is obviously the people behind the scenes actually took the time to write it properly in Egyptian or Arabic – I’m not entirely sure what she said it was now sorry – and the second is that the Ancient Egyptians actually believed by destroying or changing the name into a curse it was the best way to deny someone’s immortality to the Afterlife.
Starting on what I noticed, I’ll talk about the pyramids. There are no pyramids in Thebes as they are tombs so they wouldn’t be located at the centre of the city. All the ‘death stuff’ such as the valley of the Kings and Valley of the Queens is located on the west bank of the Nile. You wouldn’t be living near them at all. Seti the 1st ruled after Akenaten and was the dad of the famous Ramses II, he was actually overshadowed by his son so it’s cool to see him get some recognition in The Mummy. There were probably several Imhoteps but the person that is usually referenced in Egyptian media is the guy who invented the pyramids, he was chancellor to the 3rd dynasty pharaoh Djoser and was the architect for the king’s pyramid located in Saqqara necropolis. Anaksanamun wasn’t Seti’s mistress or in love with Imhotep, she was an 18th dynasty queen. She was the daughter of Akenaten and was the half-sister/wife of Tutankhamen. So, this movie takes three very well-known Ancient Egyptian figures from different points in time and puts them together to make this film.
I love the name of Hamunaptra and am very interested to know how they came up with it, it just sounds great. But interestingly they are actually facing the wrong way, I’ll elaborate. When they are looking for it, they are facing the sun, the sun rises in the east and what the Egyptian’s believed is that the sky goddness Nut gives birth to the sun in the east so it rises in the east which means the land of the living is in the east. The sun sets in the west which means the land of the dead is in the west. Hamunaptra is supposed to be the city of the dead, so it should’ve been in the west. They shouldn’t have been looking east to see the sun rising to show you the way to the city of the dead, it doesn’t work.
They had four canopic jars. They all represent the four sons of Horus so there’s Hapy the baboon who has the lungs, there’s Duamutef the jackal that has the stomach, the human Imsety has the liver and finally the one with the most confusing name Qebehsenuef that holds the intestines and he’s a falcon. The lion headed one is fictional and is probably what they say the heart goes in as the ancient Egyptians didn’t actually remove your heart as for them your heart and your mind were connected, it was your intelligence and emotion. You needed your heart to go to the weighing of the heart ceremony where you weighed your heart against a feather to see how good you were in life to see if you can go to the afterlife. So, it’s very important.
The Magi are interesting as I only learnt about this when I was researching for a book I’m writing, they are actually real which is pretty cool. They served as mercenaries for ancient Egypt and in the 18th dynasty the Magi were an elite police force, they were well known for protecting the royal temples in Thebes. Nobody knows what happened to them after the 20th dynasty.
The last thing I’m going to correct them on – there’s a few more inaccuracies but I’m just going to leave it with this, as this is what started it all, thanks Evie – is the book of the dead would’ve been a scroll or a codex, it would’ve been a papyrus scroll or in some culture’s animal hides. The book of Amun-Ra is also completely fictional, though I do love the design of both books.
I haven’t got much to put into my negative side, I wouldn’t even call the inaccuracies negative as they only stood out to me, and I’m sure others as well, because we’re fascinated in Ancient Egypt so things like that make them stand out. Something I will add onto this list is the scarabs. Even though I’m adding them to my criticism list, the scarabs are seriously nightmare fuel. But seriously … How do the scarabs go from eating people slowly to devouring them in seconds? Maybe that one guy looked tastier than Imhotep, I honestly don’t know. Disregarding the inaccuracies this film has elements of action, adventure, comedy, fantasy, mythology and horror. Seriously how many movies can pull all that off? And do it well! It pulls you in from start to finish. It has perfect pacing, well fleshed out characters and high stakes. They truly don’t make them like they used to. Now a days everything’s done in CGI, pretty much nothing is practical anymore. It honestly has something for everyone.
It remains a beloved adventure film that has stood the test of time, making it a must watch. I genuinely believe The Mummy is the ultimate movie. I’d recommend it any day.
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