The Mummy (1999 film)
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| The Mummy | |
|---|---|
 The Mummy promotional poster |
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| Directed by | Stephen Sommers |
| Produced by | Patricia Carr Sean Daniel James Jacks |
| Written by | Kevin Jarre (story) Lloyd Fonvielle (story) Stephen Sommers (script/story) |
| Starring | Brendan Fraser Rachel Weisz John Hannah Arnold Vosloo |
| Music by | Jerry Goldsmith |
| Cinematography | Adrian Biddle |
| Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
| Release date(s) | May 7, 1999 (USA) |
| Running time | 124 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $80,000,000 US (est.) |
| Followed by | The Mummy Returns |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
The Mummy is a film written and directed in 1999 by Stephen Sommers and starring Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz, with Arnold Vosloo as the reanimated mummy of the title. The movie features dialogues in ancient Egyptian language with the assistance of a professional Egyptologist.
It is a loose remake of The Mummy (1932), which starred Boris Karloff as the mummy.
The Mummy does not take place at the famed Giza pyramids where several Old Kingdom Egyptian kings (Egyptian monarchs were not yet called pharaohs) were buried. Instead most of the action takes place in the fictitious Hamunaptra — the "City of the Dead" that lies "deep into the desert" beyond Thebes.
In 2001 a sequel was made, entitled The Mummy Returns.
The movie was novelized by Max Allan Collins. Collins novelized the sequel as well.
Tagline: The sands will rise. The heavens will part. The power will be unleashed.
Contents |
[edit] Plot
The film begins in 1290 BC. The character who will become the mummy of the title is a traitorous high priest named Imhotep (Vosloo). He has an affair with the mistress of King Seti I, Anck-su-namun (named after the historical queen Ankhesenamun). In Thebes, when the king discovers the lovers, he is killed by both of them. Anck-su-namun then kills herself, intending for Imhotep to later resurrect her. (This event is played again in the sequel.)
After Anck-su-namun's internment, Imhotep breaks into the crypt and steals her corpse. He and his priests then flee through the night across the desert to Hamunaptra where they commence the resurrection ceremony. They are caught, however, by Seti's guards before the ritual can be completed. Anuk-su-namun's soul is thus sent back to the Underworld.
As punishment for this sacrilege, Imhotep's priests are mummified alive and Imhotep himself is forced to endure the curse of Hom Dai: Imhotep's tongue is cut out and he is buried alive, wrapped like a dead mummy, along with a swarm of flesh-eating scarabs. The horror of the ritual is that it grants immortality but not invulnerability, so that, unlike his priests, he is unable to die and must endure the agony of his wounds for all time. Imhotep is buried under high security, sealed away in a locked sarcophagus below the statue of the Egyptian funerary god Anubis, and kept under strict surveillance by the descendants of Seti's palace guards. If he were ever to be released, the powers that made him immortal would allow him to unleash a wave of destruction and death.
Three thousand years later (actually 3,213 years), in 1923, Richard "Rick" O'Connell (Fraser), an American serving in the French Foreign Legion, barely survives a battle at the ruins of Hamunaptra, his Arab enemies fleeing from the cursed statue of Anubis.
Three years after this, Cairo librarian and aspiring Egyptologist Evelyn Carnahan (Weisz) and her bumbling brother Jonathan (Hannah) contact Rick while he is imprisoned and sentenced to be hanged. When he reveals that he knows the location of Hamunaptra, and the treasure of past pharaohs that it contains, Evelyn bargains for his life. He is then recruited into an expedition that quickly becomes a race against another group. This latter is composed of Americans, who are being led by Beni Gabor, an old army colleague of Rick's who also knows how to find Hamunaptra.
Both groups trying to reach Hamunaptra are attacked by members of a secret society, lead by Ardeth Bey (Oded Fehr), devoted to making sure the creature never awakens. However, both groups make it to the city nonetheless, where everyone excavates old artifacts in search for the Book of the Dead. While exploring the city they come across several traps, such as parastic beetles that are hidden in hollow golden beetles, and pressurized salt acid.
Evelyn "borrows" the book and reads a page of the Egyptian language. Imhotep is accidentally released by this and begins killing the Americans, due to the fact that they opened the box which played a part in the curse by holding the sacred canopic jars. Beni survives a meeting with Imhotep by pledging allegiance to him and helps Imhotep later track down the Americans. Imhotep eventually brings the Ten Plagues of Egypt and captures Evelyn, intending to use her to resurrect his long-dead lover, Anck-su-namun. Rick and Jonathan rescue Evelyn and thwart Imhotep resurrection attempt. Evelyn reads from the golden book of Amun-Ra, which takes the mummy's immortality, after which Rick kills his mortal body by impaling him in the chest.
As they are leaving Hamunaptra, Beni falls behind to plunder the treasures of the lost city and is trapped by a swarm of flesh-eating scarabs. The heroes ride off into the sunset on camels, as yet unaware that their saddlebags are packed with treasures Beni looted earlier.
[edit] Book of Amon-Ra
The book of Amon-Ra, also called The Book of the Living, is a fictional book seen in both "Mummy" films. It is made completely of gold and it "takes life away" — in the film it is used to make Imhotep mortal, apparently by sending his soul to the underworld. It was found in the base of the statue of Horus. During the collapse of Hamunaptra it was dropped and lost. It bears similarities to the non-fictional Book of the Dead and, in The Mummy Returns, is used to bring the dead back to the land of the living .
[edit] Cast
See also: Characters related to The Mummy (1999 film)
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Brendan Fraser | Richard 'Rick' O'Connell |
| Rachel Weisz | Evelyn Carnahan |
| John Hannah | Jonathan Carnahan |
| Arnold Vosloo | High Priest Imhotep |
| Kevin J. O'Connor | Beni Gabor |
| Oded Fehr | Ardeth Bey |
| Jonathan Hyde | Dr. Allen Chamberlain |
| Erick Avari | Dr. Terrence Bey |
| Bernard Fox | Captain Winston Havlock |
| Stephen Dunham | Mr. Henderson |
| Corey Johnson | Mr. Daniels |
| Tuc Watkins | Mr. Burns |
| Omid Djalili | Warden Gad Hassan |
| Aharon Ipalé | King Seti I |
| Patricia Velásquez | Anck-su-namun |
[edit] Origins
In 1992, producer James Jacks decided to update the original Mummy film for the 1990s. Universal Studios gave him the go-ahead but only if he kept the budget around $10 million. He brought horror filmmaker/writer Clive Barker on-board to direct. Barker’s vision was quite violent and gory with the story revolving around a man who runs a contemporary museum and turns out to be a cultist trying to reanimate mummies. After several meetings, Barker and Universal lost interest and parted company. Filmmaker George A. Romero was brought in but his vision was a zombie-style horror movie a la Night of the Living Dead and considered too scary by Jacks and the studio who wanted a more accessible picture. Joe Dante was the next choice and he increased the budget size but envisioned someone like Daniel Day-Lewis as a brooding Mummy. This version (co-written by John Sayles) came close to being made with some elements, like the flesh-eating scarabs, making it to the final product. However, at that point, the studio wanted a film with a budget of $15 million and nixed Dante’s version.
Then, writer/director Stephen Sommers called Jacks in 1997 with his vision of a Raiders of the Lost Ark-style action/adventure film. He had wanted to make a Mummy film since 1993 but other writers or directors were always attached. Finally, he had gotten his window of opportunity and pitched his idea to the studio with an 18-page treatment. Universal liked this idea so much that they green-lit the movie and increased the budget from $15 million to $80 million.
[edit] Egyptian Language
The dialogues in Ancient Egyptian in both The Mummy and its sequel, The Mummy Returns, were "reconstructed" by the Egyptologist Stuart Tyson Smith in order to make the language more speakable (in hieroglyphics vowels are not written so it is unknown how the language was pronouced). The following examples show the "reconstructed" Egyptian along with the standard computer transliteration:
- "yah tamita ten" for jx Tmst tn "Who has touched (lit. besmeard) you"
- "nibi in tar sit di rinput in silaku" for "nb.i n tr st di rnpt n srq" "my lord, it is the year of the scorpion"
- "ya-tu-hai!" for "ii-tw-xai" "Rise up! (lit. "come you, appear!")
[edit] Reaction
Roger Ebert a film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times said that
"There is hardly a thing I can say in its favor, except that I was cheered by nearly every minute of it. I cannot argue for the script, the direction, the acting or even the mummy, but I can say that I was not bored and sometimes I was unreasonably pleased." [1]
Jess Cagle of Entertainment Weekly said that
"And it should be said that no one handles this kind of stuff with more aplomb than Fraser. Handsome in a funny way, swaggering in a goofy way, Fraser gooses the movie with his deft comic timing."[2]
Stephen Holden from The New York Times wrote,
"This version of The Mummy has no pretenses to be anything other than a gaudy comic video game splashed onto the screen. Think Raiders of the Lost Ark with cartoon characters, no coherent story line and lavish but cheesy special effects. Think Night of the Living Dead stripped of genuine horror and restaged as an Egyptian-theme Halloween pageant. Think Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy grafted onto a Bing Crosby-Bob Hope road picture (The Road to Hamunaptra?) and pumped up into an epic-size genre spoof."[3]
The Mummy holds a 52 percent "fresh" rating at Rotten Tomatoes and a 6.6 rating at the Internet Movie Database with 48,164 votes.
[edit] Box office
On its opening weekend, the film grossed a total of $43,369,635 in 3,210 theaters. As of November 29, 2006, the film has grossed a total of $415,885,488 worldwide (Domestic: $155,385,488; Foreign: $260,500,000).[4]
[edit] Trivia
- "Ardeth Bey," the name of Oded Fehr's character, is a reference to "Ardath Bey," the name used by the reanimated mummy in the 1932 original. Ardath Bey is an anagram of "Death by Ra." Bey's name is never mentioned in the movie.
- In the original release of The Mummy in England, around five to ten seconds of footage was cut during the hanging scene in the Egyptian prison, including a single line from the prison warden. The cut takes away any footage of Brendan Fraser actually hanging by his neck. This was then added back into the Ultimate Edition.
- Egyptologist Stuart Tyson Smith, who created the reconstructed ancient Egyptian language for some of the early dialogue in the film, also did similar work for the movie Stargate.
- Despite the movie's title, the main villain Imhotep is not a true mummy. Whilst his priests are mummified alive, Imhotep is not, as mummification (including the removal of internal organs) would kill the subject, and the point of his punishment is that he remain alive and be slowly eaten by scarabs. He was, however; wrapped in cloth as a mummy traditionally would be.
- The date of 1290 BCE, used at the beginning of the film, isn't the historical Seti's death year but, rather, the start of his reign. He died in 1279. The scriptwriters may have simply forgotten or been unaware that BCE dates run in reverse order. This could simply be a showing of alternate realities, since it is a fictional film and not, in any way, considered historically accurate.
- The impression given is that Anck-su-namun is Seti's one and only mistress who, because she is so special, no one but he may touch her. But in ancient Egypt a king or pharoah would have had a host of concubines, not to mention wives. Or he would not, as was his preference.
- Despite depictions in the movie, the scarab beetle worshipped in ancient Egypt wasn't a flesh eater. The scarab is believed to be a beetle similar to (if not the same as) the dung beetle common to Egypt and other parts of Africa.
- Minor changes were made from the original script from Stephen Sommers. Evelyn Carnahan replaces Evelyn Carnavon. And the beginning narration, originally to be spoken by Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo) instead of Ardeth Bey (Oded Fehr), was shifted to the latter when it was realized that the former wouldn't be able to speak English.
[edit] Movie Sequels And Spin-Off
[edit] The Mummy Returns
A Sequel entitled The Mummy Returns was released in 2001.
[edit] The Scorpion King
A spin-off featuring The Scorpion King, a character from The Mummy Returns, was released in 2002.
[edit] The Mummy 3
Though not officially announced, it is believed that a third Mummy movie is currently planned, as Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, and Stephen Sommers have all hinted at it. Sources say that it will not be called "Mummy 3" but a new sequel will be coming soon. A script was written in which the mummy would now be Chinese, and the main characters (Evelyn and Rick O'Connell) would no longer be the main stars, but this story is disliked by fans. [1] [2][3]
[edit] Spinoffs
There is also a spin-off television series, The Mummy: The Animated Series (2001), broadcast on The WB network in the United States and BBC1 and the CBBC channel in Britain. English Computer games developers Rebellion created a spin-off game for Universal Studios Interactive division for the PC, PlayStation and Dreamcast. Various platform versions were released throughout 1999 and 2000.
The movie property was also spun-off into successful, multi-million dollar attractions at Universal Studios Orlando and Universal Studios Hollywood. The Revenge of the Mummy: The Ride attractions at both parks are high speed rollercoasters with dark ride elements, however both are very distinct in execution due to the spacial limitations. The Hollywood ride was constructed in the former E.T. Adventure building, while the Florida version had a much larger stage with the space formerly used by the KONGfrontation attraction, in which guests encountered King Kong. Universal Studios Hollywood also converted its famous "rotating ice tunnel" building — a longtime feature on the studio tour that was originally created for an episode of The Six Million Dollar Man — into a Mummy-themed diversion.
[edit] External links
- Official site
- The Mummy at the Internet Movie Database
- The Mummy at Rotten Tomatoes
- The Mummy at Metacritic
- The Mummy at Box Office Mojo
- The Mummy at James M. Deem's Mummy Tombs site.
- Imhotep's Chamber
- Hamunaptra, City of The Dead
- Keith Short - Film Sculptor Images of set pieces created for this film
- The Mummy & The Mummy Returns Fanlisting
Categories: 1999 films | Action films | Adventure films | American films | Ancient Egypt in fiction | Fantasy films | Fictional mummies | Film remakes | Films directed by Stephen Sommers | Horror films | Monster movies | Romantic period films | Thriller films | Universal Pictures films | Fictional librarians | Films shot in Morocco
