There is nothing new under the sun — not even that sentiment, which first originated in some old book called The Bible and has since wormed its way into modern vernacular as an efficient way to express a kind of weary cynicism about the repetition of life. It’s easy to see how this phrase could be distressingly applied to the Hollywood machine, full of reboots and sequels and bald-faced pastiches. My counter-argument would be that “nothing new under the sun” gives creators freedom — if everything’s already been done, why not have fun doing it?
The Mummy, aStephen Sommersaction-adventure-horror blockbuster from 1999, is an obvious melange of influences. Most bluntly, it’s a take on Universal Pictures’The Mummyseries of films from the 1930s and ’40s, and a general update of that studio’s classic, Gothic horror films (many of which are adaptations of Gothic horror novels and stories before them). But the charming, fleet, and wholly entertaining picture also blends elements of classic, romance-tinged adventure cinema —Indiana Jones,Romancing the Stone,The African Queen, early film serials — and contemporary, family-tinged action-adventure cinema —Jumanji,Hook,Men in Black, andJurassic Park. All of this blended together yielded a film that felt timeless yet timely, post-modern yet classical, faithful to adults looking for romance and horror while never alienating kids looking for fun set pieces and silliness.The Mummy’s reputation has only increased in the years since release, even culminating in that most honored of contemporary pop culture status:A Super Yaki tribute.
Since that film’s release, Hollywood has tried to re-shine the sun onThe Mummyand recapture its lightning-in-a-bottle success in varying ways, including two official sequels extending the continuity, a spinoff extending the unvierse, and a 2017 reboot that tried to start its own, new cinematic universe. It’s also tried to make newMummy-esque movies, attempting to blend that film’s ingredients of adventure, action, horror, romance, comedy, and classical panache into something new yet old. WithJungle Cruisethe latest film attempting to rekindle this highly specific genre, we thought it interesting to examine 12 of the mostMummy-feeling attempts since it changed cinema in 1999.
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In many central ways a thorough embodiment of the"DreamWorks Smirk,“The Road to El Doradocasts two con artists, Miguel and Tulio (Kenneth BranaghandKevin Klinehaving a ton of fun), on an accidental journey toward the mythical-but-surprisingly-real land of El Dorado, a city of gold and riches. Plus, thanks to some farcical misunderstandings, our wisecracking, eternally smirking leads are viewed by this city’s people as gods coming down from the spiritual realm to fulfill prophecies. Hijinks, treasure-seeking, lesson-learning, and an oft-problematic relationship between “colonizers” and “colonized” ensues; sometimes the film wants to satirize the idea that these simple villagers could be bamboozled so easily, sometimes it wants to play that regressive trope straight (this winds up being a pervasive problem in many of these kinds of films).
And speaking of problematic: The jocular tone of the picture, especially when oriented around our bumbling, maverick heroes and their continuum of “greed vs. altruism,” often plays to its benefit, giving theMummyadjacent adventure picture a welcome sense of lightness and spontaneity (at one point Miguel literally stifles laughter, which feels like a very real reaction from Branagh in the booth that was animated in) even as its narrative gets curiously stuck in the middle section. But the budding “enemies-turned-to-reluctant-allies-turned-to-lovers” romantic arc feels garish in its explicit male gaze.Rosie Perezplays Chel, the Mesoamerican object of our heroes' affections, and she is animated with a gaudy, audacious sexualization. Chel proves herself to be a capable, crafty figure — she’s immediately onto the con artists' plan and wants in — but the top-down choices about her, from the way she moves to the way she’s lusted after, reveal a shallow, icky viewpoint of women from many key creative members. While it’s admittedly nice to see her and one of our heroes wind up together in a semi-organic matter, this romance is a far cry from the sparkling, equal-footing relationship between Rick (Brendan Fraser) and Evelyn (Rachel Weisz), our heroes fromThe Mummy.
Finally, I’m just gonna say it:“Forever May Not Be Long Enough"fromThe Mummy Returnsis better than any of the phoned-in-feelingElton JohnandTim RiceEl Doradotunes.
The Mummy Returns
Speaking ofThe Mummy Returns and He Brought a Dope Nu-Metal Tune With Him: This 2001 sequel brings back just about every member of the key creative players, including Sommers, Fraser, and Weisz, for an even bigger, more globe-trotting feeling adventure that scratches just about every itch you had lingering from the first one. Rick and Evelyn now have a child named Alex (Freddie Boath), who shares his mother’s precociousness and his father’s stubbornness, and gives the younger audience a more explicit avatar to latch onto (your mileage may vary, but I find him to be quite the endearing, and not annoying, young hero, especially in his interplay withJohn Hannahas his uncle andAdewale Akinnuoye-Agbajeas the henchman assigned to watch him). Evelyn has a richer interior journey to go on, involving a prophecy of reincarnation and/or lineage that gives Weisz lots of dope, physical action to do (especially a kinetically staged flashback fight scene between her andPatricia Velásquez). And the film’s front half broadens the scope of the action away from Egypt, including a crackling banter-filled fight scene in the O’Connell’s home and a thrilling London double-decker bus chase involving a bunch of skeletal mummies.The Mummy Returns, by design, feels less tightly constructed and surprising than the first film, but for a round two of crowd-pleasing fun with characters you love, it’s hard to beat.
The Scorpion King
The Mummy Returnsfeatured the introduction ofDwayne Johnsonas Mathayus, the Scorpion King, who enters a vicious deal with Anubis for power in exchange for eternal damnation. This gave the picture higher physical stakes in the climactic battle — stakes with pretty rough CGI, but still — and opened the backdoor for the MCU. That is to say, the Mummy Cinematic Universe.
The Scorpion King, released one year afterThe Mummy Returns, puts Johnson on a solo, originating adventure as our titular king. And while the spinoff was at least lucrative enough to kickstart a direct-to-video sub-franchise, it wascritically drubbed, and basically slammed the door on any future Sommers-authoredMummy-verses (Sommers is credited as a writer and producer on this one).
It’s a pity, that, because on modern watch,The Scorpion Kingis a refreshingly old-school bout of action-adventure, a sturdy piece of craft that delivers thrills from a character-driven place, and a welcomely self-contained story of human decisions affecting each other; from a nuts-and-bolts perspective, it might even play tighter than the bigger-scaledMummy Returns. With Sommers not in the director’s chair,Chuck Russell(Eraser) helms this one, replacing the originalMummy’s sense of timeless classicism with muscly machismo, one-liners, ostentatious camerawork, and a crunchy-guitar flavored score. Johnson, therefore, has to make up with the “dated on arrival” pulp by committing hard with and against the picture’s current of cheese, centering it with a welcome balance of stoicism and fun. Most welcomely, the film’s female lead, played well byKelly Hu, asserts herself as an intriguing sorcerer, a sensible and sparks-inducing romantic partner for Johnson, and a thrilling foil against our primary villain, played subtly bySteven Brand. These two characters motivate each other’s arcs in satisfying ways that come close to replicating the magic of the firstMummy, while the rest of the film’s thrills feel likeThe Mummyon Mountain Dew. And that ain’t a bad thing.
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
WhilePirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearlis an adaptation of a separate, pre-existing piece of intellectual property, that property happens to be a theme park ride. There are a ton of vibes in that theme park ride, vibes that directorGore Verbinskitranslates very well. But not a ton of story or narrative to mine from. So where do you go?
Obviously, the 2003 swashbuckler looks at the genre of pirate storytelling and folklore as a primary source of influence, while also cribbing from classic swords-and-scoundrels films likeThe Adventures of Robin Hood,The Mark of Zorro, andThe Princess Bride. But in its imaginatively gruesome but family-friendly fusion of decomposing body horror, its budding-but-reluctant romance betweenKeira KnightleyandOrlando Bloom, and its modernized takes on set pieces and comedic tones,Black Pearlfeels an awful lot like a voyage in the wake ofThe Mummy. However — and this is particularly strange given the Disney of it all —Black Pearlfeels looser, weirder, and wilder thanThe Mummywhile still retaining that film’s whip-smart sense of pacing and stakes.The Mummyis a playful movie, to be sure, but its playfulness feels embedded within the confines of its genre; Fraser, Weisz, and Hannah’s use of comic relief don’t poke at the edges of the frame so much as pleasurably represent the best of the frame.Black Pearl, most efficiently encapsulated byJohnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow, feels in its self-aware sense of humor like all of the comedy types and tropes represented inThe Mummysmooshed together alongside the grotesqueries of the CGI villains, and sprinkled with a chaotic dash ofBill Murray,Monty Python,Beetlejuice, andthe surrealist art movement. It plays like someone watchedThe Mummyand thought, “I can take the piss out of that,” but couldn’t help use the bones of a competent adventure film to make their points pop even more aggressively (the sequels forget this “competent adventure film” skeleton and lean hard into the chaotic surrealism of it all, to their detriment).
Van Helsing
Director Stephen Sommers found two massive back-to-back successes by updating a Universal monster movie with sweeping adventure, grand scale, and a sizzling enemies-to-lovers romance at its center. Naturally, his next move would be to doexactly that againbut with all the Universal monsters at the same time. The result wasVan Helsing, and it is a monster-sized turd next toThe Mummy, but man, it is trying. Everything about Van Helsing is trying its absolute hardest, and that starts at the top withHugh Jackmanas the titular vampire hunter, who is ordered by the Vatican to destroy the biggest bloodsucker of them all, Count Dracula (Richard Roxburgh, also dialed up to 12). Jackman, as usual, throws every ounce of his jacked theater kid energy into this film, and it’s incredibly endearing even if it doesn’t quite work, despite all theMummyblueprint pieces being in place. You’ve gotDavid Wenhamas Van Helsing’s assistant, a sort of hybrid Jonathan/Beni hybrid comic relief. The script from Sommers himself aims to turn the simple monster lore into a heightened melodrama wherein a vampire can only be killed by a werewolf but also Frankenstein’s monster (Shuler Hensley, dialed to around 15) is a vital part of the process. And then there’s the simmering will-they/won’t-they between Jackman andKate Beckinsaleas Anna Valerious, last descendant of a family sworn to kill Dracula. The chemistry there couldn’t dream of touching Rick O’Connell and Evelyn Carnahan but, at one point, Van Helsing and Anna do dramatically swing over a masquerade ball full of vampires, and if there isn’t a hint ofThe Mummyin that series of words, there isn’t a hint ofThe Mummyanywhere.-Vinnie Mancuso
National Treasure
The MummyandNational Treasureare both fantastic adventure films born from an idea that shouldn’t have worked at all. Much like nobody was clambering for a big-budget, achingly horny update of a 1932Boris Karloffmonster movie, not many people thought the next great adventure film should center around…Nicolas Cage. But both films speak to the power of unorthodox casting and confidence in your pitch. Much like the way the success of theMummy’s aesthetic radiates outward from its central duo,National Treasureworks because of Nicolas Cage and his oddball energy. A standard straight-faced action hero delivering the line “I’m going to steal the Declaration of Independence” would unravel the movie; here, you buy into the tongue-in-cheek energy of it all, that same exact wink that madeThe Mummy,Romancing the Stone, andRaiders of the Lost Arkwork before it.
It’s worth noting that The Mummy and National Treasure also produced sequels of the “kind of different, but mostly the same!” variety that are both actually pretty dang fun, but also highlight the absolute lightning-in-a-bottle miracle quality of the first films (Meanwhile,National Treasure 3hasbeen a question mark for years now, and we do not speak ofThe Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor).-Vinnie Mancuso
The Librarian: Quest for the Spear
In 2004, writerDavid Titcher, directorPeter Winther, and starNoah Wyletried something audacious: To make a big-budget, treasure-hunting adventure film within the low-budget basic cable dredges of TNT. Thus,The Librarian: Quest for the Spearwas born — and on contemporary viewing, if you put yourself in the right mindset, you will have a lot of fun with this curious little picture.
First, perhaps obviously, the gripping sheen of the big-budgetMummyvisual effects simply cannot be replicated on this film’s budget, resulting in some garish compositing, questionably quick “hide the seams” edits, and downright laughable attempts at action set pieces. The film also has some issues with tone; whileThe Mummyblends together its straighter action-adventure impulses with its sillier comedic attitudes with immersion and totality,The Librarianlurches back and forth between tones based on nothing other than the whim of the scene.Olympia Dukakisplays it like a broad comedy,Kyle MacLachlanplays it like an operatic thriller, and Wyle plays it differently from scene to scene, moment to moment, jaggedly articulating broad comedy right before romantic heroism, finding pockets of success before getting bored and wearing a new pair of pants.
However,Quest for the Spearis sneakily one of the more progressive flicks on this list, especially in its study of gender roles. The trope for these kinds of movies, a tropeThe Mummyis more than willing to play hard into, is to position its male lead as a bumbling-but-charming shoot first ask questions later type, and its female lead as a severe-but-repressed book smart type. Both parties have to learn the strengths of each other’s ways while bickering — and falling in love — the whole time. Here, these roles are simply, cleanly, and neatly flipped. Wyle, our titular Librarian, has gotten over 20 college degrees without an ounce of real-world experience; he’s about as pure an example of the book smart adventure hero as you’ll ever see. ButSonya Walger, our female lead, grabs the picture with confident action heroism, readily admitting that she may not possess any of Wyle’s arcane knowledge, but she does have strength and physical acumen to spare (as she phrases it literally to Wyle, “Me brawn, you brain”). In this simple gender reversal,Quest for the Spearfinds tons of refreshing fun and intrigue, and gives the romance between the two a new kind of spark that plays with genuine affection and cleverness. Movies can get away with spectacle over character; on TV, when budgetary limitations can only give you so much spectacle, your charactersneedto work. Here, we see that idea taken to its limits, and we have some honest-to-goodness fun along the way (and if you digQuest for the Spear, there are two otherLibrarianmovies to check out, followed by a four-season TV spinoff).
Broadly speaking, the mid-2000s brought a lot of performative darkness and edginess into mainstream cinema. Emboldened and disillusioned by 9/11, a virulently criticized president, and an unprecedently media-saturated war, we watched comedies shift into male sex fantasies developed for the “unrated DVD” market,horrors shift into “torture porn,“and actioners shift into morally cloudy tone poems of sadness.
In 2005, we watchedBreck Eisnertryto fuse this particular brand of millennium-era existentialism into the light frothiness of aMummy-styled adventure. It was, in short, a failure.Saharais confusing, a nightmare of tonal extremes, a series of whiff after whiff without any sense of cause and effect.Penélope Cruzstars as a World Health Organization doctor investigating a deadly disease spreading across Mali amidst the backdrop of a vicious dictator attempting to ethnically cleanse his people, and a group of rich, white imperialists trying to maintain their financial interests while turning a blind eye to the horrors around them.
And then, in the middle of all this:Matthew McConaugheyis a rascally treasure-hunter!Steve ZahnandRainn Wilsonare his goofy, wisecracking cohorts! McConaughey regularly diffuses any inherent tension with one-liners, eyebrow waggles, and nonsensical banter with Zahn! And when the film tries to fuse these two threads together, it really,reallydoes not work!Saharais a jagged little pill of a film, all corners and disparities that bleed tastelessness.The Mummymay be a blend of influences including the cinema of its time, butSaharagoes to show how impressive a juggling act that level of seamless pastiche can be (by, just to be clear, dropping every single one of its balls, and one of its balls is a chainsaw on fire).
A bit more traditionally fairytale-esque in its approach to fantasy-adventure,Stardustis still one of the most swashbuckling, romantic, and all-around best spiritual successors toThe Mummyyou’ll find. Directed byMatthew Vaughnand adapted from the novella byNeil Gaiman, the 2007 film starsDaredevil’sCharlie Coxas Tristan Thorn, a young man from a small English village who makes his way into a fantastical kingdom just beyond the town limits and falls for a walking, talking fallen star (Claire Danes).
Beyond sharing genres, there are a lot of structural similarities betweenStardustandThe Mummy; the antagonistic-turned-true-love dynamic, vengeful spirits of the royally betrayed, and the relentless pursuit of a monster in need of a sacrifice. InStardust, it’s a trio of witches seeking eternal youth who feed on the hearts of fallen stars to stay forever young, led by screen iconMichelle Pfieffer, who relishes in her wicked role with the satisfied energy of a pedigree cat lapping at pure cream.Stardustalso has a key selling point thatThe Mummydoesn’t -Robert DeNiroas a sky pirate. Obviously, immediately, a must-watch. -Haleigh Foutch
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
Earlier, you will have noticed my colleague Vinnie Mancuso say “we do not speak ofThe Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.” I had never seen it. Now I have. Vinnie was right to warn us.
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperordoes not feature Weisz reprising her role as Evelyn. She left the project in pre-productiondue to dissatisfaction with the script. Weisz tried to warn us, and we were wrong to ignore her.
Maria Bellotakes over Evelyn for this threequel, unfortunately muting Weisz’s sparkly, irascible take on the character for a classier, more interior, and less wholly charismatic read on the part. Fraser’s reprisal of Rick feelsFlanderized; he’s broadened Rick out into a live-action cartoon character, seemingly ignoring what change and nuance he’s gone through the two previous films in favor of an easy, mugging joke or energetic action movement (though in his defense, Fraser also sells some of the sweatiest moments of “emotional connection” with surprisingly subtle work). Stephen Sommers is out as director, instead producing the work of originalThe Fast and the FuriousdirectorRob Cohen. Under Cohen’s eye,The Mummyfranchise becomes a cruder beast, a work less concerned with mining the classical pleasures of cinema’s greatest adventures than with trying to attract “today’s teenagers” with a harder, blunter visual style and a downright yucky, puerile obsession with sex (watching Bello ask winkingly, even flirtatiously about her teenage sonLuke Ford’s sex life is upsetting on many levels).
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperoris franchise betrayal — with one exception. The tale of ancient mythology, horror imagery, and big-bad inspiration concernsJet LiandMichelle Yeoh, obvious pros, and watching their storyline rendered with emotional commitment and crafty martial arts action provides an oasis among the rest of the film’s desert.
