Despite less successful sequels, and an even less successful follow-up/reboot starring Tom Cruise in 2017, the 1999 iteration of The Mummy remains one of the best action adventure movies of all time, bringing together solid action sequences, great on-screen chemistry, and just enough magic and stylisation to make it believable.
The original movie, The Mummy (1932), was a key part of the Universal Monster franchise and focussed on an ancient Egyptian priest named Imhotep (Boris Karloff) being inadvertently raised from the dead. In his own time, Imhotep had been mummified whilst still alive, as a punishment for attempting to resurrect his dead lover, Princess Ank-es-en-Amon.
Because he was mummified alive, he was in prime condition to be brought back to life thousands of years later. A decade after his resurrection Imhotep, now masquerading as a regular human known as Ardith Bey, orchestrates the retrieval of Ank-es-en-Amon’s body, only to then meet a woman called Helen Grosvenor (Zita Johann, who also plays Ank-es-en-Amon). Imhotep believes Helen is the reincarnated form of his dead lover.
He attempts to kill Helen, mummify her and then resurrect her (as Ank-es-en-Amon), but is thwarted and returned to the land of the dead.
Following the original movie, several sequels followed. The sequels didn’t focus on Imhotep returning again and again (like the various Dracula films had). They instead followed a Mummy named Kharis (initially played by Tom Tyler, and the Lon Chaney Jr. in the following three movies).
The Mummy’s Hand (1940), the first of these sequels, followed a pretty similar plot, but the resulting movies, The Mummy’s Tomb, The Mummy’s Ghost, and The Mummy’s Curse, each took more of an original approach (albeit not the most creative of titles).
Additionally, Hammer Film Productions also made a series of Mummy films, the first of which starred Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, that were based on similar ideas and themes, but were wholly unconnected to the official Universal movies.
But in 1999 Universal relaunched their own Mummy franchise with a Stephen Sommers helmed reboot that was loosely based on the original Mummy movie, and was again set during the 1920’s.
The movie itself had gone through numerous stages of development as well as a number of directors, such as Clive Barker, Joe Dante (who wanted Daniel Day-Lewis as the titular Mummy), and George A. Romero, each of which had vastly different visions of how the reboot should play out. Summers pitched the movie as an Indiana Jones-type adventure, with an action hero put forward to battle against the Mummy.
What Sommers’ eventually produced was pretty much exactly what he had promised; an action-filled, throwback adventure, that combined everything the original Mummy movie was, with a more modern movie style and feel. The 1999 version was great for several reasons, ranging from what it took from the originals (and what it reinvented), as well as the groundbreaking VFX, and its cast.
The mummy was once again the priest Imhotep, who had been cursed and buried alive for his traitorous acts in loving the Pharos’s mistress Anck-Su-Namun (who no other man was allowed to touch, looking back – Imhotep maybe wasn’t so bad of a guy… other than the murder…). This crime, and the resulting curse, provided the basis for his return and his supernatural powers thousands of years later.
The movie took one of the best features of the original, its time setting, and managed to provide a fun throwback adventure which romanticised the 1920s and the simplicity of a time without modern technology or weapons.
Although the movie is filled with historical inaccuracies the stylisation and romanticised take on the 1920s, much like what we saw in the Indiana Jones, makes the supernatural curses, returning from the dead, and magically appearing cities almost believable.
The 1999 reboot cast was a great fit, and the stylistic change lent itself to being led by a more action-hero type than the previous movies. After the role of Rick O’Connell was offered to multiple famous leading men of the late 90s (such as Tom Cruise, and Brad Pitt) Brendan Fraser eventually won the role, Fraser brought with him a notion of self-aware fun that came off as the character understanding he was in an utterly unbelievable scenario, but that he was going to work his way through it, and hopefully get the girl, if he could manage (again like Indiana Jones).
Rachel Weisz’s Evie Carnahan, essentially a totally new addition to the series, brought an optimistic Librarian with high hopes of being a famous and successful archeologist. Evie is clumsy, and more often than not bumbles her way through scenarios, but is very intelligent and has great knowledge on all things ancient Egyptian.
The chemistry between the two leads is great from the start, and as a prospective couple Rick and Evie provide everything the love sub-plot in a swashbuckling adventure movie could hope for.
Arnold Vosloo’s Imhotep doesn’t have a whole lot to do other than look menacing and scare people (but he does that very well), and the other supporting characters such as John Hannah’s Jonathan, Evie’s even more useless older brother, Kevin J. O’Connor’s Beni, and Oded Fehr’s Ardith Bey, along with other supporting roles round out the movie to provide a great, light-hearted, and fun adventure overall.
After Universal heard Sommers’ original pitch they apparently raised the movies’ modest budget from around $15 million up to $80 million, allowing for much more scope, authenticity, and special effects.
Any director in Sommers’ position (especially in the late 90s) would go to Industrial Light & Magic, the company behind nearly every iconic movie (ever), that had a hand in shaping films such as Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Back to the Future, and Jurassic Park (as well as many, many others).
Through a combination of cutting-edge effects and motion capture work the idea behind the Mummy itself was to fully reinvent the look and feel of the character for new audiences, making him much scarier and more supernatural. The result was some groundbreaking effects that were pushed even further in the sequels.
During the late 1990s it was still relatively common practice to combine small sections of the newer CG effects (that were still very expensive to do), with primarily practical effects and stunts. By the time of the 2017 remake it was very much the other way around, even with a stunt enthusiast like Tom Cruise as the star. The style of the 1999 movie and its action sequences remains unique and looking back feels like something from a different era (and that’s not just because it’s set in the 1920s).
All in all the Mummy still stands out as an incredible time capsule of when it was made, right before the big boom in green screen blockbusters with a little too much CGI, the mummy delivers a fun over-the-top and yet tactile and tangible movie that thanks to its amazing effects, story and cast, holds up decades later. For more posts check out the rest of the site, and check out my videos on YouTube.
