The Mummy Returns (2001)
Directed by Stephen Sommers
Rick and Evelyn O’Connell, along with their 8-year-old son Alex, discover the key to the legendary Scorpion King’s might: the fabled Bracelet of Anubis. Unfortunately, a newly resurrected Imhotep has designs on the bracelet as well, and isn’t above kidnapping its new bearer, Alex, to gain control of Anubis’s otherworldly army.
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What critics compared The Mummy Returns to
There are other scenes in the “chronobowl”—the junction between different parallel universes—where actors have jarringly fake faces that remind one of nothing so much as the infamously awful CGI Dwayne Johnson in 2001’s The Mummy Returns .
Even if you were to ignore what ethical boundaries it may or may not cross, the film can’t escape the fact that it frequently features rubbery VFX and CGI-recreations of moments and characters that make them look like The Scorpion King from Stephen Sommers’ The Mummy Returns .
The same antiquated approach is evident within the backdrops and locations, which feature the type of dodgy plasticity that evokes memories of poorly-aged films from the early 21st century, such as “The Mummy Returns” or the “Star Wars” prequels.
What is worse is that the CGI does little to expand on what flesh-and-blood actors in well-done make-up could have accomplished, unless we consider the elongated screech of the lead Seeker, which aurally sends chills up your spine, but visually does little more than bring back bad memories of the equally lousy digital effects in The Mummy Returns (2001).
Since Steven Spielberg and George Lucas have apparently decided to move away from making good movies like Raiders of the Lost Ark and Star Wars, and are instead focusing their energies on crap like Saving Private Ryan and The Phantom Menace, fans are left looking for a fix, and Stephen Sommers has finally provided it, warts (and there's a big one on Brendan Fraiser's nose) and all.
While not entirely successful, The Mummy nevertheless boasted an infectious blend of high adventure, low-scare horror, and special effects that transformed it into a crowd-pleaser capable of sating the early summer audience until The Phantom Menace came along a few weeks later.
And speaking of panoramic scenery, here's a shot of one of Lucas' cityscapes from The Phantom Menace.
The most obvious being the climax, which is incredibly similar to the final act of The Phantom Menace (both films feature one gigantic battle, while cutting to smaller battles).
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Patricia Velasquez (The Mummy Returns), Will Kemp (Van Helsing), and Clifton Collins, Jr. (The Hillside Strangler) round out the cast.
In particular, there’s a lavishly superfluous prologue set in Jerusalem, which begins with a young Arab boy dashing through the streets just to bring the fastidious European sleuth his breakfast eggs—all to Patrick Doyle’s “full of Eastern promise” music, which would have been rejected as too corny for The Mummy Returns.
The story piles on fights and chases and country-hops and new characters until it feels like "The Mummy Returns" on a coke binge.
It reminded me of a bunch of 2001's summer adventure films along the lines of Tomb Raider , Jurassic Park III , or even the superior, The Mummy Returns .