| The Mummy | |
|---|---|
 Teaser poster | |
| Directed by | Stephen Sommers |
| Produced by | Sean Daniel James Jacks |
| Screenplay by | Stephen Sommers John L. Balderston(uncredited) |
| Story by | Stephen Sommers Lloyd Fonvielle Kevin Jarre Nina Wilcox Putnam(uncredited) Richard Schayer(uncredited) |
| Starring | Brendan Fraser Rachel Weisz John Hannah Arnold Vosloo Kevin J. O'Connor |
| Music by | Jerry Goldsmith |
| Cinematography | Adrian Biddle |
| Editing by | Bob Ducsay |
| Studio | Amblin Entertainment |
| Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
| Release date(s) |
|
| Running time | 125 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English Arabic Ancient Egyptian |
| Budget | $80 million |
| Box office | $415,933,406 |
The Mummy is a 1999 American adventure film written and directed by Stephen Sommers and starring Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, John Hannahand Kevin J. O'Connor, with Arnold Vosloo in the title role as the reanimated mummy. It is a loose remake of the 1932 film of the same name which starred Boris Karloff in the title role. Originally intended to be part of a low-budget horror series, the movie was eventually turned into a blockbusteradventure film with mild horror themes.
Filming began in Marrakech, Morocco, on May 4, 1998, and lasted seventeen weeks; the crew had to endure dehydration, sandstorms, and snakes while filming in the Sahara. The visual effects were provided by Industrial Light & Magic, who blended film and computer-generated imagery to create the titular Mummy. Jerry Goldsmith provided the orchestral score.
The Mummy opened on May 7, 1999, and grossed $43 million in 3,210 theaters during its opening weekend in the United States; the movie went on to gross $416 million worldwide. Reception to the film was mixed, with reviewers alternatively praising or complaining about the special effects, the slapstick nature of the story and characters, and the stereotyped villains. The box-office success led to a 2001 sequel, The Mummy Returns, as well as The Mummy: The Animated Series, and the spin-off film The Scorpion King. Seven years later, the third installment, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, opened on August 1, 2008. Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment also opened a roller coaster, Revenge of the Mummy, in 2004. Novelizations of the movie and its sequels were written by Max Allan Collins.
Plot
In Egypt, 1290 BC, high priest Imhotep engages in an affair with Anck-su-Namun, the mistress of Pharaoh Seti I. When the Pharaoh discovers their tryst, Imhotep and Anck-su-Namun murder the monarch. Imhotep flees with his fellow Egyptian priests. Seti's guards, the Medjai then enter the room, to see only Ankh-sun-Amun and the dead pharaoh. Anck-su-Namun then kills herself, intending for Imhotep to resurrect her. After Anck-su-Namun's burial, Imhotep breaks into her crypt and steals her corpse. He and his priests flee across the desert to Hamunaptra, the city of the dead, where they begin the resurrection ceremony. However, they are caught by Seti's guards before the ritual can be completed, and Anck-su-Namun's soul is sent back to the Underworld. For their sacrilege, Imhotep's priests are mummified alive, and Imhotep himself is forced to endure the curse of Hom Dai: his tongue is cut out, and he is buried alive with flesh-eating scarabs. The ritual forces Imhotep to endure the agony of his wounds for all eternity. He is buried under high security, sealed away in a sarcophagus below a statue of the Egyptian god Anubis, and kept under strict surveillance by several generations of Medjai, for if Imhotep is ever released, the powers that made him immortal will allow him to unleash a wave of destruction and death upon the Earth.
In 1926, Cairo librarian and aspiring Egyptologist Evelyn Carnahan is presented with an intricate box and map by her bumbling older brother Jonathan, who says he found it in Thebes. After the pair discover the map leads to Hamunaptra, Jonathan reveals he actually stole it from an American named Rick O'Connell, who is currently in prison. Rick tells them that he knows the location of the city because his unit of the French Foreign Legionreached the fabled city, only to be overrun by hostile Bedouins three years ago. He makes a deal with Evelyn to reveal the location of Hamunaptra, in exchange for Evelyn saving Rick from being hanged.
Rick leads Evelyn and Jonathan's small expedition to the city, where the group encounters a band of American treasure hunters, Burns, Daniels and Henderson, led by the famed British Egyptologist Dr. Allen Chamberlain and guided by Beni Gabor, a cowardly former Legion soldier and former comrade of Rick, who had hidden himself in Hamunaptra during the Bedouins' attack. Shortly after reaching Hamunaptra, both groups are attacked by the Medjai, led by a warrior named Ardeth Bay. Ardeth warns them of the evil buried in the city, but rather than heed his warning, the two expeditions continue to excavate in separate portions of the city. Evelyn is looking for the Book of Amun-Ra, a solid gold book supposedly capable of taking life away, but unexpectedly comes across the remains of Imhotep instead. The team of Americans, meanwhile, discover a box containing the black Book of the Dead, accompanied by canopic jars carrying Anck-su-Namun's preserved organs; Chamberlain takes the Book of the Dead while each of the Americans takes a jar as loot. Before opening the box, Chamberlain reads an engraving saying that any and all who open the box are cursed to mutilation of their flesh if Imhotep is awakened. The men ignore the warnings, but Beni refuses to assist them, and flees.
At night, Evelyn takes the Book of the Dead from the sleeping Chamberlain and reads a page aloud, accidentally awakening Imhotep. The priest's resurrection awakens the camp and they search the pyramid for the cause of commotion. Burns is found by Imhotep and his eyes and tongue are taken from him for Imhotep's use. Although both groups return to Cairo, Imhotep eventually finds them with help from Beni, who bargained with Imhotep in exchange for fortune and his life. Imhotep finishes absorbing Burns and eventually absorbs Chamberlain and Henderson.
Rick, Evelyn, Jonathan, and Daniels head to the museum in search of clues to put Imhotep back to rest, only to find Ardeth speaking with the curator, Terrance Bey, who is also a Medjai. After Evelyn reveals that Imhotep referred to her as Anck-su-Namun at the pyramid, Ardeth and Terrance hypothesize that Imhotep is indeed seeking to resurrect his love once more and has chosen his sacrifice: Evelyn. Evelyn hypothesises that if the Book of the Dead brought Imhotep back to life, the Book of Amun-Ra can kill the high priest once again. Shortly after discovering the location of the Book, Imhotep, now with an army of brainwashed slaves, corners the group, in the process absorbing Daniels and fully restoring his power. Evelyn agrees to accompany Imhotep if he spares the lives of the rest of the group. Rick reluctantly agrees to do so, only for Imhotep to go back on his word and order his slaves to kill them. Luckily, Ardeth discovers an entrance to the sewers and they escape. Terrance stays behind to hold off the horde of slaves to allow the rest to escape at the cost of his own life.
Imhotep, with Evelyn and Beni in tow, returns to Hamunaptra, pursued by Rick, Jonathan, and Ardeth. Evelyn is rescued after an intense battle with Imhotep's mummified priests, and she reads from the Book of Amun-Ra. Imhotep becomes mortal, and Rick stabs him, forcing him into the River of Death. Rapidly decaying, Imhotep leaves the world of the living, vowing revenge with the same words he carved into his sarcophogus, Death is only the beginning. While taking his promised treasure from the pyramid, Beni accidentally sets off an ancient booby trap and is trapped by a swarm of flesh-eating scarabs as Hamunaptra begins to collapse into the sand. The heroes escape, although they lose the book of Amun Ra in the process, and ride off into the sunset on a pair of camels laden with treasure that Beni took earlier on.
Joe Dante was the next choice, increasing the budget for his idea of Daniel Day-Lewis as a brooding Mummy.[1] This version (co-written by John Sayles) was set in contemporary times and focused on reincarnation with elements of a love story.[7] It came close to being made with some elements, like the flesh-eating scarabs, making it to the final product.[6] However, at that point, the studio wanted a film with a budget of $15 million and rejected Dante's version. Soon after, Mick Garris was attached to direct but eventually left the project,[8] and Wes Craven was offered the film but turned it down.[7] Then, Stephen Sommers called Jacks in 1997 with his vision of The Mummy "as a kind of Indiana Jones or Jason and the Argonauts with the mummy as the creature giving the hero a hard time".[1] Sommers had seen the original film when he was eight, and wanted to recreate the things he liked about it on a bigger scale.[9] He had wanted to make a Mummy film since 1993, but other writers or directors were always attached. Finally, Sommers received his window of opportunity and pitched his idea to Universal with an 18-page treatment.[6] At the time, Universal's management had changed in response to the box office failure of Babe: Pig in the City, and the loss led the studio to want to revisit its successful franchises from the 1930s.[10] Universal liked this idea so much that they approved the concept and increased the budget from $15 million to $80 million.[11]
Brendan Fraser nearly died during a scene where his character is hanged. Weisz remembered, "He [Fraser] stopped breathing and had to be resuscitated."[4] The production had the official support of the Moroccan army, and the cast members had kidnapping insurance taken out on them,[7] a fact Sommers disclosed to the cast only after shooting had finished.[2]
Production Designer Allan Cameron found a dormant volcano near Erfoud where the entire set for Hamunaptra could be constructed. Sommers liked the location because, "A city hidden in the crater of an extinct volcano made perfect sense. Out in the middle of the desert you would never see it. You would never think of entering the crater unless you knew what was inside that volcano."[12] A survey of the volcano was conducted so that an accurate model and scale models of the columns and statues could be replicated back at Shepperton Studios, where all of the scenes involving the underground passageways of the City of the Dead were shot. These sets took 16 weeks to build, and included fiberglass columns rigged with special effects for the movie's final scenes.[12] Another large set was constructed in the United Kingdom on the dockyard at Chatham which doubled for the Giza Port on the River Nile. This set was 600 feet (183 m) in length and featured "a steam train, an Ajax traction engine, three cranes, an open two-horse carriage, four horse-drawn carts, five dressing horses and grooms, nine pack donkeys and mules, as well as market stalls, Arab-clad vendors and room for 300 costumed extras".[12]
To create the Mummy, Berton used a combination of live action and computer graphics. Then, he matched the digital prosthetic make-up pieces on Vosloo's face during filming. Berton said, "When you see his film image, that's him. When he turns his head and half of his face is missing and you can see right through on to his teeth, that's really his face. And that's why it was so hard to do."[12] Vosloo described the filming as a "whole new thing" for him; "They had to put these little red tracking lights all over my face so they could map in the special effects. A lot of the time I was walking around the set looking like a Christmas tree."[2] Make-Up Effects Supervisor Nick Dudman produced the physical creature effects in the film, including three-dimensional make-up and prosthetics. He also designed all of the animatronic effects. While the film made extensive use of computer generated imagery, many scenes, including ones where Rachel Weisz's character is covered with rats and locusts, were real, using live animals.[13]
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."[26] Publications like The Austin Chronicle and Dallas Observer came to the conclusion that despite good acting and special effects, the movie lacked cohesion;[27][28] talking about the special effects, the Observer lamented "If only generating a soul for the film itself were so easy."[27] Other publications such as Jump Cut felt that Industrial Light and Magic's lock on special effects proved detrimental to The Mummy; "The mummy", Ernest Larson wrote for the Jump Cut, "is standard-issue I.L.&M.".[29] Kim Newman of the British Film Institute judged the picture inferior to the original, as all the time was spent on special effects, instead of creating the atmosphere which made the original film such a classic.[30] USA Today gave the film two out of four stars and felt that it was "not free of stereotypes",[31] a sentiment with which the BFI concurred.[30] "If someone complains of a foul odor, you can be sure an Arab stooge is about to enter a scene. Fraser, equally quick with weapon, fist or quip, may save the day, but even he can't save the picture", USA Today wrote.[31]
The Mummy received a nomination for Best Sound Mixing (Leslie Shatz, Chris Carpenter, Rick Kline and Chris Munro) at the 72nd Academy Awards, eventually losing to The Matrix.[32] It was also nominated for Best Visual Effects at the BAFTAs, but once again lost to The Matrix.[33] Jerry Goldsmith won a BMI Film Award for the soundtrack,[34] and the film won Best Make-Up at Saturn Awards, out of nine nominations including Best Fantasy Film.[35] Other nominations included Best Sound Editing at the Motion Picture Sound Editors' Golden Reel Awards, Best Visual Effects at the Golden Satellites[36] and Best Action Sequence on the MTV Movie Awards.[37]
Production
Origins
In 1992, producer James Jacks decided to update the original Mummy film for the 1990s.[6] Universal Studios and Amblin Entertainment gave him the go-ahead, but only if he kept the budget around $10 million.[1] The producer remembers that the studio "essentially wanted a low-budget horror franchise";[1] in response, Jacks recruited horror filmmaker/writer Clive Barker on-board to direct. Barker's vision for the film was violent, with the story revolving around the head of a contemporary art museum who turns out to be a cultist trying to reanimate mummies.[6][7] Jacks recalls that Barker's take was "dark, sexual and filled with mysticism",[1] and that, "it would have been a great low-budget movie".[7] After several meetings, Barker and Universal lost interest and parted company. Filmmaker George A. Romero was brought in with a vision of a zombie-style horror movie similar to Night of the Living Dead, but this was considered too scary by Jacks and the studio, who wanted a more accessible picture.[1]Joe Dante was the next choice, increasing the budget for his idea of Daniel Day-Lewis as a brooding Mummy.[1] This version (co-written by John Sayles) was set in contemporary times and focused on reincarnation with elements of a love story.[7] It came close to being made with some elements, like the flesh-eating scarabs, making it to the final product.[6] However, at that point, the studio wanted a film with a budget of $15 million and rejected Dante's version. Soon after, Mick Garris was attached to direct but eventually left the project,[8] and Wes Craven was offered the film but turned it down.[7] Then, Stephen Sommers called Jacks in 1997 with his vision of The Mummy "as a kind of Indiana Jones or Jason and the Argonauts with the mummy as the creature giving the hero a hard time".[1] Sommers had seen the original film when he was eight, and wanted to recreate the things he liked about it on a bigger scale.[9] He had wanted to make a Mummy film since 1993, but other writers or directors were always attached. Finally, Sommers received his window of opportunity and pitched his idea to Universal with an 18-page treatment.[6] At the time, Universal's management had changed in response to the box office failure of Babe: Pig in the City, and the loss led the studio to want to revisit its successful franchises from the 1930s.[10] Universal liked this idea so much that they approved the concept and increased the budget from $15 million to $80 million.[11]
Principal photography
Filming began in Marrakech, Morocco on May 4, 1998 and lasted 17 weeks. Photography then moved to the Sahara desert outside the small town of Erfoud, and then to the United Kingdom before completion of shooting on August 29, 1998.[12] The crew could not shoot in Egypt because of the unstable political conditions.[13] To avoid dehydration in the scorching heat of the Sahara, the production's medical team created a drink that the cast and crew had to consume every two hours.[3] Sandstorms were daily inconveniences. Snakes, spiders and scorpions were a major problem, with many crew members having to be airlifted out after being bitten.[13]Brendan Fraser nearly died during a scene where his character is hanged. Weisz remembered, "He [Fraser] stopped breathing and had to be resuscitated."[4] The production had the official support of the Moroccan army, and the cast members had kidnapping insurance taken out on them,[7] a fact Sommers disclosed to the cast only after shooting had finished.[2]
Production Designer Allan Cameron found a dormant volcano near Erfoud where the entire set for Hamunaptra could be constructed. Sommers liked the location because, "A city hidden in the crater of an extinct volcano made perfect sense. Out in the middle of the desert you would never see it. You would never think of entering the crater unless you knew what was inside that volcano."[12] A survey of the volcano was conducted so that an accurate model and scale models of the columns and statues could be replicated back at Shepperton Studios, where all of the scenes involving the underground passageways of the City of the Dead were shot. These sets took 16 weeks to build, and included fiberglass columns rigged with special effects for the movie's final scenes.[12] Another large set was constructed in the United Kingdom on the dockyard at Chatham which doubled for the Giza Port on the River Nile. This set was 600 feet (183 m) in length and featured "a steam train, an Ajax traction engine, three cranes, an open two-horse carriage, four horse-drawn carts, five dressing horses and grooms, nine pack donkeys and mules, as well as market stalls, Arab-clad vendors and room for 300 costumed extras".[12]
Special effects
The filmmakers reportedly spent $15 million of the $80 million budget on special effects, provided by Industrial Light & Magic;[14][15] the producers wanted a new look for the Mummy so that they would avoid comparisons to past movies.[14] John Andrew Berton, Jr., Industrial Light & Magic's Visual Effects Supervisor on The Mummy, started developing the look three months before filming started. He said that he wanted the Mummy "to be mean, tough, nasty, something that had never been seen by audiences before". Berton used motion capture in order to achieve "a menacing and very realistic Mummy".[12] Specific photography was conducted on actor Arnold Vosloo so that the special effects crew could see exactly how he moved and replicate it.[14]To create the Mummy, Berton used a combination of live action and computer graphics. Then, he matched the digital prosthetic make-up pieces on Vosloo's face during filming. Berton said, "When you see his film image, that's him. When he turns his head and half of his face is missing and you can see right through on to his teeth, that's really his face. And that's why it was so hard to do."[12] Vosloo described the filming as a "whole new thing" for him; "They had to put these little red tracking lights all over my face so they could map in the special effects. A lot of the time I was walking around the set looking like a Christmas tree."[2] Make-Up Effects Supervisor Nick Dudman produced the physical creature effects in the film, including three-dimensional make-up and prosthetics. He also designed all of the animatronic effects. While the film made extensive use of computer generated imagery, many scenes, including ones where Rachel Weisz's character is covered with rats and locusts, were real, using live animals.[13]
Box office
The Mummy opened on May 7, 1999 and grossed USD $43 million in 3,210 theaters in the United States on its opening weekend. The film went on to gross $415 million worldwide (Domestic: $155 million; Foreign: $260 million).[20]Critical
The Mummy has received mixed reviews from critics. It currently holds a 55% "rotten" rating at Rotten Tomatoes[21] and a 48 Metascore at Metacritic.[22] Roger Ebert, a film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times, gave the film 3 out of 4 stars, writing "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."[23] Likewise, Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a "B-" rating and said, "The Mummy would like to make you shudder, but it tries to do so without ever letting go of its jocular inconsequentiality."[24] Bob Graham of the San Francisco Chronicle gave the film high marks for the acting as well as the special effects.[25]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."[26] Publications like The Austin Chronicle and Dallas Observer came to the conclusion that despite good acting and special effects, the movie lacked cohesion;[27][28] talking about the special effects, the Observer lamented "If only generating a soul for the film itself were so easy."[27] Other publications such as Jump Cut felt that Industrial Light and Magic's lock on special effects proved detrimental to The Mummy; "The mummy", Ernest Larson wrote for the Jump Cut, "is standard-issue I.L.&M.".[29] Kim Newman of the British Film Institute judged the picture inferior to the original, as all the time was spent on special effects, instead of creating the atmosphere which made the original film such a classic.[30] USA Today gave the film two out of four stars and felt that it was "not free of stereotypes",[31] a sentiment with which the BFI concurred.[30] "If someone complains of a foul odor, you can be sure an Arab stooge is about to enter a scene. Fraser, equally quick with weapon, fist or quip, may save the day, but even he can't save the picture", USA Today wrote.[31]
The Mummy received a nomination for Best Sound Mixing (Leslie Shatz, Chris Carpenter, Rick Kline and Chris Munro) at the 72nd Academy Awards, eventually losing to The Matrix.[32] It was also nominated for Best Visual Effects at the BAFTAs, but once again lost to The Matrix.[33] Jerry Goldsmith won a BMI Film Award for the soundtrack,[34] and the film won Best Make-Up at Saturn Awards, out of nine nominations including Best Fantasy Film.[35] Other nominations included Best Sound Editing at the Motion Picture Sound Editors' Golden Reel Awards, Best Visual Effects at the Golden Satellites[36] and Best Action Sequence on the MTV Movie Awards.[37]
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