The Mummy (1999 film)

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"Oh I hate mummies!"

The Mummy is a 1999 adventure horror film directed by Stephen Sommers.

The movie was a loose remake of the original film. Instead of being straight horror, it was more of an action-adventure with a dash of comedy. It featured actors Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, and John Hannah. They played Rick O'Connell, Evelyn Carnahan, and Jonathan Carnahan, respectively and their quest was to find ancient artifacts and treasure. They end up, as a result, having to stop an awakened mummy named Imhotep.

Ultimately the movie owes more to Indiana Jones than anything else, however it is very Genre Savvy and just run with it, making for effective light entertainment.

Not to be confused with the aforementioned 1932 film featuring Boris Karloff as Imhotep, or the 1959 Hammer Horror film featuring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, or the 1969 Egyptian art film more usually called The Night of Counting the Years (which Martin Scorsese once mentioned really liking).

Tropes used in The Mummy (1999 film) include:

Dr. Bey: We are part of an ancient secret society. For over three thousand years we have guarded the City of the Dead. We are sworn at manhood to do any and all in our power to stop the High Priest Imhotep from being reborn into this world.
Ardeth Bay: Now, because of you, we have failed.
Evelyn: And you think this justifies the killing of innocent people?
Dr. Bey: To stop this creature? Let me think...
Ardeth and Dr. Bey: YES!

    • Or later in the film:

(mummies rise from the floor)
Rick: Who the hell're these guys?
Ardeth: Priests... Imhotep's priests!
Rick: 'k then.
(More Dakka ensues)

    • Amusingly, he actually meant what he was saying, as killing the King gave him control over the undead army, or in this case, the authority to banish it.
  • Bottomless Magazines: Inverted! In the opening shootout. Rick draws twin Colt M1911s, fires about four shots of their 7+1 capacity and they both run dry (slides locked back and all) he throws them aside and draws two more. Additionally the film is a rare example of the French Lebel rifle being used primarily with its magazine disconnect engaged as a single shot rifle.
  • Bug Buzz: The sounds the scarabs make are seriously scary, especially when closing in on somebody.
  • Cats Are Magic: At one point, a normal cat is able to ward off Imhotep because "cats are the guardians of the underworld". This is exploited only the once, because Imhotep completes his regeneration soon after and becomes immune to whatever the cat would supposedly have done to him.
  • Chekhov's Skill:
    • Jonathan and Alex are established early on as learning how to read hieroglyphics. This eventually pops up after Evy dies and they need to resurrect her using the Book of the Dead... written in hieroglyphics.
    • Jonathan picks the key that opens seemingly every locked Egyptian artifact in existence out of Rick's pocket before the start of the first movie, then swipes it again out of Imhotep's robes during a struggle near the end.
    • Evelyn taught Jonathan to pronounce the symbol that is shaped like a stork near the end.
  • Cool Pet: If a falcon isn't a Cool Pet, I don't know what is.
  • Collapsing Lair: Every movie has one.
  • Crossover Cosmology
  • Curiosity Killed the Cast: Evy reads from a book that sets off the events of the first movie, and that conveniently prevents the production company from having to pay more actors.
  • Curse Cut Short: When The museum curator is going to burn Evy

Evy: You Bas-

  • Cursed with Awesome: Imhotep, whose punishment for having an affair with the Pharoah's favorite wife, killing the Pharaoh, and trying to raise the dead is to be eaten alive by scarabs. Unfortunately for the rest of the world, once the scarabs are done and he comes back he has all the powers of the Ten Plagues of Egypt.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Rick, Evy, and Jonathan all have their moments.
  • Death by Materialism: Beni
    • Also the prison warden, who steals a wall decoration that's actually a live scarab beetle...which burrows into his skull.
  • Death as Comedy: A scene in the second movie where Jonathan leads a guy to be killed by pygmy mummies.
  • Death Seeker: Winston. A pilot who survived the war, when all his buddies died in glorious combat. In fact, when the heroes recruit his assistance against Imhotep, and tell him point blank that he'll probably die as everyone else who got involved has died, he sounds downright giddy
  • Dieselpunk: Like walking into a stylish pulp novel 1930s!
  • Disaster Dominoes: By Evy.
  • Disposable Pilot: This happens in the first movie, to the old ennui-ridden war pilot.
  • Don't Touch It, You Idiot!: The American Egyptologist tells Evy "You must not read from the book!" She does anyway. In the second film, whoever disturbs this chest will drink from the Nile. Evy disturbs it anyway, because "that doesn't sound too bad." Subverted in that both of these messages are delivered after she's already done what she wasn't supposed to. Though in fairness, she probably could have spotted the "drink from the Nile" thing sooner than she did.
  • Eagle Land: The Americans in the first film, oh so very much. It's Lampshaded a bit, though. The split is that Rick is the only Type One American. All the others were various shades of Type Two.
  • Elite Mooks/ Superpowered Mooks: The four palace guards
  • Eye Scream
    • In the first movie, when Imhotep is accidentally released he is a rotting corpse, without eyes. Guess how he gets them... not to mention the "My eyes! My eyes!" screams.
  • Mr. Fanservice: Ardeth Bay
  • Fan Service: The likely reason for Arnold Voosloo spending the last half hour a Walking Shirtless Scene.
      • Walking shirtless scene? Dude was running around in what basically amounted to ancient Egyptian boxers.
    • Evy in her clingy nightgown, and in the flashback Evy's previous incarnation and Anck Su Namun having a girlfight in bikinis.
    • Anck Su Namun's first appearance is in strategically placed cloth and body paint.
    • Aversion: When the boat sinks and everybody comes ashore, Evy's gown was alegedly so sheer that she appeared completely naked. To keep the film's rating around PG-13, Stephen Sommers ordered a full gown be edited in, much to the annoyance of some of the producers.
  • Flash Back: see also Ancient Egypt.
  • Four-Temperament Ensemble: The four Americans: O'Connell is choleric, while Henderson is sanguine, Daniels is melancholic, and Burns is phlegmatic.
  • Genre Savvy
    • Evelyn.

Evelyn: You know, sniveling little cowards like you always get their comeuppance.
Beni: <Laughs> ...Really?
Evelyn: Yes. Always.

  • George Lucas Throwback / Reconstruction : Of the classic 1930s Universal horror movies and old Lost World adventure flicks.
  • Get It Off Me!: An utterly nightmare inducing example can be found where a species of flesh-eating scarab beetles exists to protect artifacts and tombs, and attack as individuals or swarms.
  • Groin Attack:
    • This is ultimately how Beni escapes from Rick shortly after being interrogated.
    • When Ankh Su-Namun casts aside her daggers during Evy's flashback from the second film, they stick in the groins of a pair of statues nearby.
  • Guns Akimbo: The preferred method of combat in the O'Connell family.
  • He Clean Up Nicely: Evy has this reaction the first time she sees Rick clean-shaven and dressed tastefully after bailing him out of prison.
  • Historical Villain Upgrade: The Real Life Imhothep was one of the most respected Egyptians who ever lived, the first engineer and architect, inventor of modern medicine (Thousands of years before Hippocrates) a pretty unambiguous GoodChancellor, and deified after his death (something normally reserved only for the greatest pharaohs). He's the Big Bad of the first two movies.
    • Except that real Imhotep lived long before the reign of Seti I, so this would have been just some guy named after him.
  • Hero Stole My Bike: More like "hero's brother-in-law stole my double-decker bus."
  • Idiot Ball:
    • When they first learn that Imhotep is afraid of cats, do they offer the nearest urchin some cash to round up some cats? Why, no, why would we want to protect ourselves with the only thing we know of that works?
      • To be fair, they find this out too late to really put it to use; it stops working after he's fully regenerated, and the heroes only manage to make use of any cats once before that happens, though it does save their lives.
    • The Medjai's big plan to keep 'The Evil' sealed beneath the sands for all of eternity. Good in theory, except they left the book necessary for his revival where just anyone could find it. You'd think, that given the task they were charged with, they would've kept the book in their possession at all times so that it could never be used rather than left someplace where anyone could get to it if they found Imhotep's resting place.
      • No, no, no I'll do you one better: Why in the hell would you USE this technique in the first place? Yes it's a horrific way to die, but there are a lot of those. And if anyone figures out a way to bring him back, he'll be capable of destroying the world? That seems to be punishing the world more than him. Good Lord, there have to be easier/less apocalyptic ways to punish a dude.
  • It Seemed Like a Good Idea At the Time: Rick says this about his first kiss with Evy, since he was about to be hanged. He seems surprised when she takes offense.
  • Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: Rick O'Conner interrogates Beni for information about Imhotep's plan by shoving him just inches away from a ceiling fan.
  • Karmic Death: Beni Gabor's greed comes back to bite him. In scarab form.
  • Kiss of Distraction: Evy kisses Imhotep in order to break his concentration so the sandstorm he's creating to kill the heroes disperses.
  • Let's Get Dangerous: Jonathan may be a ridiculously greedy, swindling Plucky Comic Relief, but he is also a crack shot with a winchester rifle, a skilled pickpocket, and disturbingly competent with a book of ancient spells.
  • Letting Her Hair Down: Evy.
  • Load-Bearing Boss: Awesomely subverted; when the heroes finally "kill" Imhotep, the whole place starts coming down on them. It was actually Beni's fault, leading to his Karmic Death.
  • "London, England" Syndrome: Because apparently we can't figure out that yes, this is the Cairo in Egypt.
  • MacGuffin: The Book of the Living and the Book of the Dead, not to mention the canopic jars.
  • Meganekko: Evy, for not goddamn long enough.
  • More Dakka: Ardeth prefers the Thompson.
  • Morality Pet: Jonathan's a greedy bastard, but he does seem to care about his little sister.
  • Mortality Ensues: It turns out that the companion book to the Book of the Dead doesn't kill the Big Bad when read from. What it does is remove his immortality, allowing him to be killed like a mortal.
  • My Death Is Just the Beginning: The Arc Words of the movie.
  • Nerd Glasses: Worn by Evy in the beginning of the film, and shed for good not long after - which is odd because contacts didn't exist in the 1920's.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Evy reading from the Book of the Dead: nice job awakening it!
  • Oh Crap: Plenty of instances. For example, Ardeth and the Medjai have just defeated the Army of Anubis at great cost to their forces. They cheer. But that was only the first wave. Cue the entire horizon turning black as the unfathomable hordes of Anubis warriors blanket the sands. To be fair to poor Ardeth, though, he took it rather well, all things considered.
  • Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: It's not than noticeable at first, but once you know that the actor playing Jonathan is actually Scottish, you can't not hear his natural accent peaking through.
  • The Order: The Medjai, whose job appears to be guarding all the potentially world-ending crap the ancient Egyptians left lying around. We mostly only see Ardeth Bey.
  • Plague of Locusts: A horde of locusts descends upon "modern" Cairo as part of the ten plagues revisited upon Egypt with the release of Imhotep.
  • Present Company Excluded:

Jonathan: And when those damn yanks go to sleep, no offense,
Rick: None taken.
Jon: We'll dig our way up and steal that book right out from under them.
Rick: Are you sure you can find this secret compartment thing?
Evy: Oh, yes, if those beastly Americans haven't beaten us to it, no offense.
Rick: None taken.

  • Promethean Punishment: Imhotep's being mummified alive in a sarcophagus full of scarabs because he got with the Pharaoh's woman. In reality, not that bad a punishment because he gets Cursed with Awesome and can return from death with very little help from stupid people. Meanwhile, his punishers spend the rest of their lives (as do all of their descendants) keeping him cooped up. Clearly, the punishment was worth it!
  • Rebellious Prisoner: Both Evie and her son demonstrate this in the first film and sequel. Evie may just appear as a clumsy librarian on the surface, but she's tougher than she looks, as Imhotep found out the hard way when trying to sacrifice her to bring back his beloved. Likewise, Imhotep and his men kidnap Alex after he gets a bracelet attached to his arm in the sequel, and Alex sasses them. They can only shut him up by showing that the bracelet will kill him if they don't get it off before sunrise in a few days.
  • Red Shirt: Anyone in the expedition that isn't one of the three leads. Even more so in the second where Imhotep's mooks actually wear red!
  • Refuge in Cool
  • The Renfield: Beni.
  • The Remake: The film was a re-imagining of the original black and white horror classic.
  • Removable Turret Gun: the protagonists pluck the mounted machinegun from the plane before it sinks into the quicksand.
    • Justified as the gun in case is a regular infantry light machine gun.
  • Romance-Inducing Smudge: Inverted where Imhotep's romance with Anck Su Namun leads him to smear her body paint.
  • Rule of Scary: Sure scarabs don't really dig under people's skin and eat them from the inside out...but it's just so scary.
  • Sadly Mythtaken: Imhotep was an actual historical figure.
    • It's possible the Imhotep of the movies was named after this man (in-universe). Both were highly-regarded priests.
The historical Imhotep was also an architect. He was the designer of the Step Pyramid at Saqqara, the tomb of the Pharaoh Djoser, and thus the inventor of the Egyptian pyramid.
    • Imhotep is scared by cats in the movie due to the claim that cats are the guardians of the doors of the the Egyptian underworld. While there are a few cat deities in Egyptian mythology (one of them (Sekhmet) is actually pretty terrifying), they were associated with other aspects, to be specific, war, disease, hunting, fertility, and motherly love, it would have made much more sense to have him be afraid of snakes, since most of the deities assigned with duties like punishing the damned in the afterlife were horrific snakes, such as Khetti, or the servants of Seker, who's job was essentially to punish people like Imhotep. Plus, then Imhotep would have had an excuse to say "Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?" as a Shout-Out.
  • Say Your Prayers: Beni's prayers are played humorously, as he prays to several gods in several different languages before praying in Hebrew actually winds up saving him, because its a language Imhotep understands.
  • Scary Black Man: Lock-nah, who is also the first named villian to die.
  • Shooting Superman: People will not stop shooting Imhotep even though he is Immune to Bullets. Even after Ardeth has told people "No mortal weapons can harm that creature!" they shoot Imhotep. At least they slow him down. Probably also a case of When All You Have Is a Hammer.
  • Shout-Out: When they first meet and Rick is in prison, Jonathan claims to Rick that he's a man preaching Christianity in Egypt and introduces Evy as his sister (although she actually is). Given Steven Sommers' reported love of old adventure movies, this is almost certainly a reference to The African Queen..
  • Spirited Young Lady: Evelyn.
  • The Swarm: Scarabs.
  • Stripperiffic: Anck Su Namun, in her Ancient Egyptian life, wore a net, body paint, and nothing else. This is probably Truth in Television with regards to Ancient Egypt.
  • Taken for Granite: Imhotep somehow became trapped in a block of Amber after his defeat.
  • Tempting Fate:
    • "No harm ever came from reading a book."
    • Who could forget this little gem:

Rick: You're gonna get yours Beni!!! YOU'RE GONNA GET YOURS!!!!
Beni: Oh like I never heard that before!!!

      • Then later on:

Evy: You know nasty little fellows like you always get their comeuppance.
Beni: Hehehe.....They do?
Evy: Always.

Rick: Honey... What are you doing? These guys don't use doors!

Evelyn (completely drunk): "You're wondering, 'What is a place like me doing in a girl like this?"
Rick: "Yeah, something like that."

  • What Have We Done? Said by the Egyptologist during the locust swarm heralding Imhotep's rebirth: as the full weight of the situation dawns upon him.
  • White Egyptians: The Ancient Egyptian characters are played by obviously white actors: Imhotep, Anck Su Namun, the Pharaoh and so on.
    • Except not. Anck Su Namun is played by Patricia Velasquez, A Venezuelan woman with strong Amerindian heritage. Her mother is from the Wayuu tribe. Can't speak for the actors of the other characters, though.
    • Imhotep is played by Arnold Vosloo, who is South African.
  • Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: "Watch for bugs. I hate bugs." Guess what gets him.
    • Also, Imhotep for cats due to the whole "guardians of the underworld" thing. Too bad this is only used in a rather throwaway manner.
  • You!: Evelyn exclaims "You" to Ardeth when he turns up in the Cairo Museum.
  • You Said You Would Let Them Go: Without the stock phrase exchange, but Imhotep promises to spare the rest of the party if Evy comes with him so that he can perform the ritual. Naturally, once she's in hand, he orders his followers to kill the rest of them. Of course, the rest of the group had made it extremely clear they planned to follow and try to stop the ritual, so not attacking them would have been fairly silly.
  • Zombie Gait: Imhotep's enthralled. Lampshaded, somewhat, by Jonathan, who shambled along with them to avoid their wrath.
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