Movie Review – The Mummy Returns (2001)
In the summer of 1999, Universal Pictures brought the classic movie monster of The Mummy back to life in an action-adventure film set in Egypt.
While The Mummy wasn’t a contender for top film awards, the movie itself was fun, full of action and adventure, and it successfully brought back to life one of Hollywood’s classic movie monsters. As The Mummy earned a large revenue in the theaters, Universal Pictures began working immediately on a sequel.
Released in May of 2001, The Mummy Returns brought almost all of the previous cast back for another adventure in the Egyptian desert. This time around we’re introduced to the Scorpion King, a warrior who used divine powers to conquer the known world 5,000 years ago.
Written and directed by Stephen Sommers, The Mummy Returns features music composed by Alan Silvestri. Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz star in their previous roles of Rick O’Connell and Evelyn Caranahan O’Connell. John Hannah returns in his role as Jonathan Caranahan, Evelyn’s brother, and Oded Fehr reprises his role as Ardeth Bey. Both Arnold Vosloo and Patricia Velasquez have returned in their roles of Imhotep and Anck-Su-Namun.
New actors in this film include Freddie Boath in the role of Alex, Rick and Evelyn’s young son, and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as the Scorpion King.
The Mummy Returns (2001) – (c) Universal Pictures
The Mummy Returns begins back in 3067 BC as the Scorpion King (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) leads an army and tries to take over the known world. At the end of a brutal seven-year campaign, the Scorpion King’s army was defeated and forced to march across a long desert. The heat of the desert killed all but the Scorpion King. The Scorpion King made a deal with Anubis, vowing to give the god his soul in exchange for the power to defeat his enemies. Anubis accepted and created the oasis of Ahm Shere. Anubis also gave the Scorpion King the power of his army, a legion of undead humanoid jackal creatures.
The Scorpion King lead the Army of Anubis across Egypt and destroyed everything in their path. Once the enemies were defeated, Anubis claimed the Scorpion King’s soul as well as his unstoppable army.
The Mummy Returns (2001) – (c) Universal Pictures
Fast forward to 1933.
Rick O’Connell (Brendan Fraser) is now married to Evelyn (Rachel Weisz), and the two of them have a young son named Alex (Freddie Boath). The three of them are exploring an underground Egyptian tomb in Thebes. Rick has Alex stay in the temple while he and his wife continue exploring deeper into the tomb.
As they make their way deeper into the tomb, Evelyn has the feeling like she’s been there before. That’s impossible though as the tomb has been sealed closed for several thousand years. One of the rooms has a bunch of scorpions crawling around human bones. In another room Evelyn has a vision of Anck-Su-Namun (Patricia Velasquez) showing her how to use a key to unlock a door. Sure enough, the trick works and they gain access to the sealed room.
In the sealed room Evelyn discovers symbols belonging to the Scorpion King. Oddly enough, despite there being no descriptions or drawings of the symbol in any of her history books, she has no problem recognizing it. Inside of that room is a chest containing the Bracelet of Anubis, though we know from earlier in the film that it was worn by the Scorpion King.
While Rick and Evelyn are deep in the tomb, a trio of grave robbers enter the temple. Alex keeps two of them distracted with his slingshot while the third finds Rick and Evelyn. Just as he’s about to attack them, the opening of the chest containing the bracelet causes a small earthquake. That earthquake opens hidden chambers which cause water from the Nile River to flood into the tomb. Everybody runs for it as the chambers quickly become flooded. The grave robbers flee and Rick, Evelyn and Alex all manage to escape from the tomb.
The Mummy Returns (2001) – (c) Universal Pictures
Over in Hamunaptra, the City of the Dead, an excavation is commencing. Leading the archaeological dig site are Baltus Hafez (Alun Armstrong), the curator of the British Museum, along with a mysterious woman (Patricia Velasquez). Also at the dig site is Lock-Nah (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), an Egyptian soldier. They already have the Book of the Dead along with the Book of the Living in their possession. In the center of the dig site, the digging crew raises the mummified body of Imhotep.
The grave robbers return and report that they were unable to retrieve the Bracelet of Anubis. They know that Rick and Evelyn have the bracelet, so they decide to head to London and snatch it from their home.
The Mummy Returns (2001) – (c) Universal Pictures
In London, Rick, Evelyn and Alex are glad to be home. While Rick and Evelyn have a discussion upstairs, Alex opens the chest and grabs the Bracelet of Anubis. Instantly the bracelet seizes the boy’s wrist. It then activates and projects a holographic map that leads to the oasis of Ahm Shere, the secret location of the Scorpion King’s pyramid.
Elsewhere in the house, Jonathan (John Hannah) is returning home with a hooker. He happens to be carrying a scepter that once belonged to an ancient mummy. Inside of a bedroom he’s suddenly ambushed by the Egyptian cult that recovered the body of Imhotep. The try to torture Jonathan and get him to reveal the location of the Bracelet of Anubis when Rick enters the room and starts fighting with the cult. There’s a large battle and it continues downstairs when Evelyn is attacked. She shows off a fighting skill that she was previously unaware that she knew. Ardeth Bey (Oded Fehr) appears out of nowhere and tries to help Evelyn, but she’s ultimately kidnapped by the cult.
The Mummy Returns (2001) – (c) Universal Pictures
Outside of the house, Rick, Jonathan and Ardeth discover that Alex is wearing the Bracelet of Anubis. Ardeth fears that the boy wearing and activating the bracelet may have started a chain reaction that leads to the next apocalypse. Ardeth shows a picture of a man who is leading the cult, and Alex recognizes him as the curator of the British Museum. So it’s off to the museum they go to try to rescue Evelyn.
While they’re driving to the British Museum, Ardeth informs Rick that they have seven days before the Scorpion King awakens. If the Scorpion King is not killed, then he’ll raise the Army of Anubis and take over the world.
The Mummy Returns (2001) – (c) Universal Pictures
The Egyptian Cult gathers in a storage area of the British Museum and conducts a special ceremony to revive Imhotep. The spell works and once again the mummy walks the Earth. The mysterious woman walks up to Imhotep and claims that she is the reincarnated version of Anck-Su-Namun. Imhotep claims that she is that way only in body, and soon he’ll retrieve her soul from the underworld.
Anck-Su-Namun presents the captured Evelyn as a gift to Imhotep. He orders her to be executed, but just as she’s about to be put into a pit of fire, Rick jumps to her rescue. He and Ardeth have a gun battle and kill many of the members of the cult. As Rick, Evelyn and Ardeth flee from the museum, Imhotep summons four mummy warriors to pursue them and retrieve the Bracelet of Anubis.
The Mummy Returns (2001) – (c) Universal Pictures
Jonathan breaks the key to Rick’s car, so he drives a double-decker bus and helps everybody flee from the pursuing mummies. It’s a wild drive through the streets of London as the mummies chase and attack the people on the bus. Rick, Ardeth and Evelyn are able to fight off the mummies. When the bus finally stops, Rick and Evelyn share a tender moment right before Alex is suddenly snatched and kidnapped by the Egyptian cult. They’re too late to respond and Alex is driven away in a fast car.
They know that Imhotep is going to be heading to the oasis of Ahm Shere so he can confront the Scorpion King and control the Army of Anubis. Imhotep is going to need Alex along with the Bracelet of Anubis to lead the way to the oasis. Now it’s a matter of racing to Egypt and finding a way to rescue the boy before it’s too late.
The Mummy Returns (2001) – (c) Universal Pictures
Two days later the cult is in Cairo and using a train to head deep into the desert. On the train, Alex is taken to meet with Imhotep. The ancient mummy tells the boy that he *will* use the bracelet to lead them to Ahm Shere. Otherwise, he’ll be dead on the seventh day after activating the Bracelet of Anubis, which happens to be only five days from that point in time.
After meeting with Alex, Anck-Su-Namun takes the grave robbers to a train car where they’ll be paid their reward. Instead of being paid, Imhotep is in the room and he kills all three men, gaining their eyes, skin and other organs like in the first Mummy film.
The Mummy Returns (2001) – (c) Universal Pictures
Elsewhere in Egypt, Rick and his gang meet with Izzy (Shaun Parkes), a pilot and former member of Rick’s French Foreign Legion division. Izzy is reluctant to help Rick, but Rick pays him in advance and convinces him to provide aerial transportation to help them find Alex. Instead of using an airplane, Izzy flies them in his dirigible (airship).
The Mummy Returns (2001) – (c) Universal Pictures
On the train, Alex discovers a hole in the floor and pulls a chain, signalling the engineer to do an emergency stop. The train stops and Alex escapes into a nearby temple. It looks like he’s safely hidden until Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo) finds the boy and captures him again. Imhotep has now evolved and gained enough power to actually levitate people into the air.
The Mummy Returns (2001) – (c) Universal Pictures
That night on the dirigible, Evelyn gazes into the clouds and has a vision. All of a sudden she remembers herself as Nefertiri in a past life. She remembers being the daughter of Pharaoh Seti I and an opponent of Anck-Su-Namun. The two ladies fight each other with sais and other ancient weapons. After the fight, we see that Nefertiri witnessed Imhotep attack her father, and she was actually the person who alerted the pharaoh’s guards. As Evelyn is remembering her past life, in an Egyptian tomb Imhotep reunites the current Anck-Su-Namun with the soul from her past life.
The dirigible finds Imhotep’s train outside of a tomb, and they discover that both the train and the tomb are deserted. What they do discover is a clue left behind by Alex, pointing them to the next location on the path to the oasis of Ahm Shere.
The Mummy Returns (2001) – (c) Universal Pictures
Alex is ultimately discovered leaving behind clues. Imhotep spots the dirigible flying near them in a canyon. Instead of punishing the boy directly, Imhotep creates a massive wall of water from the Blue Nile and sends it through the canyon (just like creating a dust storm to crash the airplane in the first film).
The Mummy Returns (2001) – (c) Universal Pictures
Izzy uses rockets to push the airship ahead of the water and into a side canyon. It looks like they’re in the clear until they spot a second wall of water behind them. Izzy fires the rockets again, but they fail and the giant wave crashes the dirigible. Imhotep and Alex believe that the people are dead, but as we see, everybody is alive an well after the crash. Coincidentally, the crashed airship had reached the oasis of Ahm Shere. Izzy stay behind to repair the airship while Rick, Evelyn, Jon and Ardeth head into the dense jungle.
The Mummy Returns (2001) – (c) Universal Pictures
Night falls over the oasis as both groups move cautiously through the jungle. The Egyptian cult is fearing an ambush by Rick’s group. Instead they’re attacked by a bunch of pygmy mummies. The little mummies viciously attack the Egyptians. Rick uses the attack as a distraction and rescues Alex from the cult.
Ardeth kills Lock-Nah while the pygmy mummies kill most of the cult. Apart from Rick’s group along with Imhotep and Anck-Su-Namun, the only other person to escape from the little mummies is Baltus Hafez, the curator of the British Museum.
The Mummy Returns (2001) – (c) Universal Pictures
It’s now the seventh day, and the rising sun is chasing away the darkness of the night. Knowing that it’s literally a race to save his son’s life, Rick picks up Alex and races into the Scorpion King’s pyramid before it’s hit by the rays of the sun. The two of them barely make it there and the Bracelet of Anubis releases itself from Alex’s wrist.
The Mummy Returns (2001) – (c) Universal Pictures
Evelyn is thrilled that Rick saved her son’s life. Suddenly, Imhotep and Anck-Su-Namun appear, and the woman stabs Evelyn in the abdomen. They flee as Rick rushes to his wife’s side. She lies there and dies in his arms.
The Mummy Returns (2001) – (c) Universal Pictures
Inside the pyramid, Baltus Hafez finds the Bracelet of Anubis and attaches it to his arm. He then finds a statue of a scorpion and inserts his arm into a special hole in the center of the statue. This activates an ancient spell and brings the Army of Anubis back to life. Unfortunately to Baltus, this act costs the man his hand.
Imhotep has entered the pyramid and discovered that his powers have been removed. He believes that the Anubis intends on him to fight the Scorpion King as a mortal. Imhotep accepts this challenge and heads deeper into the pyramid to find his foe. Meanwhile, Rick is full of rage and also enters the pyramid to seek his revenge against Imhotep and Anck-Su-Namun.
Jonathan has a talk with Alex when Alex comes up with a theory about how to bring his mother back to life. To do so they need to locate Anck-Su-Namun and take away the Book of the Dead.
The Mummy Returns (2001) – (c) Universal Pictures
Outside the pyramid, Ardeth has met with his Medjai army and they form a battle line against the Army of Anubis. Those two armies battle one another while Jonathan fights Anck-Su-Namun to distract her. While the two of them are fighting, Alex reads from the Book of the Dead and successfully brings his mother back to life. Evelyn continues the fight against Anck-Su-Namun while Jonathan and Alex run to help Rick who is currently fighting against a mortal version of Imhotep.
The Mummy Returns (2001) – (c) Universal Pictures
Rick and Imhotep are locked in battle when giant doors open and out steps the Scorpion King. No longer a human, the Scorpion King is a blend between a human and a scorpion. Imhotep convinces the Scorpion King that he is there as a servant while Rick was sent there to kill him. The Scorpion King then attacks Rick and chases him around the temple.
Outside the pyramid, the Medjai defeat the Army of Anubis. They think they’ve won the battle until the main part of the Army of Anubis arrives, a force several times larger than the one they just defeated. It’s certain death but the Medjai stand their ground and prepare to fight the advancing army.
Rick slips away while the Scorpion King grabs Baltus Hafez and kills him. During the break Rick discovers some hieroglyphics and discovers that he really was destined to protect people, just as Ardeth claimed. He also sees how the scepter expands into a javelin, and that’s how the ancient Egyptians instruct how to kill the Scorpion King.
Jonathan and Alex extend the scepter into a javelin. Jonathan throws the javelin at the Scorpion King, but Imhotep grabs the missile in the air. He then throws the javelin at the creature. Whomever kills the Scorpion King will be able to command the Army of Anubis. Rick snatches the javelin and prevents Imhotep from killing the Scorpion King.
The Mummy Returns (2001) – (c) Universal Pictures
The Scorpion King chases Rick to a crevice leading to the underworld. Just as Rick starts falling backwards, he jabs the javelin into the Scorpion King, killing him. The Army of Anubis disappears before it can attack the Medjai, and the oasis begins to implode into the pyramid.
The Mummy Returns (2001) – (c) Universal Pictures
The implosion knocks Imhotep to the ground, and both him and Rick are hanging onto the edge of the crevice, over the thousands of souls trapped in the underworld. The pyramid is starting to collapse around them. Evelyn risks her life and helps pull Rick from the crevice. Anck-Su-Namun does not do the same. She turns her back and flees from the room. Devastated that his love from thousands of years ago abandoned him, Imhotep lets go of the crevice and commits suicide into the underworld.
The oasis continues to implode into the pyramid. Rick, Evelyn, Jonathan and Alex all make it to the outside of the pyramid and climb to the top, looking for any way to escape. Anck-Su-Namun also tried to escape, but she tripped inside of the pyramid and fell into a hole full of scarab beetles. She’s quickly consumed and eaten alive by the beetles.
The Mummy Returns (2001) – (c) Universal Pictures
Just as all hope seems to be lost, Izzy flies above the Scorpion King’s pyramid in the repaired dirigible. Alex, Evelyn, Rick and Jonathan climb on board the airship. Jonathan is dangling over the side, and he manages to snatch a massive diamond on top of the pyramid. The airship quickly gains altitude and escapes before the rest of the pyramid implodes.
The Mummy Returns (2001) – (c) Universal Pictures
The Mummy Returns ends with the gang using Izzy’s dirigible to fly back to civilization.
So is The Mummy Returns a good film?
No. This film fails in many areas.
Let’s take a look at a few parts of The Mummy Returns and see if it makes any sense in the film.
The Bracelet of Anubis is a big mystery. For starters, what makes the bracelet so special with magical powers? We barely see the Scorpion King wearing the bracelet both before and after making the deal with Anubis. At no point does the bracelet appear to help the warrior in battle. So why does it all of a sudden have the power to not only contain holographic clues, but also trigger an apocalypse?
The same goes for that scepter that Jonathan carries throughout the film. Until the very end, all we know about the scepter is that Jonathan allegedly stole it from a mummy. That’s it. All of a sudden in the end it’s revealed that the scepter actually converts into a javelin, and that’s how you kill the Scorpion King. I call that poor storytelling and one hell of a coincidence.
In two scenes we see that Imhotep now has telekinetic powers, something that was absent from the first Mummy film. Does he use this ultra power to attack Rick and Evelyn, or to cause the dirigible to crash? Nope. He just uses it to lift some people off the ground. Big deal. Why did they even both adding a new power to the ancient Egyptian priest if he’s not going to do anything useful with it?
Speaking of plot holes, where in the world did the reincarnated version of Anck-Su-Namun come from? All of a sudden there she is in the film without an explanation of how she arrived. We saw her mummified body get killed again at the end of the first film, but here she is alive an well again.
Remember that we never saw the reincarnated version of Anck-Su-Namun in the first film. In that story we saw Imhotep confuse Evelyn as his long lost love, but he knew that the two of them were separate people. In the end of that film he tried to resurrect Anck-Su-Namun’s soul and transfer it into Evelyn’s body. That doesn’t happen in this film. This time around Anck-Su-Namun is walking around like nothing happened in the past. Not only is she alive, but she also remembers everything that occurred thousands of years ago, from her conflict with Nefertiri to her love with Imhotep. It makes you wonder why Imhotep bothered resurrecting Anck-Su-Namun’s soul later in this film when she already knew everything from the past and still looked the same.
The plot involving Evelyn having flashbacks to her past life was also a bit of a stretch. This was way too much of a coincidence in the beginning of the film when she and Rick were trying to figure out how to open the tomb. The same is true when all of a sudden she knew how to use ancient weapons to fight the Egyptian cult members in London. Oddly enough, she didn’t have any of those flashbacks in the first film.
The past life connection between Evelyn / Nefertiri and Anck-Su-Namun was interesting, but the fight sequence between the two of them was comical at best. This was just an excuse to show sexy women fighting each other while wearing skimpy clothing. You can forget that the weapons and fighting styles were not developed in ancient Egypt but rather thousands of years later in eastern Asia. It wouldn’t be until the 1600s until the sai was mastered in combat.
Speaking of comical, how about Izzy’s dirigible and pretty much every scene involving the airship? Remember that this part of the film took place in 1933, and by that point in time dirigibles were reaching their peak of popularity until the Hindenburg disaster four years later in 1937. There’s no way that a dirigible as small as Izzy’s would have been able to lift off the ground let alone actually carry passengers with a chamber of helium that small. FYI, back then the gas was dominantly hydrogen and NOT helium.
Izzy’s dirigible should have also had a more sophisticated engine to push the airship. His dirigible is remarkably primitive considering that he has a couple of rocket engines strapped to the sides of the hull, technology that was very limited and quite secretive back in those times.
The scene where they use rocket engines (I’m guessing they’re liquid-propellent engines as Izzy can turn them on and off with a switch) was hilariously bad. Without any extra engines on top of the large air sack to stabilize the dirigible, the airship would have most likely spun around and crashed when Izzy activated the rocket engines. It wouldn’t simply be propelled through the air at a fast rate of speed without more engines balancing the upper part of the airship. In reality there would have been a tremendous amount of drag created by the large gas bag. The airship would have pitched up, and it would essentially spun around and around on the lateral axis like a tire, continuing to spin until it crashed or was crushed by the advancing wall of water.
Plus, that entire sequence was a ripoff from the first Mummy film. Swap the airplane for an airship, and the wall of sand for a wall of water, and there you go. It’s a significantly worse re-telling of a classic scene in the first film. In other words, it’s a waste of time.
Speaking of laws of physics and all that fun, the scene with Rick carrying Alex and running ahead of the approaching daylight was also horrible. As the sun was rising above the mountains and daylight was entering the oasis in the valley, the sunlight would have actually been in FRONT of Rick and Alex. The sunlight would have first struck the top of the Scorpion King’s pyramid and then traveled down the structure and then met Rick and Alex.
In this case, laws of physics have been reversed in a pitiful attempt at creating an exciting scene.
In The Mummy Returns, the CGI was too plentiful and not convincing at all. In many of the scenes it was painfully obvious that the effects were later added with the help of computers. The story itself tends to get lost amongst the sloppy effects, and you’re too busy cringing at the poor graphics instead of trying to feel for the characters.
As far as the characters, don’t bother caring for them. Almost none of them have any depth or charm, and it really doesn’t matter when any of them die or face certain danger. These people are merely continued from the first film without anything new being added to them.
For me, the best part of The Mummy Returns was its soundtrack. The music score is pretty cool, and quite a bit of it is used on the Revenge of the Mummy ride at Universal Studios Florida.
Sadly, The Mummy Returns is a film full of plot holes, unexplained events, and a large helping of poor storytelling. Throw in an over-abundance of mostly bad CGI and a lack of character development and there you go. This film is one big mess. The Mummy Returns is a film that had a ton of potential, but the final product is simply a waste of time.
The Mummy Returns (2001) – movie trailer
The best way to enjoy this film is to shut off your brain, ignore laws of physics, and forget about most of the events in The Mummy. If you do all of that and make your way past the plot holes, you *might* find some entertainment in The Mummy Returns. If not then you just wasted 130 minutes of your life.
This film could have been significantly better. <sigh>
Evelyn – “No harm ever came from opening a chest”
Rick – “Yeah, right, and no harm ever came from reading a book. You remember how that one went?”
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Rick – “This is bad, Evy.”
Evelyn – “We’ve had bad before.”
Rick – “This is worse.”