The Mummy (1999 film)

In 1992, producers James Jacks and Sean Daniel decided to update the original 1932 Mummy film for the 1990s.[10] Universal Studios gave them the go-ahead, but only if they kept the budget around $10 million.[4] Jacks remembers that the studio "essentially wanted a low-budget horror franchise";[4] in response, Jacks and Daniel 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.[10][11] Jacks recalls that Barker's take was "dark, sexual and filled with mysticism",[4] and that, "it would have been a great low-budget movie".[11] After several meetings, Barker and Universal lost interest and parted company.

Director Joe Dante was the next choice, increasing the budget for his idea of Daniel Day-Lewis as a brooding Mummy.[4] This version's draft was written by Alan Ormsby, and was later re-written by John Sayles. It was set in contemporary times and focused on reincarnation with elements of a love story.[11] It came close to being made with some elements, like the flesh-eating scarabs, making it to the final product.[10] However, at that point, the studio wanted a film with a budget of $15 million and rejected Dante's version.

Filmmaker George A. Romero was brought in with a vision of a zombie-style horror film similar to Night of the Living Dead, but which also relied heavily upon elements of tragic romance and ambivalence of identity. Romero completed a draft in October 1994, co-written with Ormsby and Sayles, that revolved around female archaeologist Helen Grover and her discovery of the tomb of Imhotep, an Egyptian general who lived in the time of Ramesses II.[4] Unfolding in a nameless American city in modern times, events are set into motion when Imhotep inadvertently awakens as a result of his preserved cadaver having been exposed to rays from an MRI scan in a high-tech forensic archaeology lab. The script progresses to a fish-out-of-water story when Imhotep, having regained his youthful appearance, recognizes the need to adapt to a contemporary society that is three thousand years removed from the one he came from. Assuming at first that he is a representative from the Bureau of Antiquities, Helen finds herself drawn into a tentative relationship with Imhotep while also experiencing clairvoyant flashbacks to a previous life in the Nineteenth Dynasty of Egypt as a priestess of Isis. Summoning mystical powers through incantation, Imhotep later resurrects the mummy of Karis, a loyal slave whose body had been resting alongside his master's in the same tomb but is now held in the local museum. After escaping into the city sewer system, Karis embarks on a vengeful rampage against the various criminal fences and high society antiquarians who had acquired stolen relics from his tomb. Romero's script was considered too dark and violent by Jacks and the studio, who wanted a more accessible picture. Romero was unable to extricate himself from another contract he had in negotiation with MGM, and so his involvement with the film was severed and the development of an entirely new script was commissioned.[4]

Mick Garris was attached to direct but eventually left the project,[12] and Wes Craven was offered the film but turned it down.[11] Stephen Sommers called Jacks and Daniel 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".[4] Sommers had seen the original film when he was eight, and wanted to recreate the things he liked about it on a bigger scale.[13] 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.[10] 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.[14] Universal liked this idea so much that they approved the concept and increased the budget from $15 million to $80 million.[15] In 2019, Sommers claimed the film cost $62 million.[16]

Filming began in Marrakech, Morocco on May 4, 1998, and lasted 17 weeks. Photography moved to the Sahara desert outside the small town of Erfoud, and to the United Kingdom before completion of shooting on August 29, 1998.[17] At the geological formation Gara Medouar, a concrete ramp was built to allow access into the horseshoe-shaped formation, where the city of Hamunaptra was constructed.[18] The crew could not shoot in Egypt because of unstable political conditions.[19] 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.[6] Sandstorms were daily inconveniences. Snakes, spiders and scorpions were a major problem, with many crew members having to be airlifted out after being bitten.[19]

Brendan Fraser nearly died during a scene where his character is hanged. Weisz remembered, "He [Fraser] stopped breathing and had to be resuscitated."[8] The production had the official support of the Royal Moroccan Army, and the cast members had kidnapping insurance taken out on them,[11] a fact Sommers disclosed to the cast only after shooting had finished.[5]

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."[17] 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.[17] Another large set was constructed in the United Kingdom on the dockyard at Chatham which doubled for the Giza Port on the river Nile.[20] 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".[17]

The filmmakers reportedly spent $15 million of the $80 million budget on special effects, provided by Industrial Light & Magic;[21][22] the producers wanted a new look for the Mummy so that they would avoid comparisons to past movies.[21] 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".[17] Specific photography was conducted on actor Arnold Vosloo so that the special effects crew could see exactly how he moved and replicate it.[21]

To create the Mummy, Berton used a combination of live action and computer graphics. 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."[17] 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."[5] 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.[19]

The Mummy opened on May 7, 1999, and grossed $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).[27]

The Mummy received mixed reviews from critics.[28] On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds an approval rating of 60% based on 97 reviews, with an average rating of 5.83/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "It's difficult to make a persuasive argument for The Mummy as any kind of meaningful cinematic achievement, but it's undeniably fun to watch."[29] On Metacritic the film has a score of 48 out of 100, based on 34 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[30] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.[31]

Roger Ebert, 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."[32] Likewise, Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a "B−" grade and said, "The Mummy would like to make you shudder, but it tries to do so without ever letting go of its jocular inconsequentiality."[33] Bob Graham of the San Francisco Chronicle gave the film high marks for the acting as well as the special effects.[34]

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."[35] Publications like The Austin Chronicle and Dallas Observer came to the conclusion that despite good acting and special effects, the movie lacked cohesion;[36][37] talking about the special effects, the Observer lamented "If only generating a soul for the film itself were so easy."[36] 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."[38] Kim Newman of the British Film Institute (BFI) 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.[39] USA Today gave the film two out of four stars and felt that it was "not free of stereotypes",[40] a sentiment with which the BFI concurred.[39] "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.[40]

To commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the film's release, several media outlets published articles praising the film and its impact.[41][42][43][44][45] Reviewers in Thrillist and Den of Geek called it a "perfect movie."[41][44] The editors of Rotten Tomatoes referred to The Mummy as the "Indiana Jones for a new generation."[45] Junkee declared it the "pivotal blockbuster of the nineties."[46] Commentators from Collider and Syfy Wire praised Brendan Fraser specifically for setting the mold that other action hero characters have followed in the decades since.[43][42] A contributor for Looper noted that The Mummy had "proven to be a truly timeless classic that can be watched over and over again" and that it "helped to change the game for many action movies that would come after" the film's release.[47]