There is a repeat of the biplane fleeing from a sandstorm scene in the original with the company fleeing a wall of water raised by Imhotep in a balloon, which laughably develops afterburners and allows them to get away at the last second. Back in action – (l to r) Jonathan Carnahan (John Hannah), Rick Carter (Brendan Fraser), Evelyn (Rachel Weisz) who is now Rick’s wife and their son Alex (Freddie Boath) Every frame of the film is filled with clashing armies stretching from horizon to horizon gun, sword and fist fights in country mansions and the British Museum an all-out chase with mummified golems in a double-decker bus tides of scorpions attack by mummies, golems and an army of animated shrunken heads combat with a half-scorpion person variously collapsing and flooding tombs vortex whirlwinds of greenery people hanging onto the edge of the abyss of the underworld. Stephen Sommers is relentlessly determined to bombard us with the spectacular at every point. It ends up as all spectacle to the extent that any intervening story between set-pieces has been trimmed to an absolute minimum. The Mummy Returns tries to outdo its predecessor by a factor of ten. The Mummy Returns is a textbook example of why it is such a good reason that most series should leave well enough alone the first time around. Such successes invariably require sequels.

However, it was a huge success, earning more than $400 million worldwide. The Mummy was not a particularly good film, with the spectacle and adventure being undercut by a comedic excess that clearly demonstrated nobody was taking the film seriously. Stephen Sommers’ lavish, big-budget remake of The Mummy (1999) gave the creaky old revived mummy genre an updating by feeding it through the adventure spectacle of the Indiana Jones films, while reconstructing the creature by way of the modern CGI effects.

The mummy returns movie 2001