Mummy celebrates 25 years! Such film adventures are no longer made today

Recently, we wanted to play a proper adventure movie at home. The kind where the secrets of ancient civilizations are revealed in locations exotic for a European, chases are held on horses or in cars, people jump over chasms and swordfights or gunfights are conducted with a smile and a funny joke. But all of them Indiana Jones we have already tried recently. What now? If we were to rely on movie news, then nothing. Luckily she was here Mummy. Which is celebrating 25 years since its premiere!

Mummy is pure fun and a true cinematic adventure. Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz in the lead roles have great chemistry. He as the charismatic and rugged adventurer Rick, she as Evelyn, perhaps slightly naive at first, but capable and fearless Egyptologist. Add to them the mystical vision of Oded Fehr as a member of an ancient order of fighters against evil. And also John Hannah as just the right smelly and funny incompetent.

It’s a good mix of actors – and that’s only the positive heroes, please! Because then there’s the wonderfully demonic Arnold Vosloo as Imhotep, the terrifying cursed high priest, and of course his forbidden love Anck-su-Namun played by Patricia Velásquez. Which was especially memorable for a teenage viewer in 1999.

Yes, it’s been that long. It has been exactly twenty-five years since the film by director and screenwriter Stephen Sommers went to American theaters in May. And it wasn’t an easy road at all. Hollywood has long been fond of remaking old movies Mummy from the thirties. By the way, with Boris Karloff, who became famous for the role of Frankenstein’s monster.

But once the studio Universal Pictures wanted to spend as little money as possible. Another time, the producers planned to turn the remake into a gruesome horror film. Then from the title monster to have something like Terminator. Then bring the plot back to the present… They even approached Clive Barker, the author of the brutal horror named Hellraiser. Luckily it didn’t happen.

It took more than ten years before the offices of film studios arose Mummy, which we know. Sommers abandoned efforts to remake the original Mummy io hardcore approach. He bet much more on adventure with a touch of comedy and romance and just the right amount of horror. He also set the story in the interwar period, i.e. in the times when he mostly ran amok Indiana Jones. A direct inspiration admitted by Sommers, by the way.

We thus got a slightly naive film about a handful of adventurers (rather involuntary, but with their hearts in the right place) who set out to awaken an ancient evil. It sounds pretty miserable written like that, yes. And critics Mummy they didn’t completely bury under the pyramids, but their reviews were thoroughly mediocre. Except, perhaps, for the well-deserved praise for Fraser as Rick O’Connell. But reviews are one thing, the voice of the people is another – and it sounded quite clearly.

Moviegoers were like a grain of sand in the desert, and the film with a budget of 80 million dollars grossed over 400 million. A hit was born. After all, who wouldn’t enjoy a film that could evoke tension and even a little bit of fear (after all, it’s also a film with reanimated corpses or carnivorous scarabs!), it offered solid action, love beyond the grave and unforgettable messages to this day. “Hey O’Connell! Looks like I got all the horses!” – “Hey Ben! Looks like you’re on the wrong side of the river!’

Success Mummy led Universal to produce two commercially successful but declining sequels and a spin-off Scorpion king with Dwayne Johnson. In 2017, efforts to revive the mummified brand resurfaced, even with Tom Cruise in the lead role. But pure audience joy from the nineties Mummy he did not repeat the picture of the same name.

You can accuse us of being too nostalgic, but they just don’t make that many movies anymore. In a way, perhaps even simple, some would say stupid, but at the same time, those who know very well what they want and how to achieve it. They don’t need over-combined plots or big-budget flamboyance. Just a good portion of that slightly naive enthusiasm for a classic adventure. That’s why it is Mummy absolutely watchable even today.

Sure, the gimmicks have gotten old in a quarter of a century – although Imhotep’s unnaturally distended mouth still gives me goosebumps! – but a boyish hero alongside a fearless heroine (sometimes an incompetent damsel in distress, with Mummy don’t go), a joking scumbag and a mystical warrior who tunes up a shotgun and decides to kick an undead villain, that is, shoot his four thousand-year-old ass? That’s just a recipe for fun. Too bad it’s been twenty-five years.