Unfathomably, Stephen Sommers’ The Mummy is twenty-five years old this week. Let’s talk about it!
Well, I say talk about it, but what I really what to communicate to you is, I think, beyond words. And I don’t mean that in some pretentious sense (well, mostly, anyway). I mean that in the sense that this movie was, for me as it was so many millennials, a huge part of my childhood. I can’t quite convey to you the way this film makes me feel (or the number of times I’ve seen it) – whether it was crammed on to a sofa with my family and a bag of carryout chips on a Friday evening, joyful group viewings with my other obsessed friends as a young adult, nostalgic rewatches after hospital stays, this movie is a part of me, plain and simple, in a way that only beloved movies of your childhood can be. It’s under my skin, in my rotted bones; cut me, and I bleed Stephen Sommer’s The Mummy (1999).
That blend of horror, action, romance, screwball comedy, drama, history – it’s a near-immaculate combination, one that scratches almost every cinematic itch I could ever possibly conceive (and, as my dear father loves to point out whenever the film comes up, one that also features historically-accurate guns, too).
Which is not to say that I can’t talk to you about how bloody great this film is. For me, it’s up there with classics like Jurassic Park in terms of a virtual how-to guide on how to pull off a blockbuster with real staying power. In terms of pure entertainment, it’s hard to think of many films that do it better – from the moment it kicks off, it’s got an astonishing amount of forward momentum that really doesn’t let up until the credits roll. Part of this is down to the great action and horror elements (it was one of my first introductions to horror as a kid, and, to this day, I think it has a few exceptionally effective scare sequences – the lost glasses scene, ugh!), but I think ultimately what makes The Mummy such a success is the characters.
There’s not a character in this movie – from the villains to the heroes to the ones who straddle both moral extremes – that isn’t fully fleshed-out via both script and performance. The casting is truly exceptional (and also what made me bisexual, but that’s another conversation for another time) – from Brendan Fraser (who should have got his Oscar for this, don’t at me) inventing the dashing rogue for the new millennium, to Rachel Weisz serving authentically nerdy chic in a way that doesn’t feel like a collection of hollow quirks, to Arnold Vosloo’s commanding, imposing, and even occasionally vulnerable performance as the Mummy ((oh, and I’d be remiss not to mention Kevin O’Connor as Beni here, too – probably cinema’s most impossibly, infuriatingly watchable slimeball), there’s no steps skipped here, nothing left up to the audience to fill in with a handwave as so many modern blockbusters insist on doing.
There’s a precision in these characters and how they function in this story, and the flow it gives the movie is almost unmatched – we understand how these characters operate in this world, what drives and guides them, what they’re willing to sacrifice and what they aren’t, and that confidence in the ensemble allows the movie to flourish. It’s what gives the movie so much rewatch value to me – sure, I know the story, I know what’s going to happen, but with an ensemble of cast and characters as engaging as this, there’s always another detail to pick up on.
Two and a half decades after its original release, The Mummy remains a gold standard for blockbuster cinema – and will always have an enormous place in my withered millenial heart. What’s your take on the 1999 classic? Let me know in the comments!
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By Lou MacGregor
(header image via Angelus News)
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