Rachel Weisz is replaced by Maria Bello and Bello is a great actress, but there's just something off. This is a C-tier Indiana Jones entry featuring the same characters, some of them played by different people, from the last two movies. Say what you will about the first two movies and how they also fit within thin that same action-adventure mold that Indiana Jones perfected, but I find that those two still had its own identity owing to the fact that it could be tied to the classic Universal horror heyday. This feels more like a C-tier Indiana Jones knockoff than it feels like a continuation of this franchise. It's painfully obvious that this action-adventure path has been better traveled by the likes of Indiana Jones and inviting those comparisons do not do this movie any favors. Ultimately, however, I think this movie just succeeds at the first thing, it flies by. The film is meant to fly by, you're meant to have fun and, at the end, hopefully, you're left wanting more. The pacing is breezy and, ultimately, that's what movies like these are meant to be. With that said, I mean this really is a movie that just flies by. And that they did and why this movie, really, didn't make any sort of impact despite making $401 million worldwide on a $145 million budget. If you don't give it to them immediately, in terms of blockbuster films at least, they WILL move on to the next best thing.
This movie just exists in a weird place, because people move on quickly. This, at the time, must have felt like a major retread to a lot of moviegoers. While this holds up better than I would have thought, it's no surprise that people gravitated to what was new and exciting. How is it any surprise that this film failed when the competition (Iron Man came out a couple of months earlier than this) is the start of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and one of the best movies of that decade and, in my opinion, still the best superhero movie I've ever seen. To put into perspective, this was released the same year that the first Iron Man came out and it was also released TWO weeks after The Dark Knight (yes, THAT Dark Knight) came out. I suppose one of the things that strikes me most about this movie is why in the fuck would they have waited SEVEN years to release a sequel to The Mummy Returns, which was massively successful. Though Netflix does have the first two movies and, quite frankly, while I didn't really think that much of this movie, it did make me wanna watch the two previous entries. I'm not gonna say refined tastes, because that would be a laugh, but I enjoy things now that I didn't back then and vice versa. I'm, very clearly, a much different person with different tastes.
That I would enjoy those movies to this day is another thing entirely. Hell, I even made my mom buy me The Mummy Returns on DVD after I had seen it in theaters.
Yes, of course, I know that these films are not cinematic masterpieces, nor were they designed to be, but eleven and thirteen-year-old me probably greatly enjoyed both of those movies. Here's the thing though, I have some really fond memories of watching The Mummy (1999) and The Mummy Returns. And, yes, this includes Universal's laughable attempt to create its own cinematic universe, shedding any connection with the Brendan Fraser trilogy, that starred Tom Cruise. It is an accurate statement to say that I have seen every post-1999 Mummy 'revival' film now that I've watched this.
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