If you can believe it, we’re at the 20-year anniversary of 1999’s delightful action movie romp The Mummy, directed by Stephen Sommers. While there are definitely aspects of the Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz-starring film that don’t age well, I think we can agree that this is the best Mummy film out there. The folks at Honest Trailers are celebrating blockbusters for the summer, and who could leave out The Mummy?
Honest Trailers has fun poking holes in The Mummy‘s character and plot run-down, comparing how much is identical to people and tropes we find in the Indiana Jones series. To be fair, however, they also demonstrate how much Indiana Jones borrowed from the adventure stories and radio plays that came before him. The Mummy was of course also riffing off of the 1930s horror movie starring Boris Karloff, only now with (for the time) cutting-edge special effects. That sand Mummy-face sequence was a big deal in 1999.
Despite similarities to Indiana Jones, and pointing out how some of the Arab stereotypes are extremely not good and very ’90s in execution, the Honest Trailer also highlights why the movie still works. That’s all due to its standout, often outlandish characters, who make this more than just a rote good guys-fight-CGI-monster flick. While Fraser’s dashing Rick O’Connell filled out those sarcastic, trigger-happy Jones shoes, Weisz’s Evie Carnahan was a heroine unlike any I’d seen before: bookish, brilliant, uncompromising. John Hannah as Evie’s annoying brother John, and Oded Fehr as pledged Mummy-fighter Ardeth Bay, remain characters that instantly spring to mind even 20 years later.
There’s no better nostalgic joke than the one Honest Trailers squeezes in here about the Mummy himself, Arnold Vosloo, calling him “Billy” in passing, because of his near-identical appearance to actor Billy Zane. Only true ’90s kids will remember.
(via Honest Trailers, image: Universal Pictures)
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- Trump exerts executive privilege over the full, unredacted Mueller report, which totally exonerates him, hence his need to hide it from absolutely everyone. (via NY Times)
- A miniature cousin of the T. rex has been identified by paleontologists. Adorable! (image by Andrey Atuchin, via UPI News)
- Uber and Lyft drivers are striking for pay transparency. (via WaPo)
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Lemme tell you, @LittleWoodsFilm is the only movie beside Moonlight that I’ve ever given a perfect rating.
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The plot1 of my favorites of the yr. If you have a chance to see it, YOU SHOULD https://t.co/76uyxt65gx
— valerie complex (@ValerieComplex) May 8, 2019
- 4 showrunners discuss how they go about staffing their writers’ room. (via Vulture)
- Queen Latifah’s Queen Collective helps female filmmakers get their work funded. (via HuffPo)
- BossLogic always comes through.
This summer on #Disneyplus join Steve Rogers in his search for the next Top America’s Ass @ChrisEvans pic.twitter.com/Ma8U8Elvrk
— BossLogic (@Bosslogic) May 8, 2019
What did you see out there today?
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