The Mummy (1999 film)

Still determined to create a new Mummy film, Universal hired Kevin Jarre in 1996 to write a new screenplay. According to Jacks, the executives were now convinced the film should be a larger-budget period piece.^[6]: 31 Stephen Sommers called Jacks and Daniel in 1997 with his vision of The Mummy "as a kind of Indiana Jones or Jason and the Argonauts with the mummy as the creature giving the hero a hard time".^[5] Sommers had seen the original film when he was 8 and wanted to recreate the things he liked about it on a bigger scale.^[9] Discussing other classic horror characters, Sommers recalled that "Frankenstein made me sad—I always felt sorry for him. Dracula was kind of cool and sexy. But The Mummy just plain scared me." He had wanted to make a Mummy film, but other writers or directors were always attached.^[10]: 52

After the box office failure of Babe: Pig in the City, among others, Universal needed a hit film. At the time, Universal's management had changed in response to the box office failures, and the losses led the studio to revisit its successful franchises from the 1930s.^[11] New chair Stacey Snider distributed packets detailing the studio's holdings—including nearly 5,000 old scripts and films.^[12]: 156 Sommers received his window of opportunity and pitched his Mummy to Universal with an 18-page treatment.^[4]

Sommers did not want to remake the original film; he described the original as a horror film while his adaption would be "more of a romantic-adventure-horror movie".

Jacks offered the role of Rick O'Connell to Tom Cruise (who was later cast in the reboot film), Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, but the actors were not interested or could not fit the role into their respective schedules.^[5] Jacks and Sommers were impressed with George of the Jungle's box office earnings and cast Brendan Fraser as a result;^[5] Sommers also commented that he felt Fraser fit the Errol Flynn swashbuckling character he had envisioned for Rick perfectly.^[13] Fraser's turn in George bolstered his perceived star power, yet he remained far cheaper than the biggest actors working.^[12]: 155 Fraser understood that his character "doesn't take himself too seriously, otherwise the audience can't go on that journey with him."^[17]

Evelyn Carnahan was named in tribute to

Jacks had previously produced Hard Target with Arnold Vosloo. The South African actor liked the Mummy script but told Sommers he wanted to play the role "absolutely straight. From Imhotep's point of view, this is a skewed version of Romeo and Juliet."^[5][20] He was offered the role after a single audition.^[6]: 27 Carrying some extra weight and conscious of it because of Imhotep's skimpy costume, Vosloo lost 10 to 15 pounds for the role by eschewing alcohol and sugar.^[6]: 28

A concrete ramp was built to allow access into the horseshoe-shaped formation, where the city was built from prefabricated parts shipped from England.[21]^{[16][23][24]: 103} A survey of the area was conducted so that an accurate model and scale models of the columns and statues could be replicated back at Shepperton Studios, where all of the scenes involving the underground passageways of the City of the Dead were shot. These sets took 16 weeks to build and included fiberglass columns rigged with special effects for the movie's final scenes.^[21]

To avoid dehydration in the scorching heat of the Sahara, the production's medical team created a drink that the cast and crew had to consume every two hours.^[17] Sandstorms were daily inconveniences, and wildlife were a major problem, with many crew members having to be airlifted to medical care after being bitten or stung.^[22] Fraser nearly died during a scene where his character is hanged.^[19] The production had the official support of the Royal Moroccan Army, and the cast members had kidnapping insurance taken out on them.^[7]

After shooting in North Africa, production moved back to the United Kingdom before completion on August 29, 1998.^[21] Here, the dockyards at Chatham doubled for the Giza Port on the Nile River.^[25] This set was 600 feet (183 m) in length and featured "a steam train, an Ajax traction engine, three cranes, an open two-horse carriage, four horse-drawn carts, five dressing horses and grooms, nine pack donkeys and mules, as well as market stalls, Arab-clad vendors and room for 300 costumed extras".^[21]

The filmmakers reportedly spent $15 million of the budget on special effects alone.^[16][26] The Mummy features hundreds of shots that required optical or digital special effects in post-production. Effects house Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) contributed more than 140 shots, with additional work done by Cinesite (60 shots) and Pacific Title/Mirage (45 shots, and the film's title sequences.)^[27]: 60

Sommers engaged ILM while still developing the script, having previously worked with ILM effects supervisor John Andrew Berton, Jr. on Deep Rising. ILM was eager for the challenge the film provided and produced a proof of concept for The Mummy's effects in late 1997 to demonstrate the feasibility of Sommers' vision to executives.^[16]: 103

The filmmakers sought to make something faster and scarier for the title creature, using cutting-edge techniques to create something never before seen.^[16] ILM started developing the look of the Mummy three months before filming started.^[21] "We wanted to create a photorealistic corpse that was obviously not a man in a suit, obviously not an animatronic, and obviously alive," he recalled.^[6]

Over a months-long period, the designers worked on developing four distinct stages for the Mummy. Stage one was the mummy at its most decayed, with tattered bits of clothing, skin, and sinew hanging over a skeleton. Stage two added areas of regenerated skin, with stages three and four having the Mummy almost fully regenerated with only small areas of its innards showing through. The artists developed black-and-white sketches, then moved on to color treatments before building the creature in the computer; models were also made to use as reference for the digital artists.^[16]: 103

The initial states of the Mummy were created entirely by computer, while later stages combined live-action performance. To supplement prosthetics and makeups applied on set, LED lights and pieces of tape served as tracking points so that digital "cutouts" could be applied to Vosloo's face and body in postproduction;^[27]: 61 Vosloo remarked that walking around the set he felt like a Christmas tree.^[13]

The final creature was created with a combination of live-action acting with prosthetics and digital imagery.^[10]: 55 A digital representation of the Mummy was created in Alias, featuring simulated muscles for much of the body attached to a skeleton.^[27]: 60 The animators controlled parts of the Mummy via procedural animation; animating the underlying bones in turn controlled the stretch and movement of the overlaid muscles. Finally, layered on top of the procedural animation and motion capture was additional animation to tweak the performance; given the limitations of the technology, subtle movements like facial or hand animations had to be done by hand.^[27]: 61 Shots that featured Vosloo with overlaid computer-generated prosthetics were the most difficult for the effects team, requiring careful match moving.^[16]: 114

Rather than using a stunt performer, Vosloo performed the motion capture for the character himself.^[27]: 61 Scenes were blocked out and performed on set during principal photography (first with Vosloo in the scene, then without). The shots were then replicated in the motion capture studio, with Vosloo's performance recorded by eight cameras from different angles.^[16]: 111

In addition to the Mummy, the script called for numerous effects shots to magnify the sweeping adventure of the film. Vistas like a flashback shot of the ancient city of Thebes combined location footage shot in the desert with composited actors shot on green screen, model miniatures,

Another close-up shot used footage of anesthetized locusts attached to a stunt performer combined with extra computer-generated pests.[16]^: 116 Sandstorms used procedural graphics based on programs used to create tornados in Twister, while the masses of flesh-eating scarabs used techniques developed for Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace.^{[16]: 115 [6]: 27} A shot of a firestorm engulfing Cairo combined real palm trees, physical models, and matte paintings with computer-generated hail, fire, and rubble. Pacific Title/Mirage also enhanced shots with digital camera shake.^[27]: 64

The finale involves an army of mummies coming to Imhotep's defense. Many of these mummies were created by Make-Up Effects Supervisor Nick Dudman, who produced makeup, prosthetics, and animatronic effects in the film.^[22] Each suit came with variations for stunt moves or pyrotechnics. After principal photography, the suits were sent to ILM to scan and be modeled in the computer. Using parts of the Imhotep mummy to save time, ILM recreated the underlings digitally to add into the scenes and used motion capture to animate them. The animators credited Fraser's ability to consistently re-enact his movements in multiple takes as saving time when it came to match the motion-captured digital mummies to the live-action fight scenes.^{[16]: 118–199}

The score for The Mummy was composed and conducted by Jerry Goldsmith, with orchestrations provided by Alexander Courage.^[28] Goldsmith had previously scored Deep Rising for Sommers. As he reached the final few years of his career, Goldsmith was coming off a number of action and adventure films in the 1990s, from multiple Star Trek films to Air Force One. Goldsmith provided The Mummy with suitably bombastic music, with the traditional European orchestra supplemented with regional instruments such as the bouzouki.^[29]

The opening of the film contains nearly all of Goldsmith's major themes for the score, with what music critic Jeff Bond calls an "Egyptian theme" reused in different configurations throughout to establish the epic settings and sense of place for Hamunaptra; a theme for Imhotep/the Mummy that is performed in an understated manner early in the film, before repeating in more forceful, brassy renditions after the Mummy has regenerated; a love theme used for both Imhotep/Anck-su-namun and Rick/Evelyn; and a heroic theme for Rick.^[29] In addition to the extensive brass and percussion elements, the score uses sparing amounts of vocals, unusual for much of Goldsmith's work.^[30]

The soundtrack was released by Decca Records on May 4, 1999. Overall, Goldsmith's score was well received. AllMusic described it as a "grand, melodramatic score" which delivered the expected highlights.^[28] Other reviews positively noted the dark, percussive sound meshed well with the plot, as well as the raw power of the music. The limited but masterful use of the chorus was also lauded, and most critics found the final track on the CD to be the best overall.^[30][31] On the other hand, some critics found the score lacked cohesion,^[32] and that the constant heavy action lent itself to annoying repetition.^[30] Roderick Scott off CineMusic.net summed up the score as "representative of both Goldsmith's absolute best and his most mediocre. Thankfully [...] his favourable work on this release wins out."^[31]

Test audiences reacted poorly to the film's title, which conjured up negative impressions of an old horror film, but domestic marketing president Marc Shmuger recalled that they decided "we would redefine the myth with the film" rather than change the title.^[13] Enthusiasm for the film was low, but Universal took out a television spot for the Super Bowl (reportedly costing $1.6 million)^[13] that Sommers recalled immediately reversed the discussion of the film's prospects.^[15] The producers were concerned that the imminent release of The Phantom Menace would sink the film's box office fortunes, resulting in them moving the release date from May 21 to 7.^{[13][12]: 157}

The Mummy was the number one film in the United States and Canada on its opening weekend, grossing $43 million in 3,210 theaters. Its weekend take was the highest non-holiday May opening, and ninth-biggest opening of all time.^[33][34] The film later fell to second place behind The Phantom Menace. The Mummy grossed over $155.4 million in the United States and Canada and $261 million internationally, grossing over $418.1 million worldwide.^[3]

The Mummy received mixed reviews from critics.^[34] On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 62% based on 104 reviews, and an average rating of 5.9/10.^[35] On Metacritic, the film has a score of 48 out of 100 based on 34 critics, indicating mixed or average reviews.^[36] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.^[37]

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film a positive review, writing, "There is hardly a thing I can say in its favor, except that I was cheered by nearly every minute of it. I cannot argue for the script, the direction, the acting or even the mummy, but I can say that I was not bored and sometimes I was unreasonably pleased."^[38] Critics such as Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman and The New York Times' Stephen Holden concurred with the sentiment of the film as a breezy crowd-pleaser.^[39][40][41]

Less positively, Keith Phipps of The A.V. Club wrote that the film's attempt to create a big, Indiana Jones-inspired action film felt "forced" and the result was unsatisfying.^[42] Other reviews complained of an overstuffed plot or recycled elements from better movies.^[43][40] Reviewers comparing the film to the 1932 original sometimes favored the original's focus on atmosphere and dread,^[43] though others welcomed the change to a more energetic Indiana Jones-type film.^[44]

The effects were generally praised, especially the title creature.^[45] Ernest Larson's review for Jump Cut felt that the effects were too similar to ILM's other work, and that the effects alone could not support the weight of the rest of the movie.^[46] Bob Graham of the San Francisco Chronicle and Hal Hinson from the Dallas Observer agreed that the effects never overshadowed the human aspects of the film.^[45][47] Gleiberman said that the horrors of the effects were undercut by the lightheartedness of the film, while the BBC's Almar Haflidason felt that the effects were occasionally unconvincing, and the heavy reliance on cutting-edge computer-generated imagery would likely date the film heavily as time passed.^[39][48]

Critics generally praised the acting,^[47][44] with Haflidason writing that the efforts of the cast sold material that would otherwise have been cheesy.^[48] David Hunter of The Hollywood Reporter wrote that all the actors managed to hold their own amid the special effects, although he felt Vosloo was largely wasted after Imhotep regenerates and the screenplay gives him little to do.^[49] Reviews from USA Today, the British Film Institute, and The A.V. Club said the film featured questionable casting of ethnic roles and occasionally traded in stereotypes of Arabs.^[43][50]

Writing to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the film's release, writer Maria Lewis said that on paper, The Mummy should not have been a success, as yet another period adventure film coming after a decade of failed period adventure films. Its connection with audiences, if not critics, was down to its successful blend of "heart, humor, [heroics], and horror." She declared it the "pivotal blockbuster of the nineties."