The 2000s Most Misunderstood Fantasy Sequel Is Secretly A Great Blockbuster

By Robert Scucci
| Published 13 seconds ago

When was the last time you watched 2001’s The Mummy Returns? Be honest. It’s probably been about 20 years because you saw it when it first came out and thought the special effects looked like early PlayStation graphics. That was my experience anyway: watch it once, never again. Well, I’m a never say never kind of guy, and decided to revisit what I assumed would be a total punisher of a film. Surprisingly, it holds up shockingly well.

Here’s the thing about CGI-heavy movies from the early aughts: they’re disproportionately ambitious when you consider how limited the technology was back then, and it’s hard to reconcile what the movie intended to look like with what actually made it to the screen. These days, the trick seems to be making everything as dark as humanly possible to obscure filmmakers’ reliance on CGI, and honestly, that looks worse.

Upon revisiting The Mummy Returns, my first thought was that it looks really cool. Not in the sense that it looks great, but in the sense that writer-director Stephen Sommers and Universal Pictures were at least brave enough to show us what we’re looking at, rough edges and all. It’s a PG-13, family-friendly, big-budget fantasy action flick, and it plays out exactly how you’d expect.

It’s not Brendan Fraser’s finest hour, but I’ll gladly sit down with my kids and watch this one because, at the end of the day, it’s a supremely fun, low-stakes movie.

Picks Up 7 Years After The First One

The Mummy Returns picks up seven years after the first film, but first we’re introduced to The Scorpion King (Dwayne Johnson in his film acting debut) in 3067 B.C. His world domination plot fails, and he makes a deal with Anubis so he can continue down the war path, only to get double-crossed the second he conquers Egypt. He and his army of CGI jackals get sucked into the underworld, and that’s all we hear from him for a hot minute.

Back in the present day, which is 1933 in The Mummy Returns lore, we’re reintroduced to an older, wiser, and more cautious Rick O’Connell (Brendan Fraser). Wanting very much to put his treasure-hunting days behind him, Rick would like to settle down with his wife Evelyn (Rachel Weisz), now that the two of them have a 7-year-old son together, Alex (Freddie Boath). Evelyn, the thrill seeker that she is, wants to continue tracking down ancient ruins and artifacts, namely the Bracelet of Anubis, who, if you remember what I said in the previous paragraph, is the ruler of the underworld who had that run-in with The Scorpion King. Something that spectacularly comes into play later.

They find the bracelet, Alex tries it on, and it sets off a constantly escalating chain of events. Evelyn is kidnapped by a cult connected to the original film’s antagonist, Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo), who hopes to gain control of Anubis’ army. The leader of the cult, Baltus (Alun Armstrong), brings along his enforcer, Lock-Nah (Adewale Akinnouye-Agbaje), as well as Meela Nais (Patricia Velasquez), who just so happens to be the physical reincarnation of Imhotep’s ancient lover, Anck-su-namun. 

Joining in on the fun are Evelyn’s brother Jonathan (John Hannah), and Medjai chieftain Ardeth Bay (Oded Fehr), who help navigate all of this ancient tomfoolery while providing comic relief. From this point forward, we get blasted with CGI monkey bridge explosions, giant sandstorm faces, Brendan Fraser chewing scenery, and a sensible amount of one-liners while navigating treacherous landscapes.

It’s Not What It’s Lacking, It’s What It’s Trying To Attempt

This is where I talk about how glad I am that I rewatched The Mummy Returns. In the grand scheme of things, the special effects aren’t terrible. The film is clearly dated, and some sequences land better than others. Evelyn’s flashbacks and the visions Alex experiences thanks to the Bracelet of Anubis are genuinely cool to look at, especially when ancient times are superimposed over the 1933 timeline.

However, the third-act sequences involving a reinvigorated and pissed-off Scorpion King stomping through the scenery are beyond rough. I can’t in good conscience say it looks great or even passable, but also, I don’t care, because up to this point we’ve been on the adventure of a lifetime. I didn’t realize until my adult viewing of this film that I kind of like it this way. It’s a movie that requires you to suspend a monolithic amount of disbelief, so moments like this don’t really take away from the storytelling because everything is already so ridiculous in the first place.

The best part about The Mummy Returns, though, is Brendan Fraser, who never misses, even when he does. He has the whole reluctant hero thing down pat here, and most of the laugh-out-loud moments come from that kind of characterization. For my money, there’s nothing better than watching somebody who’s intimidatingly good at what they do, mowing down legions of undead CGI monkey things, but is only showcasing those skills because he wants to go home and relax. I identify with that more than you could possibly imagine.

As of this writing, you can stream The Mummy Returns on Peacock and Max. It’s also available through other streamers like Hulu, The Roku Channel, and Amazon Prime Video, though some require add-ons or bundles, or additional on-demand purchases.