Stephen Sommers's The Mummy has aged very well since its 1999 release, while its two sequels are considerably more frayed. The Mummy follows the travails of Brendan Fraser's Rick O'Connell, Rachel Weisz's Evelyn Carnahan and her brother Jonathan (John Hannah) accidentally resurrecting the evil, 10 plagues-wielding mummy Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo). The Mummy's success led to two sequels, The Mummy Returns and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, along with The Mummy: The Animated Series and The Scorpion King spin-off series.
While the three Mummy films were all box office hits, The Mummy Returns and Tomb of the Dragon Emperor each have a far less positive reputation than the 1999 original. With the 20/20 hindsight afforded by the two sequel's storytelling choice, technical aspects, and the larger adventures they add to The Mummy franchise's timeline, a few key decisions and components help explain why the two have not retained the kind of B-movie love The Mummy continues to enjoy. Unsurprisingly, all derive in some way from the tone The Mummy established for the franchise in contrast to that of The Mummy Returns and Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.
The Mummy Sequels Traded Scares For Silliness
The Mummy was re-imagined from the pure horror movie of the 1932 Boris Karloff-led original into an Indiana Jones-style adventures story by Stephen Sommers, but that did not mean that it jettisoned the horror roots of its namesake. The Mummy is very much an adventure-horror hybrid that gradually builds up to Imhotep's revival, with the film emphasizing him as a rampaging monster whom Ardeth Bay (Oded Fehr) refers to as "the creature". While Imhotep's plague usage creates a plot hole, it still adds tremendously to his frightening menace. The scenes of Imhotep draining the life out of his victims are also presented as supernatural slasher movie kills to be turned away from in revulsion, Imhotep's henchmen Beni (Kevin J. O'Conner) doing exactly that.
Any and all traces of horror elements or genuine scares were completely abandoned in The Mummy sequels. While this is probably in the aim of emphasizing the globe-trotting quest format of the series, The Mummy sequels adopted a genuinely silly tone as their new groove. The plots of both The Mummy Returns and Tomb of the Dragon Emperor also effectively had the adventure-driven Mummy franchise follow video game-like rules for the protagonists to achieve victory (Evelyn's line "Jonathan throw it! Kill the Scorpion King! Send his army back to the Underworld!" exemplifying that in The Mummy Returns). Of course, the checklist-like story format of The Mummy sequels was not the only reason for them losing their capacity for fright.
The CGI Of The Mummy Sequels Was A Major Downgrade
The Mummy remains a shining example of CGI executed extremely well for its time, making great use of the sand of Egypt's deserts as their major tool while Imhotep's plagues and his desiccated body largely holding up over two decades later. Unfortunately, the effects of The Mummy Returns took a sharp drop from the quality of their predecessor, with effects like the Anubis soldiers and Imhotep's wall of water bearing his face never coming close to the convincing CGI of The Mummy.
Comparatively, Dwayne Johnson's role as Scorpion King also stands as one of the most memed examples of jarring CGI ever created. While the effects of Tomb of the Dragon Emperor were certainly a step up from those of The Mummy Returns, they still pale in comparison to the accomplishments of The Mummy's very persuasively realistic effects. The Mummy sequels had another major problem in how they handled the villains following after Imhotep.
The Rock & Jet Li's Villains Were Very Underutilized (With Bad CGI Of Their Own)
Long before Dwayne Johnson became the biggest movie star in the world, The Mummy Returns was marketed extensively on his big-screen debut at the height of his pro-wrestling career. The Rock himself only appears in the film's opening prologue, with the Scorpion King built up as the ultimate final boss and hamstrung in the finale by the aforementioned terrible CGI scorpion creature. Though The Scorpion King franchise handled its innate cheesiness much better and gave the character far more to do as the adventurer known as Mathayus, his minor role in the film coupled with the bad CGI he was saddled with left him a very toothless big bad for The Mummy Returns.
Tomb of the Dragon Emperor took the O'Connell's on an adventure to China with Jet Li as a resurrected ancient Emperor. While his CGI in his Terracotta form was marginally better than that of the Scorpion King, Tomb of the Dragon Emperor kept him in this form much longer than necessary. Furthermore, Jet Li being one of the greatest martial arts stars of all time was something that Tomb of the Dragon Emperor utilized far less heavily than the rest of Jet Li's English-language filmography. Li only has two notable fight scenes against Michelle Yeoh and Brendan Fraser (who trained in Krav Maga for the film), both of them fairly short and relatively bland in their fight choreography, a huge missed opportunity on the part of Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.
The shortcomings of The Mummy sequels do not suggest that there is no entertainment value to be found in The Mummy Returns and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. Like The Mummy, neither of its sequels have any qualms about what they are, and the goofiness of each is not without their own endearing quality. Even still, The Mummy remains fully appreciable for the fun feeling of escapist adventure blended with horror and comedy that that its two sequels did not similarly capture. With the potential now having been set for Brendan Fraser to comeback in The Mummy 4 - as the actor has expressed an openness to reprise his role as Rick O'Connell - the best option for it is to look back to the beginning to the example The Mummy set for the series.