# Dumb things in 'The Mummy' **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [July 14, 2000, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dumb-things-in-the-mummy/25603 "2000-07-14T21:27:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Unauthorized\_Cinnamon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/bc8723/32.png) [@Unauthorized\_Cinnamon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unauthorized_Cinnamon)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2000, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dumb-things-in-the-mummy/25603/1 "2000-07-14T21:27:56Z")
Alright, I actually like watching The Mummy - it’s on Starz practically on a 24-hour loop, and it is a good background to making dinner and other household chores. Mostly what I like are Rachel Weisz, Brendan Fraser, and John Hannah - they are all very charming actors, and work well together. But come on, there are some really dumb and/or tired plot devices in this movie. My favorite is the guy with the glasses. First of all, if he were so blind he couldn’t make his way down a straight, narrow passage, his glasses whould have been incredibly thick, which they weren’t. I have 20/500 vision, and you can bet your ass I would have been sprinting down that tunnel with everyone else, glasses or no. Second, what does the mummy take from him? _His eyes_! So, shouldn’t the mummy be stumbling around ineffectually trying to find the exit? Just had to share. Thank you. ---
**Author:** ![Unauthorized\_Cinnamon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/bc8723/32.png) [@Unauthorized\_Cinnamon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unauthorized_Cinnamon)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2000, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dumb-things-in-the-mummy/25603/2 "2000-07-14T21:31:02Z")
Er, no one told me if I put “The Mummy” in quotes it would vanish from my thread title! Sorry. ---
**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2000, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dumb-things-in-the-mummy/25603/3 "2000-07-14T21:33:22Z")
Come on, a little suspension of disbelief, here? The mummy took the skin from every other stupid American, but he doesn’t actually look like them. So he takes the eyes and improves on them a bit. But what really gets my goat is the ludicrous inclusion of the “10 Plagues of Egypt.” Like they have any business in a horrible Egyptian curse, or in the entire movie for that matter. MR ---
**Author:** ![UncleBeer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/977dab/32.png) [@UncleBeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleBeer)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2000, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dumb-things-in-the-mummy/25603/4 "2000-07-14T21:38:12Z")
Heh, I fixed it before you even made your second post. For some bizarre reason, the double quotation marks cause the software to ignore anything enclosed in them. You have to use the apostrophe, or single quote marks, instead. ---
**Author:** ![Edwardina](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Edwardina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Edwardina)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2000, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dumb-things-in-the-mummy/25603/5 "2000-07-14T21:38:57Z")
And then they didn’t even _use_ ten plagues . . . It’s still a great movie, though. ---
**Author:** ![Balance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ccd318/32.png) [@Balance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balance)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2000, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dumb-things-in-the-mummy/25603/6 "2000-07-14T21:51:22Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Edwardina \* > And then they didn’t even _use_ ten plagues . . . Well, some of the other plagues would seem irrelevant and/or incomprehensible to the average audience. What did they leave out? Let’s see, there’s “death of the firstborn” which would have confused people badly, and the plague on cattle which would have made people say “WTF has that got to do with anything?” Then there were the toads; yah, those are horrifying. :rolleyes: It was a fun movie, though. My friends and I nearly fell out of our seats laughing at it. ---
**Author:** ![Arnold\_Winkelried](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Arnold\_Winkelried](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arnold_Winkelried)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2000, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dumb-things-in-the-mummy/25603/7 "2000-07-14T22:39:16Z")
Yes, I could see how the logical inconsistencies in a movie about a thousand-year-old mummy coming back to life would be troubling. What bothered me the most was this: why did they call him a mummy instead of a daddy? ---
**Author:** ![Dumbguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/2bfe46/32.png) [@Dumbguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dumbguy)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2000, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dumb-things-in-the-mummy/25603/8 "2000-07-14T22:40:37Z")
I think this may be the dopeyest movie ever made. Here are a few of my favorite dumbnesses: - There’s a centuries old organization dedicated to keeping mummy entombed. The mummy ends up being released by its leaders assistant. With information she learned at his library. Nice work. - These same protectors ride into camp and have an extended gun fight with the explorers who are raiding the tomb. After numerous deaths they stop unexpectedly and leave, warning that they’ll be back tomorrow if the raiders don’t abandon the site. Thus allowing the alleged Egyptologists to do precisely what they’ve dedicated their lives to preventing. - The mummy’s weakness is cats. In one scene, Brendan Fraser saves the day by hurling a tabby at him. ---
**Author:** ![Sealemon88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c68b51/32.png) [@Sealemon88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sealemon88)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2000, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dumb-things-in-the-mummy/25603/9 "2000-07-14T22:43:22Z")
At least the remake took care of one inconsistancy with the original: Just how would it be to outrun a shambling mummy? ---
**Author:** ![Sunshine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Sunshine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunshine)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2000, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dumb-things-in-the-mummy/25603/10 "2000-07-14T23:05:08Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by AerynSun \* > **But come on, there are some really dumb and/or tired plot devices in this movie. My favorite is the guy with the glasses. First of all, if he were so blind he couldn’t make his way down a straight, narrow passage, his glasses whould have been incredibly thick, which they weren’t. I have 20/500 vision, and you can bet your ass I would have been sprinting down that tunnel with everyone else, glasses or no. Second, what does the mummy take from him? _His eyes_! So, shouldn’t the mummy be stumbling around ineffectually trying to find the exit?** I totally agree. They made this HUGE deal out of how bad the guy’s eyesight was, as if to tell us “Don’t worry–when the mummy steals his eyes, this will be a way for the good guys to have an advantage for a short time!” And then they completely ignored it. I don’t think the mummy would LOOK like the people whose skin he took, but I would expect that skin to have the same limitiations or whatever. If he took the skin off a guy with no legs, then the mummy’s legs would still be skinless and he’d need some leg skin from another guy. Not to say I didn’t like the movie, because it is one of my all-time favorites. I found it very enjoyable, but the eye thing really bugged me. I mean, couldn’t they at least have _acknowledged_ the fact that he stole bad eyes? Have him squint a lot or something. If they weren’t going to acknowledge it, why did they make a big deal out of the fact that the guy had bad eyesight? AAARRGGH! I’ll shut up now. Good movie, though. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_Torque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Max\_Torque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_Torque)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2000, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dumb-things-in-the-mummy/25603/11 "2000-07-15T00:18:04Z")
Courtesy of [Movie-Mistakes.com](http://www.movie-mistakes.com/films.htm): > [@](#): > > In the scene where the brother picks up the scarab, it breaks open and the beetle inside starts to crawl under his skin. We see Brendan Fraser tear the brother’s shirt and we see a knife and can only assume they cut the beetle out of him. However, in the very next scene, we see the brother walking into the temple, his shirt is intact and there is no blood to be seen. > > In the part where Imothep’s priests are chasing the trio in the hall right before they get to the book of Amun-Ra, the guy in black is blasting away with a machine gun. When they reach the room with the statue, Brenden Fraiser hands the man in black his shotgun. The machine gun has disappeared. > > I counted only 6 plagues. > > Brendan Fraser is wearing captain’s bars in French Foreign Legion uniform. The majority of Legion commissioned officers have always been French. Some were from central or eastern Europe, but I’ve never heard of an English-speaking officer, particularly not one so patently lacking in officer potential as Fraser! > > Egypt in the 1920s was dominated by the British. The prisons would have been run by British officers, and hangings would not have been so arbitrary. British-style prisons are run by ‘governors’, not ‘wardens’. > > What is the ‘Royal Air Corps’? It was the Royal Flying Corps until 1918, and has been the Royal Air Force ever since. > > The pilot is wearing an unidentifiable cap badge (it’s certainly not RAF). He is also wearing his pilot’s brevet (wings) on his right breast pocket; the RAF, like most air forces, wear their brevets above their left breast pocket. The RAF presence in Egypt was still very much there in the 1920s: there were several stations, not simply one elderly pilot who had been forgotten about. > > What happens to all the British when the plagues arrive? All the people affected seem to be Egyptian. Where are the army and police? > > Why did the pharaoh’s guards create something which was so dangerous that they had to devote their lives and those of their descendants to making sure it did not escape? Seems like pretty poor planning! > > Why were the descendants of the pharaoh’s guards apparently Moslems? Surely they would have preserved the old ways. > > The biplane is a DeHavilland Tiger Moth from the 1930s, too modern for the period of the film. But then again the Tiger Moth has stood in as a generic biplane countless times - it almost seems too late to worry about now! > > The Mummy takes a man’s eyes, but the man needs glasses for him to see clearly and the mummy can see perfectly well without glasses afterwards. > > Toward the end of the movie, when Imothep is talking to Anck-Su-Namum, when they show a close up of her face and neck you can see her neck move with her pulse. > > In the scene in the library, when Evie is putting back the books. She leans over to put the book back, but it falls to the ground and she is balancing on the ladder. When the camera cuts back to show the whole ladder, the book is nowhere to be found on the floor. > > In the scene towards the beginning where the librarian knocks over all the bookshelves, she’s wearing glasses. She never wears glasses after this, even when reading. > > When the biplane sinks into the quicksand, why don’t any of the parts around it sink as well? For that matter, why did the plane suddenly start sinking after staying in a fairly stable position for at least 15 seconds? [Quicksand’s weird…] > > On the DVD version of the movie there are some deleted scenes - one would have explained two mistakes that occured towards the end of the movie. Mistake one was that there was a hole in the ground when Jonathan and Rick are at the base of the statue of Horus. You can see the hole clearly when Rick lights the TNT - but without the missing scene there is absolutely no reason for that hole to be there and it just sort of appears. > > The second mistake is why there is no salt acid bobby-trap protecting the gold book like there was protecting the black book. In the missing scene some of Imhotep’s priests burst through the floor/ground and attack Jonathan and Rick, who get tossed aside. The priests then open the gold book’s hiding place and get burned all up by the salt acid. You can even see when Rick grabs the TNT that there is smoke rising from the hole. > > When O’Connell (Fraser) flies back to Hamunaptra he is wearing a black scarf like thing around his neck. In the following scenes the scarf disappears then returns a few times. > > Also when the beetle goes into the brother it goes in his left arm, Fraser rips the shirt, and cuts him in the forearm. Just before he cut we saw that the beetle was closer to the shoulder area. In the following scene the brother has blood on his right arm, his shirt is no longer torn and he has a bandage on his left hand. > > Just out of curiosity, where did the bandage come from on Fraser’s hand at the end of the movie? > > Why don’t they have to wait for the rising sun to be “shown the way” to Hamunaptra when they flew there towards the end of the movie? They had to wait for it at the beginning, right? > > If, towards the end of the movie, Imhotep, Beni, and Evie flew in on a whirlwind and Jonathan, Rick, and Winston flew in on a plane, where did the camels come from that they rode off on? > > The mummy Imhotep looks completely different the first time we see him (the dummy version) than the next time (the CGI version). > > As Jonathan, Rick and guy in black enter the gold room, they engage in a mummy fight with Imotep’s priests. During the fight they blast the mummy priests to pieces. During the last scenes in the room of gold, what happened to the pieces of the mummy priests - shouldn’t they have been scattered all over the path to the stairs? Someone must’ve been standing by with a broom… My additions to the above: Sure, there might be quicksand in Egypt, but in the middle of a dry desert? My understanding of quicksand was that the sand is suspended in water. The bandage thing is odd; a black wrapping appears on Fraser’s left hand just after the mummy-guards leave him, just before he starts fighting Imhotep. No sign of where it came from. Do some counting of the shots fired from each gun during the fight scenes. On the boat, one American’s revolver fires at least 11 shots (and he’s plainly using only one gun, because he’s using his free hand to fan the hammer). From his two revolvers, Fraser gets around 18 shots from a single reload, and does it again when shooting at Imhotep just before the first “cat scare”. Why do they need that dumb ‘key’? It doesn’t appear to displace any tumblers or anything…they should be able to open all the locks that require that ‘key’ with a screwdriver. End of movie: Beni is trapped in the treasure room. It’s plain that he will soon expire from either suffocation or starvation, surrounded by the gold he so coveted. Wouldn’t it have been BETTER, O Filmmakers, to leave it there, rather than bringing out the beetles one last time? They did Beni a favor by making his death quick. I mean, what’s the point of offering TWO horrible-death situations when either one would suffice on its own? The “bad eyes” problem has never bothered me as much, simply because I figure that, if ol’ Mummers can alter flesh to make it his own, he would be able to do the same with organs like eyes. But, then, if a viewer has to explain a flaw in a film, the filmmakers didn’t do their jobs. ---
**Author:** ![UncaStuart](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/uncastuart/32/404_2.png) [@UncaStuart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncaStuart)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2000, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dumb-things-in-the-mummy/25603/12 "2000-07-15T00:21:46Z")
It’s been a while since I’ve seen it, but out of the many frustrating inconsistencies, the one that gets me the most is this: If the mummy has the magical wherewhithal to come up with a great whonking dust storm to destroy the airplane, why on earth does he get into a physical fight with Brendan? Seems if you could call up a storm, you could just snap your fingers and produce enough energy to pulverize a mortal–the mummy equivalent of Indiana pulling out his pistol and shooting the swordsman. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2000, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dumb-things-in-the-mummy/25603/13 "2000-07-15T00:36:49Z")
I intend to show “The Mummy” at my Bad Film Festival this year. I cannot believe how wonderfully, cheesily bad it is. I’d like to show the 1972 version of “Lost Horizon”, too, if I can find it. It can be “Bad Remake Night”.