At this point I think the better question is ‘why?’. Seriously, Imhotep is gone, the Dragon Emperor blew up, the Scorpion King was vaporized. There might be plenty of other mummified bad guys out there that Fraser and family can take on, but why? Ryan Scott of MovieWeb makes a great remark in that it would be a bit nostalgia from twenty years past that would stand as the sole reason why this movie would be able to come back. Brendan Fraser wouldn’t mind reprising his role as Rick O’Connell but one has to think it’s because his career has been moderate to almost non-existent for a while now and he hasn’t been even a fraction as popular as he was back in the days when he was fighting ancient mummies and trying not to get hanged. There are a great many people who are as gung-ho as can be when it comes to movies such as this and would be able to, with a straight face, say ‘go for it’. But these are usually the same people that thought the last installment under Fraser’s watch was actually a well-done movie when in fact it was nearly just as big of a CGI mess as the second movie when the mutated Scorpion King arrived on the scene. There’s no denying that the movies have raked in the cash throughout their run, but each one seemed to get a little less impressive as time went on and the third movie even saw Maria Bello take the place of Rachel Weisz for some reason.
Josh Spiegel from The Hollywood Reporter gets into the idea of why Fraser’s initial movie was so much better than Tom Cruise’s and it’s pretty simple to figure out. Both movies feature treasure hunters that are out to get what they can and get rich in the process. But the 1999 movie was easily more likable and had a greater sense of belonging to its own time. The newer version with Cruise was kind of a mishmash of old and new school ideas that weren’t absolutely horrible but didn’t really resonate with the audience all that much, and as a result it was kind of a flop no matter what the box office numbers say. Fraser and company were a lot more entertaining to watch than Cruise trying to perform his textbook skill set of running, fighting, and looking bewildered half the time when anything new crosses his line of sight. While the idea of a connection between the main protagonist and antagonist was kind of interesting, keeping them apart was probably a better idea since it made them more formidable enemies and less likely to make the audience feel bad in any way for the antagonist. Honestly, the 2017 version almost seemed to make the audience empathize with the antagonist in a way since she’d committed an evil act for a very good reason in her mind. Plus, the act of making a female mummy wasn’t a bad idea really, save for the fact that she seemed an easier individual to pity since, admit it, women in pain vs. men in pain are bound to get the sympathetic vote each and every time. It’s not sexist, it’s very real, and to be honest women in movies are often seen far more deserving of empathy than men no matter what part they’re playing.
However, in the 1999 movie a lot of people seem to forget that Evelyn might have needed someone to save her, but when it came to other matters she was quite capable and could handle herself like the true scholar she was since she knew just about everything there was to know that was pertinent to the story. And what she didn’t know she found out and learned quickly since she was about as woke as any woman could have been in that movie. And then think once again as in the sequel she came back and she was a great deal like Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2, she was tough and she had the physical and martial skills to put down many an enemy. So there are many reasons why The Mummy was a great movie in 1999 and why the sequels were worth the effort when they came out, but seeking to recapture that magic seems like a bad idea since twenty years is a long time to sit and wait, even if there were two sequels and the continuity will, hopefully, be followed if this does happen. Unless you remember there were a lot of unanswered questions between the first and second movies, and few if any were ever answered. This idea feels like a cash grab and a way to bring Fraser back into the spotlight if it works, which isn’t that bad of an idea, unless it ends up blowing up in his face.
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