The elements of terror and a good capture of the period from the first film, are completely discarded here. Bigger and fun but does not have the charm as before

Rating: 6/10 (4 July 2020)

With one foot in the adventurous Spielberg of Indiana Jones, the megalomaniac Stephen Sommers skillfully and unashamedly brought together all the clichés that permeate the most basic of adventure films, whether in the usual conception of good vs. evil. badly, in the inevitable romance between two charismatic protagonists, in the uncompromising epic tone of a production set in exotic environments, and in the technical pomposity to fill and please the public's eyes. Being a bet that was more than right, "The Mummy" earned a few million for Universal's coffers, which would inevitably end up generating a following. The producer called Stephen Sommers again, who once again wrote and directed. Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, John Hannah, Arnold Vosloo, Oded Fehr, Patricia Velásquez would also return by reprising their characters.
In London, inside a dark chamber of the British Museum, an old force of terror is about to be reborn. It is 1933, the year of Scorpio. It has been ten years since the brave Rick O'Connell (Brendan Fraser) and Egyptologist Evelyn (Rachel Weisz) fought for their lives against Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo), a 3,000-year-old enemy. Now Rick and Evelyn are married and live in London, along with their son, Alex (Freddie Boath), who is eight years old. Several events culminate in the discovery of the resurrected body of Imhotep, thanks to the help of the reincarnation of his beloved from ancient Egypt, Anck-Su-Naman (Patricia Velazquez), who killed and died for him. Thus, the mummy returns to roam the Earth, determined to carry out its search for immortality. However, another force is also at large in the world, the Scorpion King (Dwayne Johnson), who was born from the dark rituals of Egyptian mysticism and is even more powerful than Imhotep. When they face each other, the fate of Earth will be in danger and Rick and Evelyn will start a desperate race to save the world from an unspeakable evil and also to rescue Alex from the followers of Imhotep, who took the boy because he, without having a clue, he placed the bracelet of Anubis on his arm, an artifact of incredible power. On this journey they will go to Egypt and enter the Scorpion King's domain. A long time ago this terrible warrior promised his soul to the god Anubis in exchange for military sovereignty. He and his army were frozen in time, in a kind of interval between life and death, but now they are ready to kill again. The King Scorpion has more powers, secrets and strength than the fearsome Imhotep, is full of hatred and should not be disturbed.
Sommers established himself as a nostalgic for classic adventure, which, in the midst of his generous production in special effects and grandiose scenarios, seeks to flirt with naivety and disengagement with great ambitions that allow him to flow and breathe organically while entertainment. Anyway, here is again the whole gathering of elements that made the original taste good, improved now by a more experienced director and a cast whose tuning has grown satisfactorily from one film to the next. Of course, Sommers who does not miss the chance to shamelessly reissue the most striking moments of the original production, such as the imposing sandstorm (here taken to the sea) or the climaxes - which involved reading the Book of the Dead, was 'recreated '- and the character who reads the spell, although different from the one who performed the task the first time, gets to be confused with the same symbol - which certainly denotes a certain lack of interest in innovating in the script, even though there are curious twists and turns.
In "The Mummy's Return", Sommers makes this mistake again by creating an absurd story that serves as a mere excuse for him to portray his heroes facing, in exotic locations, digitally created villains. With this, the director manages to produce a film that entertains the audience for about two hours, but that is promptly forgotten when the lights go on. Films like Return of the Mummy always revolve around ancient curses, human sacrifices and legendary beings that are apparently indestructible. However, the first to recognize the clichés is the story's own hero, Rick, since he is the one who says the above sentence at various moments in the narrative - and this is the characteristic that redeems, at least in part, this production: by insisting on not taking himself seriously, the film ends up conquering the viewer through his humor, which tends to self-parody. Yes, parody: after all, how would you define the reaction of a certain character in this sequel, who, upon discovering what the villain's goals are, exclaims: Ah, the old trick of destroying the world '?
Much more form than content, this was a film that enriched the universe of its predecessor, but even more dumbed down a formula that, honestly, was never smart. The great asset of Return of the Mummy was to bring to the mainstream world in its first film role, still in a completely underdeveloped way, what would be, today, one of the biggest names in the world entertainment industry: Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. In charge of playing the Scorpion King, perhaps the greatest warrior Egypt has ever seen, for a few minutes of the film, the character's popularity ended up being so great that the producers thought it best to give him his first film, The Scorpion King.
The lack of originality ends up being compensated, however, by the technical values of production. Sommers excels in the action scenes, intense and well-choreographed (there is a sensational duel between two characters), in addition to maintaining their ability to exhibit and explore the grandeur in art direction. Alan Silvestri replaces Jerry Goldsmith well in the composition of the soundtrack and maintains the scale of the production's grandeur. The production has numerous shots involving visual effects, which work in a few scenes, such as the chase of the mummies on a double-decker bus in the heart of 1930s London, but which, in general, aged extremely badly and arrive in several moments to be extremely shameful and regrettable, especially in a production of almost 100 million dollars, in which we can mention the emergence of a forest in the middle of the desert. This same forest being "sucked" into a pyramid, the escape of the airship from a water wall connecting its turbo, the extremely artificial look of the local pygmies and, mainly, the scenes that perhaps most people remember in this film, which is the regrettable and shameful CGI of the Scorpion King, amazingly, is one of the main characters in the plot. The most powerful warrior in ancient Egypt, here, seems to have come out of a video game whose lack of budget did not allow it to be finished. Not only the face, but the whole movement of the character takes away all the sense of danger and urgency from the climax of the film, causing laughter and greatly impairing the final experience of those who watch it.
Even the elements of terror and a good capture of the period and its classicist features from the first film, are completely discarded here. Becoming just that big-scale action-adventure movie that, while fun, doesn't have the same charm as before. Sommers certainly wanted to adapt new blockbuster rules and please the general public, and he still does not do badly in directing the action that is well shaped and still has matinee elements. Even if you come to opt for generic elements of constant slow motion and quick cuts, with some vexamous visual fuss. "The Mummy's Return" is not a film that can be considered bad. He has good times, despite a substantial amount of poorly performed effects along with recycling and repetition of past plots, not to mention some rather stupid and even contradictory decisions to the first film. Arnold Vosloo's Imothep in the first film had the power to control the ten plagues that plagued Egypt, an even smart and cool balcony, and here out of nowhere he apparently has the power to levitate people by hand; climbing walls with your hands; create tsunamis with a gelatinous face of yours; anyway ... he became a perfect villain of the X-Men that the X-Men never had.
The film, like the first one, has a good sense of rhythm and never fails to slow down in a way that is always direct to the point of the thread and surprisingly cohesive. And even with the countless new villainous characters and the presence of almost 5 different macguffins, nothing gets confused and everything is quite understandable. In the cast again we have the greatest virtues of production. Brendan Fraser, despite being more of the same, he has a lot of charisma in his Rick, and he nourishes a good chemistry with an always great Rachel Weisz who manages to be the only character to demonstrate a clear evolution from the silly historian character in danger from the first film to a woman who knows how to fight practically everything she sees ahead and her stimulus is in love for her family. And young Freddie Boath completes the family triangle that is certainly the efficient heart of the film. We have more of the same with John Hannah, the clumsy man who manages to function as comic relief as possible, and Oded Fehr with his Ardeth once again fulfilling the quota of the Arab franchise, but without any charisma.
The film goes far from having any more essence to make here a perfect continuation of your great and charming first film. Overall, the film ends up working well, as the action sequences are really breathtaking - but when the story comes to an end, the viewer ends up discovering that his 'old friends' remain Indiana Jones, Luke Skywalker and John McClane, not Rick O'Connell or Ardeth Bay. And this is, after all, the big difference between Stephen Sommers and other storytellers: his characters are for immediate consumption, not for a long trip.