The Mummy (1999)

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Movie
German title The Mummy
Original title The mummy
Themummy-logo.svg
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1999
length 124 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Stephen Sommers
script Stephen Sommers
Lloyd Fonvielle
Kevin Jarre
production Patricia Carr
Sean Daniel
James Jacks
music Jerry Goldsmith
camera Adrian Biddle
cut Bob Ducsay
occupation
chronology

Successor  →
The Mummy Returns

The Mummy is a horror - adventure film of the American director Stephen Sommers is from the year 1999. The film is a remake of the horror film - the classic The Mummy from the year 1932. The film opened on 3 June 1999 in German cinemas.

action

In ancient Egyptian Thebes of 1290 BC Chr. Lead the high priest Imhotep and Anck-Su-Namun, the mistress of the Pharaoh , a clandestine love affair. One evening, Pharaoh Seti I discovers treacherous evidence and is murdered by the two of them. When the bodyguard appears, Anck-Su-Namun commits suicide so that Imhotep can escape and later call her back to life. Imhotep, in turn, steals their body with his priests and takes it to Hamunaptra, the city of the dead. With the "Black Book of the Dead" kept there, he begins a forbidden resuscitation ritual. But the Medjai , the Pharaoh's bodyguards, prevent him from successfully completing the ritual. Imhotep's priests are mummified alive as punishment . He himself is subject to the worst of all curses , the Hom-Dai : Wrapped in mummy bandages, he is locked in a sarcophagus together with carnivorous scarabs and buried under the statue of Anubis , where the Medjai will from now on closely guard him for his ominous one Prevent return.

In 1923 the American Rick O'Connell fought for the French Foreign Legion in the ruins of Hamunaptra against a rebellious Bedouin people . When his troops are overrun, he barely survives when he escapes to the rear of the ruins, which the Bedouins do not dare to enter due to an apparition. Three years later Rick is robbed in Cairo by the unsuccessful archaeologist Jonathan Carnahan, the loot is an ancient Egyptian, octagonal box . Jonathan's sister Evelyn, a librarian and Egyptologist at the historical museum , discovers a map of the lost city of Hamunaptra. When Dr. Terence Bey, the museum director, is deliberately made unusable, Jonathan and Evelyn set out to recruit Rick as a guide to Hamunaptra. After rescuing him from the gallows in a prison , Rick agrees to take them to the fabled city.

On their trip on the Nile they get to know the American treasure hunters Burns, Daniels and Henderson as well as the Egyptologist Dr. All Chamberlain who are also on their way to Hamunaptra. They are run by Rick's former brother-in-arms Beni Gabor, who abandoned Rick at the time. At night her paddle steamer is boarded by the Medjai. When the ship caught fire, everyone jumped off board and then set off by land to the city of the dead, Rick with the Carnahans and Beni with the Americans.

Both groups make interesting discoveries in Hamunaptra. The Carnahan group finds Imhotep's mummy, and the Americans find a chest that they open despite Chamberlain's warning of Imhotep's curse. It contains the "Black Book of the Dead" and five canopies with the organs of Anck-Su-Namun. During the night Evelyn steals the Book of the Dead and reads it aloud. In doing so, she unwittingly awakens Imhotep, who wants to complete the ritual that was interrupted over 3000 years ago. When he triggers one of the ten biblical plagues with a swarm of locusts and snatches Burn's eyes and tongue, both expeditions flee back to Cairo.

Imhotep engages Beni as a servant and follows the treasure hunters to Cairo. There he executes his curse on the Americans by stealing other body parts and their vital energy and thus regaining his human body. When he meets Evelyn, he thinks she is the reincarnation of his lover Anck-Su-Namun and wants to kidnap her, but Rick can drive him away with a cat. In the Egyptian museum they meet again Ardeth Bay, the leader of the Medjai, because the museum director Terrence Bey is also a Medjai. Evelyn suspects that the "Golden Book of Amun-Ra " can kill the living mummy again. Bay, in turn, believes that Imhotep needs Evelyn as a human sacrifice in order to be able to revive his beloved. Imhotep shows up with a new, willless following and kidnaps Evelyn to Hamunaptra.

Rick, Jonathan and Bay follow him on Captain Havelock's plane, but Imhotep crashes the plane in a sandstorm. In the temple of Hamunaptra he begins again with the ritual to resurrect his beloved, but at the last moment is prevented from completing by Rick. While Rick fights against Imhotep's undead priests and Bay apparently sacrifices himself, Evelyn and Jonathan find the "Golden Book of Amun-Ra" and let Imhotep become mortal through a spell so that Rick can finally kill him.

Beni has used the time to create wealth from the ruins and unintentionally triggers a self-destruct mechanism. While the temple collapses, Rick, Evelyn and Jonathan manage to escape. Beni, on the other hand, is locked up in the treasury, where the scarabs attack him. When Hamunaptra sinks into the desert sands, Ardeth Bay appears, who also survived. Rick and Evelyn become a couple, want to start a quiet life and ride off on Beni's gold-laden camels.

production

The film was made in Morocco and at Shepperton Studios in Great Britain . The museum scene was filmed in the great hall of the Mentmore Tower . For the representation of the port of Giza, film recordings of the historical shipyard Chatham Dockyard , which is under monument protection, were made and then processed by computer (CGI). Sommers' film was the surprise hit of the 1999 summer movie. It grossed more than $ 155 million in the US and $ 416 million worldwide. Joe Dante , Clive Barker and George A. Romero were among the directors in discussion.

criticism

“The movie The Mummy is like the fat, stupid dog you had as a kid; you can't help it and just like him. "

- John J. Puccio : DVDTown.com

" The mummy is the typical summer hit: loud, spectacular and dispensable."

- Maitland McDonagh : TV Guide's Movie Guide

“This crooked mixture of shock and slapstick, freak show and B-movie doesn't want to be more than a carefree cinema pleasure - and thus becomes a disrespectful Indiana Jones parody, which even the strict Indy producer George Lucas participated in would appreciate a smile. "

- Cinema

“Remake of the old Karl Freund material of the same name from 1932. The staging, which is based on classic models of adventure and monumental films, strives for an ironic undertone that makes the film amusing, at least in parts. With the coarsening of the material for the event movie, the intimate atmosphere of the original is lost. "

- Lexicon of international film

Background and useful information

  • The Egyptologist Stuart Tyson Smith from the University of California worked in an advisory capacity for the film team to ensure that the Egyptian language was reproduced as faithfully as possible in the dialogues as well as on questions about ancient Egyptian culture . Smith had already supported Roland Emmerich for his film Stargate . However, since it is unknown how the ancient Egyptian language actually sounded and has to be pronounced, the film reverted to Coptic . Indeed, this language arose directly from ancient Egyptian.
  • The high priest Imhotep actually existed and was believed to be the architect and builder of the step pyramid of Djoser . However, the historical Imhotep lived in the time of the 3rd Dynasty , in the Old Kingdom and not at the time of the film, which is set in the New Kingdom . The portrayal of Imhotep in the film as the king's murderer also stands in opposition: the historical Imhotep was considered the Pharaoh's closest confidante , was already famous during his lifetime and was even deified in subsequent epochs.
  • The film character of Anck-su-Namun is presented as if she were the Pharaoh's only mistress. This is also ahistorical : a pharaoh could have several wives ( polygamy ), concubines and concubines .
  • In the film, the scarab , a species of beetle , is shown as a feared carnivore. However, this is in stark contrast to the true nature of the scarabs, which are coprophagous as adult insects and are completely harmless.

synchronization

role actor Voice actor
Rick O'Connell Brendan Fraser Torsten Münchow
Beni Gabor Kevin J. O'Connor Santiago Ziesmer
Jonathan Carnahan John Hannah Stefan Staudinger
Evelyn Carnahan Rachel Weisz Bettina White
Captain Winston Havelock Bernard Fox Wolfgang Völz
Ardeth Bay Oded Fehr Frank Glaubrecht
Overseer Gad Hassan Omid Djalili Tom Deininger

Sequels

Awards (selection)

  • Leslie Shatz , Chris Carpenter , Rick Kline and Chris Munro were nominated for an Oscar in the category of Best Sound in 2000.
  • The film was nominated for a BAFTA in the category Best Visual Effects .
  • He received the Saturn Award for best make-up and was nominated eight more times for this film award (actor (Brendan Fraser), actress (Rachel Weisz), director and screenplay (both Stephen Sommers), best fantasy film, best costumes, music and Special effects).
  • Jerry Goldsmith was also honored with the BMI Film Music Award.
  • The film was also very popular in Germany and in 1999 received the Golden Screen for more than three million visitors and the Gold Bogey Award for more than three million visitors within the first 28 days.
  • The German Film and Media Assessment FBW in Wiesbaden awarded the film the rating "valuable".

literature

  • Matt Cardin: Mummies around the World: An Encyclopedia of Mummies in History, Religion, and Popular Culture. ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara 2014, ISBN 1-61069-420-1 .
  • Susan D. Cowie, Tom Johnson: The Mummy in Fact, Fiction and Film. McFarland, Jefferson 2001, ISBN 0-7864-3114-8 .
  • Cory Hamblin: Serket's Movies: Commentary and Trivia on 444 Movies. Dorrance Publishing, Pittsburgh 2009, ISBN 1-4349-9605-0 , pages 304-306.

Web links

Wikiquote: The Mummy  Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for The Mummy . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , July 2005 (PDF; test number: 82 119 UMD).
  2. ^ British Film Locations for The Mummy
  3. ↑ Box office results for The Mummy
  4. ↑ The Mummy on cinema.de
  5. ↑ The mummy. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  6. ↑ Penelope Wilson: Sacred Signs: Hieroglyphs in Ancient Egypt. Oxford University Press, Oxford (UK) 2003, ISBN 0-19-280299-2 , page 134.
  7. ↑ Susan D. Cowie, Tom Johnson: The Mummy in Fact, Fiction and Film. Pages 38–39.
  8. ^ Campbell Price: Imhotep. In: Matt Cardin: Mummies around the World. Page 175.
  9. ↑ a b Cory Hamblin: Serket's Movies. Page 304.
  10. ^ The mummy in the German synchronous file
  11. ↑ The Mummy (1999): Awards . Entry on IMDb, accessed April 1, 2016.
  12. ↑ The Mummy on fbw-filmbeval.com