The Mummy became a modern-day blockbuster with the release of the 1999 reboot starring Brendan Fraser which decided to change things from a dreary horror-drama to a dark action-adventure resembling the swashbuckling adventure films from the era the movie takes place. Financially and critically, The Mummy was a huge success!
This success led to the movie spawning a franchise with a flawed but fun sequel, an animated series, and a third film that effectively ended the series becoming one of the most infamously bad sequels ever made. How did a series that starts off so well die off so quickly? It was a mixture of many things.
15 The Series Gradually Became More For Kids
The first movie was definitely lighter than the original film but kept a threatening villain with Imhotep, a great atmosphere, and enough dark elements to pull off an epic blockbuster. The Mummy Returns became lighter but still felt like a follow up while Tomb of the Dragon Emperor drifted the farthest away from the tone of the first movie.
14 The Comedy Kept Getting Worse And Worse
The first movie had comedic elements to break up the suspense and for the most part, it worked due to a superior script and the chemistry of the characters. As the series became more lighthearted, they opted for cheaper gags & sillier jokes to appeal to all generations until the jokes became cringe-worthy in the third movie.
13 The Recasting Of Evie O'Connell Did Not Work
While Maria Bello is a brilliant actress, the filmmakers poorly used her since her version of Evie didn't look or act anything like the Evie we had grown to love from the previous movies. Maybe it was best that Rachel Weisz was not involved with the project but she would have been a diamond in the rough.
12 There Was No Mummy In The Third Mummy Movie
The Mummy: The Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor couldn't even get its titular character right since the Dragon Emperor himself never gets mummified in his backstory but instead just gets cursed to turn into a stone statue. So when a movie is called The Mummy and doesn't have a mummy, that's a pretty bad sign.
11 The Sequel Introduced A Comedic Child Sidekick
Rick and Evelyn returned in The Mummy Returns and proved to be just as great as they were in the first movie, but the movie added Alex O'Connell, their son. Now a child sidekick can work as shown with Laura in Logan but this one came off more as annoying along the lines of Short Round from Indiana Jones just to appeal to all ages.
10 The Scorpion King CGI Was Top Tier Terrible
The setup and build up for Dwayne Johnson's Scorpion King villain was perfect, audiences were expecting some undead warrior who would make us shrug at the idea of Imhotep, but instead what we got was a half-human/half-spider with Johnson's face featuring what was already some of the worst CGI back then: it's even worse today.
9 What Happened To Alex's Accent?
While Alex was far from beloved, that's no excuse for the third movie having no excuse for a lack of consistency. Sure, he's grown up, but the O'Connells still lived in England, so it's hard to believe that Alex would outgrow a British accent. The worst part? Luke Ford who played Alex was Australian! He could have done the accent just fine!
8 The Yetis Were The Straw That Broke The Camel's Back
For the first and some of the second act, Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor was bad, but it was at least tolerable. Then they introduce the Yetis and this is when the movie crashes and burns to Batman & Robin levels. You can't salvage a movie after a Yeti from Tibet makes an American football joke.
7 Wasting The Talented Jet Li
Jet Li has played villains effectively in the past with movies like The One but rather than letting Li do his job as both an actor and martial artist, Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor only used him on screen for maybe ten minutes while the rest of the movie replaces him as a CGI living statue or a monster.
6 The Animated Series Was Not Needed
This was during an age where if a movie was successful, it was inevitably going to get an animated spin-off show and sometimes it worked, but that was not the case for The Mummy. The series was a poorly animated and written attempt to appeal to kids once again after the success of The Mummy Returns.
5 The Lack Of Horror Left Classic Fans Alienated
One reason the first movie is still the best is due to its darker elements like Imhotep's corpse forms, the plagues that stem from him, the scarabs eating a man in seconds, Imhotep's origin story, and the darker tone mixed well with the adventure. The sequels kept little to no darker elements.
4 Jonathan Became A One Note Annoyance
While Jonathan was definitely a more comedic character in the first movie, he was also endearing and helped in the adventure. In both sequels, Jonathan became just the goofy money-hungry sidekick that keeps getting into trouble. You can almost hear the canned laughter and silly theme song whenever he's on-screen.
3 The Third Movie Didn't Know What To Do With Brendan Fraser
Brendan Fraser is a great guy and he killed it as Rick O'Connell in the first two movies, but the character of Rick just seems wasted in the third movie. He provides most of the very few okay moments, but for most of his screen time, he was wasted with cringe-worthy jokes or just shooting things to look somewhat cool.
2 Undead Warriors VS Undead Warriors Should Have Been Great... But Wasn't
Two armies of the undead fighting? Sounds like perfect material for a Mummy movie, right? Well, the jokes on you because the third movies decides to make the more mummy-like characters into the allies to our heroes while they fight a bunch of statues with very poor CGI. At least it looked better than the Scorpion King?
1 Imhotep Was The Icon Of The Series And Removing Him Was A Mistake
Rick O'Connell was a great hero, but there was another reason why the first two movies are superior: Arnold Vosloo as Imhotep AKA the titular character. Boris Karloff is undoubtedly iconic, but Vosloo made it his own and became just as iconic. So replacing him made the third movie lose most of its identity.