The Mummy Returns

Deliberate mistake: At the beginning, we see the Scorpion King leading his army into battle. However, despite people being stabbed with swords, and slashed, there is no blood on any of the soldiers, nor on their weapons. Kind of hard to believe war was that clean back then. (00:01:40)

Deliberate mistake: According to the DVD version, the Army of Anubis roars in ARABIC. Rather strange for a monstrous army of an ancient Egyptian god... (01:44:15)

Deliberate mistake: When Rick and Imhotep battle man-to-man at the end, in one shot above them you see steam blasting from the side of the screen. Problem is that when the angle changes, it's clear that area is just empty space, so the steam came from nowhere. (The DVD commentary mentions that they always had people with flame-throwers and steam-machines right off-screen to blast fire and smoke to make certain scenes more dramatic).

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Mistakes

Factual error: When Brendan Fraser & his son are running to reach the pyramid before the sun hits it, the sunrise line approaches the pyramid along the ground, but the sun would naturally have hit the pyramid at the top first and worked its way down to the ground. [Some people insist on trying to correct this - think of it this way. If the sun's illuminating the ground from way up in the sky, what's keeping something higher up than the ground in darkness?] (01:34:40)

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Suggested correction: Despite the additional comments this posting is wrong. The terminator line - the distinct boundary between sunlit day and dark night - moves horizontally across the surface of the earth, from east to west. It is perfectly feasible for the land behind Rick (i.e. to the east) to be in bright sunlight while the pyramid - to the west - is still in darkness. What is not feasible is anyone outrunning the terminator line, which moves at around 1500 kmh in the latitudes they are in.

Try it for yourself - get a round object, such as a basketball, a map tack and a flashlight. As you shine the flashlight on the ball you will see the equivalent of the day/night terminator line. Now stick the map tack into the ball and slowly rotate the ball with the light still shining on it. As it moves, the terminator moves and the map tack will become illuminated before the surface of the ball at the base of the tack. The light will move down from the top of the tack. The only way it would work as shown in the movie is if everything is exactly flat - with no differences in altitude above the ground. Obviously that is not the case. (Of course, if you don't want to poke holes in your basketball, you can use any combination of something round and something to stick to it.)

The original post is correct. Because of its sheer height, the top of the pyramid would receive direct sunlight first, just as a mountaintop receives sunlight before it appears on level ground.

Charles Austin Miller

It is perfectly possible for a mountain to be in complete darkness and the low lying land nearby to be brightly sunlit if the mountain is to the west and has not yet been reached by the terminator line. I repeat, the terminator line moves horizontally (in all practical terms) across the surface of the earth and as a result anything west of the line will be in darkness regardless of its height and will stay that way until the line reaches it.

Look, you're talking about mountains miles away beyond the terminator (so far away that they would be beyond the range of sight anyway). We are talking about a pyramid, easily the tallest thing in the immediate vicinity, in the near background, only a mile away at most. Under the physical conditions and locations present in this film, the pyramid should be illuminated top-down. Period.

Charles Austin Miller

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Quotes

Rick O'Connell: Knowing my brother in law, he probably deserves whatever you're about to do to him. But this is my house, and I have certain rules about snakes and dismemberment.

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Trivia

Trivia: When the pygmies fall into the river after they blow up the bridge, look closely. As the right hand end falls into the ravine, one end is glowing from the blast, and one of the pygmies climbs on top of it and rides it down, hand waving, exactly like the scene from "Dr. Strangelove, or How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb". Must be deliberate, and definitely worth a look.

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Questions

Question: After Alex translates the hieroglyphs as "This way to Scorpion King," Jonathan quietly responds by saying "It's just my work." What exactly did he mean by that? He's not a translator of ancient Egyptian like his sister Evie, so I don't think he literally meant "work" as his profession.

Phaneron ★

Chosen answer: He says, "this just might work" meaning he and Alex trying to bring Evie back using the book of the dead.

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