The Mummy Returns (2001) - 89 mistakes

Continuity: In the British Museum, when Rick and Ardeth are saving Evie, Rick gives her a .45 pistol and they start to shoot the guards, her pistol fires once and the slide locks back meaning the pistol had no ammo, but she keeps firing as if the magazine was still full.

Plot hole: The timeline is off.  Mummy started in 1923, yes, but it wasn't until three years later in 1926 that Evie and Rick actually met. Mummy Returns takes place in 1933 - only 7 years later. At that, Rick and Evie's son was born the year before they met...

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?]

Continuity: When Rick is trapped in the bathroom, he finds John underwater in a bathtub full of suds. As John climbs out of the tub, his body naturally is covered in suds.   However, when he and Rick jump out the window and start running away, John's body is completely suds-free.

Continuity: When Rick and Ardeth Bay save Evie from the warehouse after Imhotep is resurrected, there are four mummies chasing them when they get on the double-decker bus. Rick shoots one of the mummies and "kills" it.  He shoots another one in half and goes to the top of the bus to fight another one.  The top portion of the mummy that got shot in half then fights Ardeth Bay.  Evie kills the mummy that got shot in half and the top part of the bus gets torn off by the bridge and kills the mummy Rick is fighting.  John stops the bus and they all sign with relief. Whatever happened to the fourth mummy chasing them?

Continuity: In the beginning when Brendan Fraser is looking around the tunnels he turns around to see his kid and they scream. As they are screaming they are at eye level but when a few seconds later when they are standing the kid is like 2 feet shorter then Brendan Fraser, and if you look around there is nothing for the kid to have stood on.

Continuity: Before Fraser and the gang reach the Oasis, the falcon is sent back to the human army that is advancing in order to stop the Anubis horde. There are literally tens of thousands of men advancing. Yet after the first battle with the Anubis warriors, the human force is decimated. Only a ragged line of warriors remains for the final charge of the Anubis warriors. But there are no human bodies or horses in the sand.

Continuity: In the first movie, Rick (Brendan Fraser) has a tattoo of the eye of Horus on the back of his right hand (easier to see in the theatres than on the video, but if you look closely you can see it several times throughout the film). However, in the sequel the tattoo is gone and now he has that tattoo on his forearm, which he didn't have in the first one. Considering the time period, tattoo removal wasn't possible.

Continuity: During the first battle, the Scorpion King is fighting with his sword in his right hand and his shield in the left. For one instant, they change arms. I assume the film must have been reversed.

Continuity: At the end of the movie, when Imhotep is hanging off the ledge, if you look at his arm and his hand, there isn't any pressure being put on them, almost like he's just standing behind it, with his arms resting on the ledge.

Continuity: During the ride on the double decker bus. Rick is fighting the mummy by punching him in the face. The mummy's tongue and face are a grey color. Right before the mummy gets killed on the low bridge we cut to his expression and his tongue is pink.

Continuity: After Rick and Evie open the chest with the bracelet in it, the Nile begins to rush in. They are running down a corridor and Rick has his rucksack (with the chest in it) in his left hand. The Nile is shown rushing in upon them. They turn to face the oncoming water and Rick puts both arms around Evie. You can see both his hands. Then he reaches up and holds onto the grate with both hands. When the wall collapses and Rick and Evie wash out, the rucksack is back in his left hand.

Revealing: In the British Museum after O'Connell frees Evie from being sacrificed, they both shoot at glass containers filled with alcohol and formaldehyde. Right before they explode, you can see protective masks very clearly on the guards that were standing in front of them.

Revealing: In the visions of Nefertiri scene where Nefertiri is fighting Anck-su-Namun back in ancient Egypt, Evie (Nefertiri) gets knocked to the floor and when she lifts her mask up you can see on her right index finger is a band aid/plaster. Did they have plasters back in ancient times?

Audio problem: When they arrive at "The Magic Carpet" you can hear Izzy drag three heavy bolts across the door, when the door opens, there are no bolts - just as well, otherwise shooting the lock wouldn't have worked.

Continuity: In the first big catfight between Anck-Su-Namun and Nefertiri (in Seti's throne room), look carefully when Nefertiri is knocked down the first time. Her weapons fall to the ground; however, when she bounds back to her feet, the knives have magically reappeared in her hands.

Plot hole: The mummies that attack during the scene on the doubledecker bus are supposedly pretty tough and can smash through brick and masonry walls. However, during the fight just before the bus hits the bridge, the mummy fighting Fraser acts like a normal person. The two grapple together, and the mummy has his hands around Fraser's throat and tries to strangle him. Not only does Fraser fend him off, he even breaks his grip and dives to the floor before the bridge hits. Pretty wimpy for a mummy that just tore through a steel bus roof.

Visible crew/equipment: When Ardeth, Rick and Evie arrive at the first city where Imhotep took their son, Evie is walking through the hall where she had the vision of fighting with Anuk-Sun-Amun in her previous life. As she's walking past/behind a column, you can see someone's head and shoulder poking out from the back side of the column.

Continuity: When Rick jumps over the fire to save Evie in the museum, her arms are tied together. The instant he hits the board and the camera is at another angle, her arms are free. Then when she falls over his shoulder, they are bound again.

Revealing: After Rick and Evie find the bracelet the water starts coming after them. There are then shots of the water and then them running. Finally, they stop and hold each other. Shortly after that the wave comes over them. If you notice right before it hits them, it is their doubles you see. Not the actors.

Revealing: When Ardeth Bay is waiting for the warriors of Anubis to attack, his close up shows that he is sweating off his forehead tattoos.

Plot hole: In the scene where Alex is escaping the train, he has to pull the emergency stop cord to make the train stop and even Imhotep is surprised that the train is stopping. However, their destination was Karnak so that Alex could see the next step of the journey. As Alex enters the ancient city, the bracelet reacts and he sees the next step, thus, they are at Karnak. Shouldn't the train have been stopped or in the process of stopping already without Alex pulling the cable if they had reached their destination?

Factual error: In the scene where the airship has crashed, Izzy uses a modern day fire extingusher that was painted black.

Continuity: When Rick and Ardeth are saving Evie from the library Ardeth manages to shoot the chemicals and blow them up. When you see him shoot them from Ardeth's view Imhotep has disappeared, as he was standing next to the chemicals before they were shot.

Revealing: When Jonathan gets separated from Rick, Alex, and Evelyn while running, he bumps into another surviving guard and they keep running together. While they're running, if you look on the ground, you can see tire tracks left by the camera vehicle.

Continuity: In the scene when Rick and John are pinned down in the lavatory by machine gun fire if you look at the stained glass window before they jump through it, it is smooth but just before they jump through it it is textured like break-away glass.

Continuity: When we first enter the museum there is a long shot of the resurrection area with Evie at the top of the screen lying on a wooden stretcher. She is conscious and seen moving around to adjust the ropes. In the next shot, she is unconscious and is only woken once she is bumped on the table.

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.

Other: During the first battle between the Medjai and the Anubis warriors there is a part when all of the Anubis warriors start to get killed off. You can see a Medjai jog across the bottom of the screen from right to left with his sword held out. He runs into an Anubis warrior at the bottom left hand side of the screen and he turns to sand. It's obvious that the guy wasn't doing anything and they just edited in a warrior and had him destroyed. You can tell that the direction for these guys was, "Just run across the screen like you're in battle." Some of the guys are real animated and jump and hack, this guy just looks like he's taking a leisurely jog. He doesn't even swing his arm.

Factual error: After Evie is stabbed and dies in Rick's arms, if you look closely at her neck, you can still see a pulse in her neck. Dead people don't have pulses. Yes, obviously they couldn't have actually killed her for the shot, but at the same time they shouldn't have had a close-up of her neck either...

Plot hole: Anubis Warriors can only be killed by being beheaded. But during the final battle, you see several are killed by simply being stabbed.

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...

Continuity: In the scene where the bad guys ask John Hannah about the bracelet of Anubis (and he has no idea what they're talking about), they throw him on a chair, and one of the guys in red holds a knife to his throat. In the shots from the front, he also grabs John Hannah's hair with his other hand, in almost all of the shots from behind, he doesn't.

Revealing: In the scene where Rick and Evie break through the wall together with the water (after their son made the columns fall), you can see that Evie is lying on a skateboard on which she's being pulled forward. (It's a black one, visible when she leans over to Rick.) You can also easily see it under Rick.

Continuity: When Ardeth (Oded Fehr) waves goodbye to the Medjai leaders, at Izzy's place from the front his right arm is raised. They show a behind shot and his arm is lowered. They go back to the front and his arm is still raised.

Continuity: When they arrive at the Magic Carpet, in the very frame where the camera is on Rick and you can hear Izzy lock the doors, Jonathan is seen walking towards Rick, and he gets very close to him. The camera then cuts to the locked doors, and when it cuts back to Rick and Evie you can see Jonathan walk all the way from the car door back towards Rick - for a second time.

Factual error: We get a panoramic view of London with the houses of Parliament, St Paul's Dome and Tower Bridge. The problem is that Tower Bridge has been moved next to the Houses of Parliament (they have put it in place of Westminster Bridge) and it should in fact be not visible at that point but several miles down river. St Paul's is also on the wrong side of the river. If this is where Tower Bridge is in the film then there are no low bridges for the bus to hit in the chase which follows the escape from the British Museum. Were it in the proper place there are quite a few.

Factual error: When Rick and Evy find the first sand castle Alex left, there is one point where Evy lightly brushes some sand off of the top. If the sand had fully dried, the castle would have crumbled. (Confirmed in DVD commentary).

Continuity: When the family is on top of the pyramid, in one shot Brendan Fraser has stubble, then in the next shot he is completely clean shaven.

Continuity: Towards the end, where the pyramid is sucking up the oasis, and everyone is jumping on the dirigible, Jonathan's slash on his chest from fighting Anck-Su-Namun has mysteriously healed, and there is no blood, although his shirt is still cut.

Continuity: During the long shot when the cast are racing across Tower Bridge in the double decker bus, right in the middle of the screen you can see the twinkling lights of a distant skyscraper which looks suspiciously like Canary Wharf, which of course had not yet been built in 1935. Its construction was in fact not completed until 1990.

Visible crew/equipment: You can see this mistake in the double decker bus scene. The bus suddenly turns left (right on the screen cause this is a front take) and hits a car that is parked in the street. If you look closely, you can see that the wheels of the car don't move because the car is mounted on a wheeled surface.

Factual error: If rockets were to attached to the basket of a balloon, the balloon would remain in the same spot but the basket would spin around it, due to the flexible ropes between the basket and balloon.

Continuity: In the scene where Rick and Eve are hanging from the bars in the flooding tunnel she has her green top on. The water hits them and then they are haning from the bars, but the green top is gone. Then, when the wall breaks and the two of them spill out, she has her green shirt again.

Factual error: Our Heroes are running after the Bad Guys who have kidnapped their "Precocious Kid." They are chasing them in a dirigible. We see them flying across the full Moon. A few nights later, we see them flying across... the full Moon. The phase of the Moon is probably the single most abused astronomy idea in movies (besides sounds in space). The Moon goes through phases as it orbits the Earth. The phase changes every night, and the difference over even two nights is pretty clear. It's possible, just, that over three nights the Moon can be almost full, then full, then a little past full. But usually the Moon is very different over the course of that much time. Really, the phase should have changed quite a bit during the chase.

Revealing: The Anubis Warriors do not leave footsteps in the sand, but they do kick it up when they run. This is especially obvious when the army turns to dust at the end of the movie, leaving a pristine, footprintless desert. One could argue that the dust from the disintegrating Warriors covers the footsteps, but the dust also engulfs the Medjai, whose footsteps are still visible when they cheer.

Revealing: In the opening battle, when the armies organize before charging, you can see some men walking right through each other, where digital doubles have been added into the scenes. Hard to catch, but it happens at least once or twice.

Revealing: In the final shot of the movie, you can see where the real set of the balloon changes into the computer-generated balloon. You see parts of the boat fade away or suddenly move position, and some of the wires and such disappear or change.

Revealing: Rick and Jonathan jump through the bathroom window. All the glass is gone as they fall.

Continuity: When Spivey is "sucked dry" by Imhotep, you can see his face is totally decimated. Yet, when Anck comes in later, his face is totally intact, with only a gray discoloration. An easy way to see this is to look at his lips: as he gets killed, they curl and rot completely off, but they are perfectly present on his corpse.

Factual error: In the jungle / oasis scene the clumsy Jonathan grabs a rifle and the "tatooed face guy" asks him if he can handle a rifle. This rifle is a Lee Enfield Mark 4 rifle. The movie takes place in 1933. At this time the Mark 4 was not available.

Continuity: When you first see Oded Fehr's bird of prey (At Izzy's Place), it flies towards him, but it appears there's a line tied to the birds' leg that is either translucent or has been digitally covered over.

Revealing: During the fight against the Anubis warriors, in one shot you can see two men stab one of them in the chest. The warrior explodes and when the sand clears only one man remains. This is because all of the men were photographed separately and digitally composited together, so one of the computer artists made a mistake and accidentally cut out a character half-way through the shot.

Revealing: When the Nile explodes through the corridor in the beginning, as the villain's goon is running by, you can see the wall suddenly get a little bit lighter in a circular fade pattern. This reveals that two separate images were used, and they were composited together. One day the goon was filmed, then another, the water bursting through was filmed, and the lighting was slightly off.

Continuity: As Imhotep hangs from the ledge his arms change position several times.

Factual error: The dynamite Rick destroys the log bridge with appears to damage a very localised area. It makes a very narrow, clean cut down the centre, when any explosive you place on a log would naturally cause a wider area of damage to the top than the bottom.

Continuity: When Evie gets stabbed by Anck-su-Namun, she falls to the ground with her hands clutching the wound on her stomach. Her hands do not leave her stomach (even though her arms are out of the shot, her shoulders stay still) but in later shots her arms are spread out, away from her body.

Revealing: At the beginning of the movie we see Rick and Evy almost drowning in crystal clear water. Had that water really been from the Nile, it would have been muddier.

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).

Revealing: During the final battle, when the burning oil-pots are being knocked over, you can see the weapons on the sides are rubber from the way they bend and wobble.

Factual error: There were no jet engines outside of a few top secret military laboratories in the mid-Thirties, and there has never been a jet propelled airship ever, anywhere. Even using jet engines as auxiliary power, as this one does, the acceleration would rip the airbag to pieces.

Revealing: I can go with Alex making sandcastles to let his parents know where to go, but if you pay attention, the scale in each castle is perfect in every detail, and there are portions which would just be too hard to make by hand.

Continuity: When Alex is on the scaffolding in the temple, there are the three bandits looking through some old pots and other bits. You see one of the bandits pick up a pot and lean a boat over to the side. When you cut to the scaffolding where Alex is, he does the exact same thing again, he lifts the pot and tilts the boat.

Continuity: In the scene after the bad guys kidnap Evelyn and Ardeth shows the picture of Mr. Hafez, Jonathan has his hand on Alex's shoulder, but in the very next shot when Alex says 'He works at the British Museum', his hand is down.

Factual error: In the beginning when Anck Su Namun is holding the black snake and says "Egyptian asps are very poisonous." The snake she is holding is a Mexican Black King Snake, a species native to Mexico and commonly kept as a pet in the U.S.

Continuity: When Alex is taken on the train, Anuk-su-Namun puts her hand under his chin and kisses him, but when the camera angle changes, her hand isn't under his chin.

Continuity: When Alex moves the toilet on the train and looks down through the hole there is some water round the side. The camera then goes back behind Alex and you can see the pipe that was conected to the back of the toilet with a steady flow of water leaking out above the hole. The shot then goes back to above the hole and there is no water falling down.

Continuity: The invasion upon the city at the beginning showed the dog headed army pushing over an Obelisk (large granite pillar) which upon impact showed it separate into chunks similar to roman and Greek pillars, but these Obelisks were made of one single slab of granite so it should break and have slithers and chunks come off it.

Revealing: In the battle against the Anubis Warriors, you can see the CGI sand explodes "wrong" sometimes. In other words, the sand sometimes overlaps the wrong areas, such as people that are in front of it.

Continuity: In the first movie Ardeth Bay has tattooed on his forehead a bunch of hyroglyphs, one of which is a half moon shaped heiroglyph, but in this movie he is missing the half moon shaped tattoo.

Visible crew/equipment: In the scene where Brendan Fraser and John Hannah are hiding from the gunshots behind the fountain you can see the little charges which make the sparks. And if you shoot at something stone, large chunks are sure to come off.

Factual error: When Rick and Jonathan (in his mysteriously foam free tux, as noted elsewhere) vault over the fence outside Rick's house, a thug is firing at them with a machine gun from an upstairs window. Look at the bullet impacts on the top of the fence - some of them could only happen where they do if the bullets had passed straight through Jonathan's body.

Factual error: The design of the dirigible is rubbish. The gas bag would need to be about twenty times that size to lift the boat-shaped caboose and its passengers, their weapons, equipment and luggage.

Continuity: In the first movie, one of the canopic jars is broken. In this movie, they are all perfect.

Continuity: Right after Alex scares Rick, we see him holding a stick with fire on top. Every time they change camera angles the amount of stick between his hand and the fire changes dramatically. Its not possible to make the stick move up and down that fast with one hand without hurting himself.

Continuity: Right after the sun rises on the Scorpion King's pyramid, the following scene, which is approx. ten seconds later, the sun is directly overhead, then the shadows change lengths.

Continuity: When Evie is unconscious and being carried on the stretcher, you clearly see her head facing to her left in the close up, when the camera pulls away for a long shot you see her head facing to her right only to be quickly returned to the left for the next close up.

Continuity: When Imhotep is talking to Alex on the train, he turns over an hourglass onto the table. When Imhotep grabs the hourglass, he turns his wrist as he turns over the hourglass. The next shot, is of Imhotep with his hand on the hourglass, only this time, his hand is right side up.

Factual error: When Rick uses dynamite to destroy the log bridge, the log snaps several seconds after the explosion has gone off. The force of the blast would snap it instantaneously.

Deliberate "mistake": After Evie has been taken from her house, Rick, Ardeth, Johnathan and the kid run to get the car and give chase. As they get round the corner of the house they all stop running and are just walking to the car. As they have only run a a few paces they can hardly be worn out but since this is an emergency why do they stop running?

Other: When they are flying the dirigible through the night you can cleary see that there is a repeated pattern in the stars.

Factual error: In the bus chase scene the 'prewar' bus has fleetnumber LT1097. Actually it's a postwar RT-class AEC Regent III bus built circa 1950. Although the LT class AEC Renown was a prewar class of London bus, these had three axles, two at the back. And - for the record - LT1097 did exist, but it was a 'Scooter' type single decker.

Continuity: When the bad guys find Imhotep's tomb, a mound of sand starts to rise from the ground. In one shot everybody is backing away from it, in another they're moving closer to the mound.

Continuity: After they've kidnapped Alex on Tower bridge, they raise it to aid their getaway. The next shot is of Imhotep and Anck-Su-Namun standing looking over the city from a balcony - you can see the bridge, and it's lowered. You might think that that shot takes place a while afterwards, and the bridge has since been lowered, but then it goes back to Rick and Evie, and you can both see and hear the bridge lowering back into place.

Continuity: When Imhotep is hanging off the ledge at the end, he yells to his woman to help him. After she leaves, he starts to cry. They show him crying and hanging on with his right forearm on the ledge, then it cuts to a shot of Rick and Evie, then back to Imhotep, but now he is using his left forearm to support himself. Potentially he could have swapped arms, but he doesn't show any sign of having shifted his weight, and it happens really quickly.

Continuity: After the cast makes a get away on the double decker bus, the little kid jumps on John's back and says, "Nice job." When the shot cuts, he is still there. In the next shot, the bus is pulling over to the side of the road and you can see that the boy is not on John's back anymore.

Other: During the fight scene in Seti's throne room, several times Anck and Nefertiri magically switch places. For instance in the scene where they are fighting Anck appears in front of Nefertiri to hit her in the face followed by Nefertiri kicking her.

Continuity: When Patricia Velasquez has her first flashback to her past life, she is in a room with Imhotep. If you look closely at her shoulders in an up close shot, her hair is in front of both of them. Then we cut to a shot of the room from outside (we can see the room through the balcony) and the hair is still over both shoulders. Then we cut to another up close shot of Patricia, and we see that her hair is over her left shoulder, but behind her right one.

Factual error: In the scene where the father says "You know, those snakes are very poisonous."  Then the mother says "Only if they bite you." You can clearly see the snake's colours are red touching black which clearly means that the snake is not a venomous snake.