The Mummy Returns

Corrected entry: In the beginning, Ardeth calls Anubis the "dark god." However, Anubis was not an evil god, simply the one to perform the weighing of the hearts ceremony for the deceased. The fact that he deals with the dead may have created a false impression. But a much better "dark god" could have been Set, god of chaos.

Correction: Anubis was the god of the afterlife and the Egyptian underworld. That's pretty dark stuff - doesn't have to mean evil.

Phixius

Corrected entry: Around halfway through the movie we see Ardeth's army of Medjai warriors which appears to be in the thousands readying for the battle against the Anubis warriors. Where were all these men the entire time the bad guys were digging up Imhotep at the beginning of the movie? If they had that many warriors they could have easily overpowered the bad guys at Hamunaptra. This also raises the question what all of these warriors were doing when they could have helped during the events of the first movie.

jbrbbt

Correction: This army had to be assembled first, in the days between discovering the plot and facing the army of Anubis, slowly growing as they chased Imhotep. I would say these warriors came from as far as Sudan, Iraq and Libya. By horse.

lionhead

Corrected entry: When Lock-Nah discovers Alex building one of his clues for Rick and Evey in the sand, his mouth isn't in sync with the words when he says "Leaving breadcrumbs, are we?"

Cubs Fan

Correction: That's because his teeth are clenched, meaning that your lips don't need to move a lot. Look carefully and you can see his lips moving just a little bit.

Corrected entry: 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. (00:07:00)

Correction: The rhyme applies only to the coral and king snakes of North America. So it is possible that the snake is venomous, even though it is obviously a king snake. The coral snake does not have red touching black though there are bands of yellow in between.

Corrected entry: 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. (01:24:25)

Correction: The rifle is actually the predecessor to the Lee Enfield - it is a Lee Metford Rifle Mark I which was first in use in 1888.

Corrected entry: After Evie has been taken from her house, Rick, Ardeth, Jonathan 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? (00:32:55)

Kara

Correction: Not a mistake. Rick and Jonathan jumps off from the bathroom and sees that Evy was abducted and taken away by the bad guys. They start running towards the car but the bad guys was shooting towards Rick and Jonathan, they hide themselves from the bullets and sees "Evy" is out of reach to give the chase. Then Ardeth comes near them and they start walking together towards the car.

vinoth2803

Corrected entry: Jonathan is unable to start Rick's car as the key breaks off in the ignition. In 1933, no cars would have ignition keys as the starter motor wasn't invented until 1936.

Correction: The electric self-starter first appeared on Cadillacs in 1912; it was invented by Charles Kettering. I have personally ridden in a 1929 Model A Ford with both a dash-mounted ignition switch and an electric self-starter. Both were standard equipment. The starter was actuated with a foot pedal, but the ignition switch had to be "on" for the starter to work. Just because the car has a dash-mounted ignition switch does not mean said switch controls the starter, but if the switch was inoperative, the starter would not work.

Corrected entry: On the ledge in the oasis, Ardeth tells Jonathan that the only way to kill an Anubis warrior is to cut off its head. Yet, during the first "battle" between the Magi and the Army of Anubis, there are at least 2 Anubis warriors that are headless. How are they meant to be killed? (01:45:09)

Correction: There are no headless Anubis warriors. There are some with only partial heads, or skulls where their heads should be, but none without at least most of a head.

Corrected entry: The flooded corridor and the front area by the boy where both at the same ground level, since when the wall broke it caused the water to spill through. Since it was the Nile that was flooding the place, there should be more than enough water to drown all three of them, instead of that little water that spilled out.

Correction: The "Little water" that spills in? A ton of water spills in, enough that Alex has to run for his life. And also, the hole from which the water spills is only big enough that water is being let in at a fairly slow rate (For such a large amount of water.) And also, you have to consider, it will have to fill the rest of the temple/area they are in before the level will start to totally rise, so they are safe for at least a few minutes. Enough at least to get their stuff and get out.

Corrected entry: During the fight at the O'Connell estate, there is a shot in which Rick jumps onto a chair (causing it to fall over) and then runs to the bathroom. As he does so, there is a mysterious blast of steam or smoke, I'm guessing from a hydraulic device in the chair.

Correction: The blast of steam came a long while after the chair fell over and the bad guy started firing shots at them. I don't know how homes in England are made, but it appears that the bullets hit a pipe or something that caused steam to come off. It appears to be an intentional effect that the movie wanted, not a hydraulic device in the chair.

Corrected entry: At the end when Alex is reading from the book of the dead, how did he get it open? In the first movie, they had to have a key to open it. (01:45:25)

Correction: The bad guys used acid to open the bracelet case, so I don't think it's a big stretch that they would use the same method to open the books.

Corrected entry: Here's a mistake only a South African would notice. Towards the end of the film, when Arnold Vosloo throws the spear at the Scorpian King and Brendan Fraser catches it, he shouts "Nee", which is the Afrikaans word for "No" (Arnold Vosloo's home language.) A few seconds later he exclaims again, this time using the correct "Egyptian" word for "no". (01:54:05)

Correction: Actually, he uses the same word both times, but it could be misinterpreted as to what word he says.

Corrected entry: In the bus chase scene they come across a bridge. A sign reads "low clearance" or whatever. The roof of the doubledecker bus gets cut off. There are two mistakes in that scene. (1) The bridge is the tower bridge of London. Doubledecker buses actually CAN pass under that bridge. (2) If there is a low clearance at one side of the bridge, why isn't it the same on the other side? On the opposing side they could just drive through without any obstacles.

Correction: The bridge is not the Tower Bridge and it's never implied it is. What they are going under is any low bridge in London over a one way street, that's why the clearance is only on one side. The Tower Bridge appears in the scene after, which takes place some time later.

Corrected entry: In the first kissing scene with Imhotep and his woman. An inoculation scar is clearly visible on Imhotep's left arm. Boy, the ancient Egyptians sure were advanced in medicine...

Correction: Yes it's an innoculation scar for the actor but it could easily be a scar from an insect bite or something on Imhotep.

Corrected entry: In the scene where Alex gets kidnapped on Tower bridge, Brendan Fraser runs after him and as the bridge lifts, he jumps across to the other side. When they show him again, he is actually hanging on the wrong side of the bridge.

Correction: He doesn't jump across the gap. He jumps to land at the edge of the side he's already on.

Corrected entry: When Rick, Evie, Jonathan and Alex are 'walking' up the pyramid at the end to be rescued, there are steps there for them. The Ancient Egyptians NEVER made pyramids with those kind of ridges on them. They were smooth and even if there were stairs. At the size that they were, the pyramid could only have been about 10 metres tall. (01:58:25)

Correction: If you were to visit the Step Pyramid at Saccarra (somewhere between Cairo and the ancient capital of Memphis) you will see at leat one pyramid that was built (by an architect named Imhotep) in the same fashion as the one shown at the end of "The Mummy Returns")

Corrected entry: In the bus chase scene, Fraser shoots a shotgun through the roof of the bus. The damage that is done looks like single bullets were shot - not like the typical shotgun damage.

Correction: The shotgun may not have been loaded with "shot". Shotguns may also fire solid slugs. The rifled type, the Brenneke, was introduced in 1898. The smoothbore slug was introduced in 1936. One would assume that given O'Connell's plethora of weapons, he may have shotguns loaded with either type. He definitely would understand that solid slugs work better than buckshot against a large creature. http://www.shotgunworld.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?t=891.

Corrected entry: When the cast is sent back to ancient Egypt and after Arnold Vosloo and Patricia Velasquez have killed the king and she urges Imhotep to go. You can see at the bottom left hand corner, her arm from the present come into the scene but it is smaller than normal. Someone didn't get the timing right.

Correction: That's actually a shot of the pool that present-day Imhotep and Anck-su-namun are sitting in front of which Imhotep is using to show Anck images of the past. Hard to recognize, but the wavery nature of the image projected onto the water gives it away.

Phoenix

Corrected entry: When looking for the Oasis, Rick says something along the lines of "That's the Blue Nile down there. We must be out of Egypt be now". The Blue Nile starts in Sudan, hundreds of miles away.

Correction: If Rick is referring to modern Egypt, his comment is perfectly valid. The modern border is a line in the sand, not visible except on a map. Today it can be recognized as the end of Lake Nasser, but the Aswan high dam which formed the lake was not built until the 1960's. (The comment is not in error anyway, being in Sudan certainly implies being "out of Egypt") If Rick is referring to ancient Egypt, his comment is still not in error. The Blue Nile starts at Khartoum, which was a part of ancient Egypt, but near the border. If they were looking down at the river and could not see the junction with the White Nile, they were likely outside ancient Egypt as well.

Corrected entry: This story takes place in 1933. However, during the sequence of events in Rick's home, they are attacked by people trying to retrieve the scorpion bracelet. One of the villians begins shooting at Rick and his brother-in-law with a Sten submachine gun. This firearm wasn't invented for another 10 years, until after the outbreak of WWII, in 1943.

Correction: Close examination of the weapon in question shows that it has 1) A full-length ventilated handguard around the barrel in front of the action; 2) A wooden shoulder stock. NEITHER of these features was present on the early model STEN. These features WERE present on the German MP-18, MP28-II, and the MP-34. The MP18 used the Luger 'Snail Drum' magazine exclusively, while the weapon in the film has a standard straight box magazine. The most likely weapon, given the time frame, is an MP-28-II. Although there may have been prototype MP-34s in existence in 1933, they would not have been available outside Germany. The MP-28-II was made in a variety of calibers for the export market as well, making it historically correct in the context of the film.

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)

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

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

More mistakes in The Mummy Returns

Rick: Right. She's a reincarnated princess, and I'm a warrior for God.
Ardeth Bay: And your son leads the way to Ahm Shere. Three sides of the pyramid. This was all preordained thousands of years ago.
Evelyn: But how does the story end?
Ardeth Bay: Ah, only the journey is written, not the destination.
Rick: Convenient.

More quotes from The Mummy Returns

Trivia: In the tomb, Alex knocks over the columns the same way Evie knocked over the bookcases in "The Mummy."

More trivia for The Mummy Returns

Answer: He says that it means 'it's as hot as hell'.

More questions & answers from The Mummy Returns

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