The Weekly Planet - The Mummy Returns - Caravan Of Garbage

Episode Date: February 20, 2020

Hot off the heels of our review of The Mummy 1999 comes a look at the sequel, The Mummy Returns from 2001. With the returning cast including Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz plus the inclusion of Dwayne "The rock" Johnson in his first movie role. It's bigger in so many ways but also not as good in other ways. This is our Caravan Of Garbage review.Video Version ► SUBSCRIBE HERE ►► http://goo.gl/pQ39jNJames' Twitter ► http://twitter.com/mrsundaymoviesMaso's Twitter ► http://twitter.com/wikipediabrownPatreon ► https://patreon.com/mrsundaymoviesT-Shirts/Merch ► https://www.teepublic.com/stores/mr-sunday-movies The Weekly Planet iTunes ► https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-weekly-planet/id718158767?mt=2&ign-mpt=uo%3D4 The Weekly Planet Direct Download ► https://play.acast.com/s/theweeklyplanetAmazon Affiliate Link ► https://amzn.to/2nc12P4 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

FX's The Veil explores the surprising and fraught relationship between two women who play a deadly game of truth and lies on the road from Istanbul to Paris and London. One woman has a secret. The other, a mission to reveal it before thousands of lives are lost. FX's The Veil, starring Elizabeth Moss, is now streaming on Disney+. Will you rise with the sun to help change mental health care forever? Join the Sunrise Challenge to raise funds for CAMH, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, to support life-saving progress in mental health care.

From May 27th to 31st, people across Canada will rise together and show those living with mental illness and addiction that they're not alone. Help CAMH build a future where no one is left behind. So, who will you rise for? Register today at sunrisechallenge.ca. That's sunrisechallenge.ca.

This podcast is part of the Planet Broadcasting Network. Visit planetbroadcasting.com for more podcasts from our great mates. For this week's Caravan of Garbage, we've actually skewed directions because of our patreon supporters we were going to do leave extraordinary gentlemen for the invisible man the dark universe is back my god is it back you know it's back for how long is it back though one more movie at least one then it's cancelled again yeah then it's back on in a couple of years you know it is oh my god i cannot wait yeah so we're gonna do that but after we did the mummy there was huge requests for us to cap off The Mummy trilogy.

So we're back. We're talking The Mummy Returns. This was greenlit the morning that The Mummy opened because it was such a big hit. People loved it. And they were like, get this one off the ground. And the directors and all the cast involved were like, if we're going to do this, we're going to do it bigger and better. And they didn't. Well, that's the that's

the problem with a sequel is you have to go we want to recapture the magic yeah but it's also got to be bigger it's what you liked but more and bigger yeah it's like it's like difficult second album syndrome it's like more and better and in a shorter amount of time because it was two years after yeah the thing about this video is it's going to be bigger and better than the first one we did so we will accept a like from you for making it that way correct yes you it's you the viewers and all listeners that make this bigger and better correct but also the editor yes obviously bigger if we don't spend if we in the production of this don't make it bigger if you could just add some some white noise at the end maybe just a minute or two of white noise just really crank those levels you know what i mean so this is the mummy light yeah right it's got pillars falling instead of bookcases instead of

a sand face it's a water face you can't dust face and a dust face later you uh you're reading a book but you can't work out what one of the things is in the book and you're asking somebody what the thing in the book is the cast is also back They make that classic era of introducing a kid. Phantom Menace did it. But again... Zorro sequel did it. But what are you going to do? Because this is set nearly ten years after.

Yeah, about nine or ten years after. After the original. And so Rick and Evie, they're married now and grave robbing's done really well for them because they live in this enormous mansion. They're so rich. And they have a kid. He's like a sort of snotty-ish little kid.

He's both of them. He's both of them, exactly. And he's a little bit anachronistic. He's always like, oh, get a room, you two. You know, like they said in the 1930s. Oh, my God, you know they did. Rick O'Connell's kind of the same. And Evie's had a real glow up, let me tell you.

And she wants more adventures. Her eyebrows have grown back. Bless her. A few people pointed out that the reason also her eyebrows are like that in the previous movie is because that was the style of the 20s. I don't believe that. It's a coincidence. I feel like there's no way they're all like,

listen, if there's one thing we get right in this movie, it's that big rat wheel, which was apparently a real thing. We talked about it at eyebrows. Yeah. Look, you can check in any number of videos there are a lot of factual errors in the first the mummy relating to harmonaptra and imhotep and all all kinds of sand physics absolutely the window can't make a bloody can't make a bloody big sand face

no you can't but anyway yeah so this this movie is if if i can put the plot back together so it's it's quite similar evie and and and rick they find a golden bracelet and their son puts it on and that that was the bracelet of the scorpion king yeah and in putting that on that summons the scorpion king in seven days and it's going to bring with him the the army of anubis yep which is going to destroy the world but the followers of imhotep want to bring back the mummy because if he comes back and he defeats the scorpion king then he can take control of the army of anubis and destroy the world instead and they want that for some reason yeah i feel like though you could just work for either of those guys right their goal is quite similar isn't it they're both big spooky boys who want to destroy the world.

That's exactly it. So, interestingly, the son in this, Freddie Both, his name was, and he's alive, yeah. He was such a huge fan of the mummy that he was like, on set he'd remind people working on it, what happened in the first film and what we need to do with this and how it ties in. And he actually chose to audition for this over Harry Potter.

There you go. So he turned down that completely. What role in Harry Potter though? Hermione. And Hagrid. He's very multi-talented, Mason. He does it all. They just put him in a big dirty trench coat, put a fake beard on him.

It's fine, isn't it? You know what I don't like about this movie? And there are some things that I do because I don't think it's terrible. No, see, when this movie came out, I remember because I was so jazzed on the first Mummy, I think I brought, I'm like, oh my God, you haven't seen the Mummy? Let's go see the Mummy returns. And afterwards, I'm like, I'm sorry. But in re-watching it, it's not as bad as I remember it being.

But I think what happens is when you leave a big action blockbuster, what sticks in your mind is the finale, which I'm sure we'll talk about after this. After the show's finished? Yeah, after the show's finished. We'll talk about it personally in our own lives. But I think maybe that soured my whole experience. But you were saying?

Well, I was going to say I don't like how they give everyone a destiny. That's the first thing I was going to say. Evie is the pharaoh's daughter or a reincarnation of that. The pharaoh that Imhotep killed in the first movie. So she's out for revenge somehow. He doesn't recognize Imhotep killed in the first movie. So she's out for revenge somehow. He doesn't recognise her for some reason in the first one. I guess he's got different eyes. Also the eyes that he stole from the first

movie, that guy needed glasses. So maybe that's why he didn't recognise her. In this one he does, you know, he comes back and he's like, bloody hell, it's you! How have you been? It's been eons! It's been three to five thousand years. I don't 3,000 to 5,000 years. I don't know the timeline on this.

Do you? Sorry. I'm just, you know, when you just see someone out of context, you don't recognize them. You know, sorry. Sorry. And you've grown your eyebrows back now, so obviously I remember you now. But, yeah, Destiny.

So she's the, and Rick O'Connell, some sort of guardian magi. That they must have tattooed him when he was a baby. Does he have that tattoo in the first movie? So she's the, and Rick O'Connell's some sort of guardian magi. That they must have tattooed him when he was a baby? Does he have that tattoo in the first movie? He says that he, no, well, he's got leather wristbands. Ah, okay, perfect. The perfect crime. The perfect crime indeed. They must have looked, when they were writing the sequel,

they must have been like, what part of his body is covered in leather wristbands? Oh, his wrists, that's handy. They could have just done it under his flappy hair on the sides. Exactly. I feel like that's where they could have put it, yeah. The other thing is they make him Indiana Jones but a little bit better because they give him the fedora at one point.

Yeah, right, right. And there's also a couple of moments where he's fine with snakes. He gets one thrown at him and he's just like, snakes, and he's just not fussed by it at all. Only a real coward would be afraid of snakes for any reason, even childhood trauma. Even if you were massively traumatised by falling into a train carriage full of snakes as a child, you are a coward.

You've got a coward's heart. That's right. I love the moment, though, after the... I've just made this note. It's not really relevant. But after he gets the snake thrown at him, a guy throws a knife and he catches it, like like way off to the side. Like not even close.

He's like arm's length away. Yeah, right. So what you're saying is that knife guy's a real, he's a bad shot and he's got a coward's heart. That's what I'm saying. Which I thought was going to come back late. Oh, it does come back later. He catches the spear at the end. Yeah, he does.

Yeah. He's a good catch though. Like I assumed that he was. I mean, if he wasn't't he'd be dead a long time ago for sure 100 yeah uh also i feel like this movie it was inspired as all movies of this era was by the matrix yeah i think they're like let's do some matrix style stuff without the kind of the technical prowess or expertise or equipment to do that yeah so it's like we're going to do like long form martial arts battles without the actual long form yeah just we'll do it with we'll do it with quick cuts and nobody will notice we noticed we noticed apparently rachel vice trained for like five

months to do those sequences that's mostly her yeah so that's impressive but yeah maybe they should have filmed it in a way where kind of you could tell that and it wasn't just stunt people yeah at one point she's in a mask maybe that isn't her but i think the one at the end is a little bit better you can kind of get a better sense of it yeah right mvp of this movie though i think it's actually an improvement or they build on it well art of bay oh i did fair yeah you know i think that guy is he's good in the first movie and he's expanded on in this movie yes not in the third because what does he know about china not Not nothing, mate. That's right. There's a deleted scene from the start of the third one where he's like,

I got nothing, mate. Not a damn thing. This, though, interestingly enough, was The Rock's first motion picture. He'd never seen a movie. He didn't even know what one was at that point. Look how far he's come. I know. He's Snapchatting.

He's a baller. He's a baller, big time. So it opens with the Scorpion King, and it tells all these stories and how he's cursed and whatever, and he wanders the desert. And then he bites a real gooey scorpion, and I really enjoy that. I'm like, that's a gooey scorpion.

Yeah, that's right. And good job, The Rock. It foretells a sense of incredible visceral realism we're going to have with the scorpion king for the rest of this movie right just if he's gonna do something he's gonna do it for real and we're gonna feel it we're gonna know yeah i will definitely get back to that yeah after the video obviously that's right yeah we're gonna talk about that in our personal lives here's some good stuff though yeah i like the chase through london i like how the mummy gets its legs cut off and it's like monkeying through

the bus yeah you know what good stuff that also felt mummy gets its legs cut off and it's like monkeying through the bus. Good stuff. That also felt very reminiscent. I don't know, maybe it's a deliberate homage. Maybe it's just my brain making connections. It felt very much like any number of T-1000 chase scenes in Terminator 2. He's got the lever action rifle. He's shooting up like they're shooting up in the lift.

I can see that. In the mental asylum in Terminator 2. Just watch him play him side by side. You want Ben to do that? No, I wouldn't put that upon the man to make an incredible video comparison. Just frame by frame it, you know? Just pick it. I mean, it'd take him weeks, but he could do it.

I'm not, you know, faulting his technical expertise. Yeah. And if he wanted to make the best video of his career. Sure. If he wants a hero's heart. I mean, you don't have to, though. So the other thing I like is I think the chemistry is still good between Rick and Evie. You feel like they like each other and they've been married.

It's only been two years since the previous movie, but again, it's about a decade in between, or it's supposed to be. You get the sense that their relationship has grown. For sure, yeah. Again, they've been robbing a lot of tombs together. They've been stealing a lot of priceless artifacts she's really turned around on that definitely i like the guy who's like this is cursed that is cursed you know he makes that joke against that guy oh yeah i like that bit it turns out it was cursed killed them all yeah yeah where do you stand on pygmy mummies because i'm not sure where i'm they kind of avoid

the main characters a lot yeah and just tear apart everybody else i think they just needed a new scarab beetle like a flesh-eating beetle kind of situation they just flamethrower them in this yeah right exactly they're like we need something that's even more dangerous pygmy mummies yeah there's a moment in this where and again it's the bus chase sequence i think where they're being pursued by the mummies from the previous movie and rick o'connell like, oh, these guys again. And I'm like, yeah, me too, Rick O'Connell. As you take a toilet break. Yeah.

You know what didn't do it for me? I feel like a lot of the supporting cast I felt a little bit bland. Like in the previous movie, we had like the American rival adventurers and they're kind of like. We had Benny. We did have Benny, yeah. We do have the dirigible pilot who i like quite a lot yeah other than that it was just kind of like generic henchmen yep generic cultists yep little generic whatever yeah they had mr echo from lost

he's in this yeah water's hard to cgi isn't it seems that way yeah i kind of accepted it in the first one that they just survived the plane crash with the big sand face they crashed in some sand yeah this they fucking tumble out of the sky and they smash that ship two bits which he then repairs apparently yeah he does yeah he's a very good dirigible pilot slash repairer. I guess he is. Anubis' army is... Not bad. Not bad. Pretty solid, I think.

Yeah. There's a lot of them. Yeah, that's right. You cannot take that away from them. There's heaps of them. There's heaps of them. Some bits I also don't like, though, with the CGI, the first bit where the jungle grows around the rock, not great.

Imhotep after he fuck... That's what the audio one Imhotep after he sucks the life out of that first guy not very good yeah I think they

were kind of resting on their laurels they're like we nailed this money thing from the first one just chuck it right back in I think it's time

though because the reason the Scorpion King doesn't look great is because excuse me well it was it was excuse me when they cgi i'm not at the start yeah right but he's a regular man i'm talking about that's right because he does look great at the start he looks so good just choose into that scorpion oh my god for reals baby really does it we're talking about the we're talking about the

scorpion king yeah look again like i i feel like when i watched it way back in the day, that was my takeaway. The Scorpion King. It was never good. When you have a big action movie, you want that last action sequence to be memorable, and I guess for me it always has been because it looks absolutely atrocious. It looks like a PS2 game. It really does.

It looks like some of the CGI in this movie looks like it came out of the game Myst. Sure. Or possibly Riven. The sequel to Myst. Great games, probably. Oh, my God. Yeah. But the worst of all is you didn't think about just getting the rock to be on top of a big

animated scorpion? That's exactly what I thought. Just a big animatronic dude? It must have been they didn't have the time because they actually completed this. Completed. Eight days before the film's release. Oh, right. Okay, sure. And maybe he wasn't available to do that because it's atrocious. actually completed this completed eight days before the film's release all right okay and

maybe he wasn't available to do that because it's atrocious he was being courted for ballers no yeah it was a long courting process that's right yeah corridor crew have actually gone back and tried to fix this and they've made some improvements who were they they've got a youtube channel they do special effects stuff sounds really good. They're good. You should definitely check them out. But it's just, it's atrocious. But my favourite moment from this entire film is the moment where Rick O'Connell finally stabs the Scorpion King. There's a pause.

Then you see Imhotep slide in and go, No! That's pretty great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's that moment where nothing is happening and then there's that. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

No, that's very enjoyable. That sequence also has Evie at one point saying, don't let Imhotep stab the Scorpion King, because then he'll rule the world, so maybe you get the spear and stab the Scorpion King. Yeah. We know. We've been watching this movie for like an hour 50, Evie.

We get it. We know what the plot is. Yeah. You know what you're doing. We know what. We know what the plot is. Yeah. You know what you're doing. We know what we're doing. Everything's fine. Yeah. Here's a segment of the show I like to call.

It's a new segment. Oh, yeah. Rude stuff. Rude time trivia. Oh, rude trivia. That's right. Hello. Yeah.

Wow. Ben, can you put in a... I can't do it. Yeah. You know what I mean? Well, that's why you need Ben to put it in. Exactly. He's world class.

Yeah. So, Rachel Weisz's character,fertiri was originally called Nefertiti. That is true. The producers felt that people would make boob jokes about the name, so they changed it to that of another Egyptian queen. Oh, my God. Rude facts after dark. You know it is.

The other rude fact is there is a cameo by Stephen Sommers in the form of- The director. The director, sorry. Yes, he's back for this one in a big way. The handprints in the train's bathroom you know when the kid goes in? That's actually Stephen Summers. So that's him, I guess, who smeared shit

all over the walls with his bare hands. Wow. So there you go. See, I told you, visceral. Real. That was real shit. Incredible. His own? His own, yes. So look, I don't know, man. It was real shit. Incredible. His own? His own, yes. So, look, I don't know, man. It was a big hit.

That's true, yeah. A bigger budget, $98 million. It made $433 million. It was a big movie. I don't remember, unlike you, I didn't hate it at the time outside of The Scorpion King. I thought, this is fine. And I think it's still fine, but it's aged way worse than the other one. Yeah, absolutely, yeah.

What's the difference, I wonder? Is it chemistry? Characters? Maybe. Well, maybe it's the mummy, even though, you know. It's not funny? It's not funny. Yeah, maybe it's that.

The kid? No. He's not bad in it. He's not bad. That's the thing. Maybe it's the thing they tried to make Rick too cool. Maybe it's that. He's Indiana Jones. They did change his name to Rick too cool. Exactly. Maybe bad in it. He's not bad. That's the thing. Maybe it's the thing they tried to make Rick too cool. Maybe it's that. He's Indiana Jones. They did change his name to Rick too cool.

Exactly. Maybe that's it. That was a retcon. Rick Radical. Rick, we looked into your records at the orphanage. Your name is Rick Radical. Maybe it's because even though the first one is set in all kinds of places in Egypt, it is a smaller scale.

They didn't try to overreach. Maybe that's what it is. It's just kind of every part of that movie is kind of solid, whereas I feel like maybe this one has some kind of weak stuff that you can take out. Like, again, like the pygmy mummies and a dirigible that's going through some sort of PS2 CGI cutscene. You know what I mean? Do you want to take out where the guy puts his hand in the hole and then it chews off

a lot of his hand and he takes his hand out and he got a gooey hand no i kind of want to keep that in they were like listen before we trot out the scorpion king people are gonna hate that let's just do the realest thing that we can an old bony gooey hand that'll get people on board for this that's what people will take away from it exactly i nearly forgot it is that how corridor crew fix it like after the after the scorpion king sequence is just a guy going like, ooh, look at my gooey hand. Ooh. I don't know about this movie, but I like the gooey hand at the end.

That was real goo. So we'll actually be back next week for The Mummy 3, Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. I haven't seen that. I've never seen it. Since it came out. And I think...

Oh, you have seen it though. I maybe watched a pirated version of it. Maybe. Because I was living overseas at the time. It also came out... And I think... Oh, you have seen it, though. I maybe watched a pirated version of it, maybe, because I was living overseas at the time. It also came out... Maybe you lived it. Where were you overseas? Maybe I did. China?

Ancient China. I was in London somewhere at the time. I can't remember. But you know how I am, Mason. I travel. I'm like Rick O'Connell. I'm constantly on adventures, murdering people and stealing.

Wow. We've just found your new birth certificate. It says your name's actually James the Big Liar. So anyway, I'm really interested to come back to that and see how it even compares to this. Well, yeah, because I've never seen it, so I'm sort of excited to see. You better push that excitement aside.

I hear there's a casting change. That's all I know. Yeah, there is. Rachel Weisz declined to come back. That's right, yeah. That's all I know. Anyways, we'll. Rachel Weisz declined to come back. That's right, yeah. That's all I know. Anyways, we'll be back next week for that. But if you do have a suggestion for Caravan of Garbage,

please hit us up. And of course, on patreon.com slash MrSundayMovies, we're constantly running polls to be like, what do you guys want? What do you want to see? That's why we're doing the Mummy Trilogy. There's so many aggressive polls. You're like, my phone's blowing up.

I don't like this. Stop it. I don't have this many opinions why do you keep making me do polls you know we don't need you get out of here we want only poll friendly patreoners you know that's the truth also of course we have a podcast called the weekly planet where we talk movies and comics and tv shows we've got an upcoming episode on the invisible man probably don't we mason i so. And we're going to be doing that A League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie commentary. Oh my God, I cannot wait.

Which I will link below because I know, look, people want to see it and we'll get to it, don't you worry. But in the meantime, you can check that out. Where are you on? Did you say where you were on social media? I'm at Wikipedia Brown on Twitter. You should say hi. I'll edit that bit out though.

Excuse me. Anyways, guys, thanks for watching. Grabbed our gem, you guys. We will see you next week. Goodbye. That's the end. Nice. This podcast is part of the Planet Broadcasting Network.

Visit planetbroadcasting.com for more podcasts from our great mates. I mean, if you want. It's up to you. FX's The Veil explores the surprising and fraught relationship between two women who play a deadly game of truth and lies on the road from Istanbul to Paris and London. One woman has a secret, the other a mission to reveal it before thousands of lives are lost.

Fx's The Veil, starring Elizabeth Moss, is now streaming on Disney+.