The film follows adventurer and treasure hunter Rick O'Connell as he travels to Hamunaptra, the City of the Dead, with librarian Evelyn Carnahan and her older brother Jonathan, where they accidentally awaken Imhotep, a cursed high priest with supernatural powers.
In 1926 AD Cairo, Jonathan Carnahan presents his sister, Evelyn—a librarian and aspiring Egyptologist working for museum curator Dr. Terence Bey—with an intricate box and map that lead to Hamunaptra, the existence of which is now considered a myth along with the treasures believed to reside there.
Jonathan reveals he stole the box from American adventurer and treasure hunter, Rick O'Connell, who discovered the city while in the French Foreign Legion.
Evelyn bargains with corrupt prison warden Gad Hassan to free an incarcerated Rick, in exchange for the American leading them to Hamunaptra where she hopes to find the golden Book of Amun-Ra.
Ignoring Bay's warnings the two expeditions continue to dig through the ruins, resulting in numerous fatalities that include Hassan being killed by a scarab he inadvertently releases.
Within the statue, however, the competing expeditions come across the Book of the Dead as well as five canopic jars, while Evelyn, Rick, and Jonathan accidentally discover Imhotep's mummified remains.
That night, Evelyn steals the Book of the Dead from the rival camp, accidentally awakening the mummified Imhotep when she reads scripture contained within aloud.
Barker's 1990 treatment and a successive 1991 screenplay by Mick Garris were dark and violent with the story revolving around an art museum that rebuilds an entire Egyptian tomb in Beverly Hills.
[6]: 30 Romero returned to the project 7 years later in 1994[6]: 30 with a vision of a zombie-style horror film similar to Night of the Living Dead, but which also relied heavily upon elements of tragic romance and ambivalence of identity.
Romero completed a draft in October 1994, co-written with Ormsby and Sayles, that revolved around a female archaeologist named Helen Grover and her discovery of the tomb of Imhotep, an Egyptian general who lived in the time of Ramesses II.
[5] Unfolding in a nameless American city in modern times, events are set into motion when Imhotep inadvertently awakens as a result of his body having been exposed to rays from an MRI scan in a high-tech forensic archaeology lab.
[5] Helen finds herself drawn into a tentative relationship with Imhotep while also experiencing clairvoyant flashbacks to a previous life in the Nineteenth Dynasty of Egypt as a priestess of Isis.
This draft was a period piece awash in Egyptian art-inspired Art Deco, but the vision once again proved too expensive for the studio and was discarded for a modern setting.
At the time, Universal's management had changed in response to the box office failures, and the losses led the studio to revisit its successful franchises from the 1930s.
[6]: 27 Carrying some extra weight and conscious of it because of Imhotep's skimpy costume, Vosloo lost 10 to 15 pounds for the role by eschewing alcohol and sugar.
[25] This set was 600 feet (183 m) in length and featured "a steam train, an Ajax traction engine, three cranes, an open two-horse carriage, four horse-drawn carts, five dressing horses and grooms, nine pack donkeys and mules, as well as market stalls, Arab-clad vendors and room for 300 costumed extras".
ILM was eager for the challenge the film provided and produced a proof of concept for The Mummy's effects in late 1997 to demonstrate the feasibility of Sommers' vision to executives.
[16]: 115 The plagues Imhotep unleashes were accomplished using particle-based computer graphics, with ILM designers swapping out models of different qualities depending on how far from the camera the swarming "insects" were.
[27] While the film made extensive use of computer-generated imagery, many scenes, including ones where Rachel Weisz's character is covered with rats and locusts, were shot using live animals.
[16]: 116 Sandstorms used procedural graphics based on programs used to create tornados in Twister, while the masses of flesh-eating scarabs used techniques developed for Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace.
[16]: 115 [6]: 27 A shot of a firestorm engulfing Cairo combined real palm trees, physical models, and matte paintings with computer-generated hail, fire, and rubble.
Using parts of the Imhotep mummy to save time, ILM recreated the underlings digitally to add into the scenes and used motion capture to animate them.
The animators credited Fraser's ability to consistently re-enact his movements in multiple takes as saving time when it came to match the motion-captured digital mummies to the live-action fight scenes.
[37] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film a positive review, writing, "There is hardly a thing I can say in its favor, except that I was cheered by nearly every minute of it.
"[38] Critics such as Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman and The New York Times' Stephen Holden concurred with the sentiment of the film as a breezy crowd-pleaser.
[46] Bob Graham of the San Francisco Chronicle and Hal Hinson from the Dallas Observer agreed that the effects never overshadowed the human aspects of the film.
[48] David Hunter of The Hollywood Reporter wrote that all the actors managed to hold their own amid the special effects, although he felt Vosloo was largely wasted after Imhotep regenerates and the screenplay gives him little to do.
"[53] Reviewers felt Fraser's portrayal of Rick set a new mold for action heroes that more films would follow in the years after,[54][55] while also considering Evelyn a character allowed to break free from a traditional damsel in distress role.
[77] Universal announced plans in 2012 to reboot the franchise;[78] a new film, also titled The Mummy, was released in June 2017 to poor critical and box office performance.
[82] The film also inspired a roller coaster, Revenge of the Mummy, found in three Universal Studios Theme Parks: Hollywood, California; Orlando, Florida; and Sentosa, Singapore.