Biggest Unanswered Questions From The Mummy Franchise

Early in "The Mummy," after Evie (Rachel Weisz) accidentally knocks over the bookcases at the museum where she works in Cairo as a librarian, her boss Dr. Terrence Bey (Erick Avari) tells her he puts up with her because of how much he cared for her parents, who were the library's most generous donors. Apparently, these mishaps are commonplace occurrences when Evie is around. In the film's action, we never learn what happened to Evie and Jonathan's parents, but from this conversation, it's safe to assume they are no longer living.

As Evie tells Rick O'Connell (Brendan Fraser) on their first night in Hamunaptra, her father was a renowned adventurer who met and fell in love with her mother in Egypt, where her mother was born. The couple raised their children in England at the sprawling English estate we see for the first time in "The Mummy Returns." But even in the sequel, we never learn from Evie or her brother Jonathan (John Hannah) what happened to their parents.

Did they die while on an adventure? Is this why Evie became a librarian instead of following her passion, becoming an Egyptologist? According to the Mummy Fandom wiki, Evie and Jonathan's parents died before the events of "The Mummy" in a plane crash related to a cursed mummy whose tomb their father disturbed. With no other sources to substantiate the theory, it's just conjecture, but it certainly suggests supernatural hijinks run in the family.

We see many of the ten plagues of Egypt carried out during the action of "The Mummy," including water turning to blood, swarms of locusts, and an eclipse blotting out the sun. The plague of boils and sores on a group of Egyptians who are transformed into Imhotep's zombie-like minions is perhaps the most dramatically portrayed in the film. Still, the final plague — the death of firstborn sons, which would have threatened Jonathan's life and the lives of every other eldest son in Egypt — never materializes.

Do Rick, Evie, and Jonathan beat Imhotep before he gets around to unleashing the last plague, or does he simply stop throwing plagues at them once they've Cairo and headed back to Hamunaptra? Maybe the filmmakers didn't want to go quite that dark. This seems like a missed opportunity to up-the-ante of tension in the movie, having Jonathan threatened with death and giving them a countdown to sunrise to defeat Imhotep. Alas, we don't see the plague of livestock or lice either, so we can all thank the ancient gods for saving us from that.

In "The Mummy Returns" we learn that Evie is the reincarnation of the daughter of Pharaoh Seti I from the first film. During the action of the sequel, Evie uses memories of her past life (which have been manifesting as dreams) to find the Bracelet of Anubis by accessing a hidden room in the tomb they're excavating at the beginning of the film. Evie's connection to ancient Egypt, explored through the concept of reincarnation, is absolutely fascinating.

When Evie remembers more about her past life from a vision during their trip to Ahm Shere, she discovers that Nefertiri was the protector of the Bracelet of Anubis, explaining why she knew how to find it. Both Evie's connection to the bracelet and Rick's connection to the Medjai warrior, depicted as the one capable of killing the Scorpion King, certainly imply that Evie and Rick meeting and falling in love was fated by the ancient gods.

Unfortunately, this fascinating plot development in the sequel creates a little confusion about details in "The Mummy." Why didn't Imhotep recognize Evie as the reincarnation of Nefertiri when he met her in the first film? A fan on Reddit posits Imhotep initially mistook Evie for Anck-Su-Namun because his eyesight was blurry after stealing Burns' (Tuc Watkins) eyes. Meanwhile, TV Tropes suggests that Imhotep recognized her and said nothing because it was immaterial to his desire to use Evie's body to resurrect Anck-Su-Namun.

In the prologue of "The Mummy Returns," we learn of the deal that the Scorpion King (Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson), an ancient warlord who predates the pyramids, made with the god Anubis. The spin-off prequel "The Scorpion King" introduces us to a very different Mathayus before he came to power and transformed into the power-hungry warlord we know.

As a hired mercenary, you could argue that Mathayus already had questionable morality, but he proves himself to have integrity despite his status as an Akkadian assassin. He doesn't kill the Sorceress (Kelly Hu) they hired him to kill, instead joining forces with the other free tribes to defeat the power-hungry warlord Memnon (Steven Brand). So, how did Mathayus go from being a liberator to an evil conqueror?

Although the films that followed take us back to when Mathayus (Michael Copon) was a young man in "The Scorpion King 2: Rise of a Warrior" and after Mathayus' (Victor Webster) kingdom has fallen and he's returned to being a hired assassin in "The Scorpion King 3: Battle for Redemption" and "The Scorpion King 4: Quest for Power," the series never explains where Mathayus went wrong and became power hungry. We're left to speculate that a taste of power can corrupt even the best of men, and a questionable deal with Anubis will make you as evil and insane as the resurrected Scorpion King in "The Mummy Returns."

In "The Mummy Returns," Rick, Evie, Alex, and Jonathan are one big happy family, enjoying crazy adventures and their shared love of treasure hunting, but in "The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor" the family has become estranged. Jonathan is living in Shanghai, where he's opened a club with his earnings from the enormous diamond he stole as they flew away from Ahm Shere at the end of "The Mummy Returns."

When Rick and Evie arrive in Shanghai with the Eye of Shangri-La, they discover that Alex is on a dig in China with his archeology professor Roger Wilson (David Calder), a treasure hunter Rick knows. Rick is angry that Alex went on an archeological dig, leading to a huge find, without telling them. Rick is also frustrated that they only hear from him when he needs money. Alex complains they "haven't been a family for a long time." It's painfully obvious the dynamic has shifted — Alex is trying to become his own man, and there's an underlying tension between Rick and his son.

Evie makes veiled comments about Rick not showing an interest in Alex's life, which is surprising because of how close they were in "The Mummy Returns." Mummy Fandom suggests Alex and Rick's relationship changed when Alex joined the U.S. Air Force, but without supporting sources this is conjecture. Regardless of what caused the rift, by the end of "Tomb of the Dragon Emperor" the O'Connells have reconciled. After all, the family that battles undead armies sticks together.

Why did Maria Bello replace Rachel Weisz? The question seems destined to remain stuck in the Hollywood rumor mill. According to Digital Spy in May 2008, the director Rob Cohen implied that Weisz didn't want to play the mother of a 21-year-old, feeling that the character was too old for her to portray. But the same article also reported that a representative suggested Weisz simply didn't want to leave her young child to shoot on location in China.

Cinema Blend claimed that a source close to Weisz said the actress had issues with the script's portrayal of Evie and left the project when the script was not changed, despite Universal refuting that claim. According to Weisz herself, as reported by Digital Spy in September 2008, it was simply a scheduling conflict and she didn't even have time to read the script.

Regardless of the reason (and no offense to Maria Bello, who is a great actor), the movie didn't have the same magic as the ones Weisz starred in. Weisz and Fraser's chemistry was fantastic in the first two films, and it would've been impossible to replicate that no matter how talented the replacement. On the other hand, a lack of chemistry between Bello and Fraser certainly works with the premise that the O'Connells need to spice up their lives and find their spark again.

For the love of all ancient Egyptian gods, why did the filmmakers strong-arm an unrelated literary character, Dr. Henry Jekyll (Russell Crowe), into Tom Cruise's "The Mummy" reboot? As chronicled by The Hollywood Reporter, Universal had plans to create a cinematic universe to compete with superhero movies. Cruise's "The Mummy" kicked off the studio's "Dark Universe," centered on the classic stable of Universal Monsters. According to Daily Dead, franchise architects thought introducing Dr. Henry Jekyll in the reboot would set him up for his own film series.

The problem with this strategy is that 2017's "Mummy" movie needed to be successful enough on its own legs to warrant sequels and spin-offs — after all, the Marvel Cinematic Universe only happened because people liked the first "Iron Man." Forcing Jekyll into the reboot was clumsy, made absolutely no sense within the story they were trying to tell, and simply didn't work. A more clever version of the same idea could have worked; "Penny Dreadful" did an excellent job bringing various dark literary figures into an inventive series that was a treasure trove for the well-read.

Cruise's "The Mummy" did terribly at the domestic box office, and it was only the international numbers that saved the film from being a financial flop. It also earned terrible scores on Metacritic with both audiences and critics, promising that even those who did buy a ticket wouldn't be likely to come back for more. Some of these failures land on the inexplicable decision to include Dr. Jekyll, but as Brendan Fraser told Variety, the other problem was that the film was lacking, "The ingredient that we had going for our 'Mummy,' which I didn't see in that film, was fun."