The Mummy Returns
The Mummy Returns mistake picture

Revealing mistake: 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? (01:07:49)

The Mummy Returns mistake picture

Revealing mistake: 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. (00:39:51)

Revealing mistake: 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. (01:33:00)

Revealing mistake: 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. (01:47:07)

The Mummy Returns mistake picture

Revealing mistake: 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. (00:31:40)

Revealing mistake: 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.

The Mummy Returns mistake picture

Revealing mistake: 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. (00:14:55)

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

Grumpy Scot

The Mummy Returns mistake picture

Revealing mistake: 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. (00:16:10)

Revealing mistake: 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 mistake: 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.

Revealing mistake: 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.

Revealing mistake: 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 mistake: 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.

Revealing mistake: 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 mistake: 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.

Revealing mistake: During the very first shot of the scene where the heroes arrive in the canyon (during the "Wall of Water" scene), pay attention to the shot carefully as the camera tilts down, as several elements seem out-of-place. When Imhotep steps into frame, the lighting on him doesn't quite match the scenery around him (indicating he was shot against a blue or green screen and added into the shot), and the waterfall in the background moves somewhat unnaturally (slightly jittery if you look closely) towards the end of the shot.

Revealing mistake: 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.

Revealing mistake: When Rick realises his destiny to kill the Scorpion King with the spear he backs into the wall with the painting on of a figure with the tattoo on his wrist. We see this is just a big prop because it wobbles as he backs into it, instead of just standing firm like a rock wall should.

Awesomo

Revealing mistake: After Anck-su-Namun meets with Imhotep in the museum, he waves his hand over her face and there is a brief flashback of the two of them in ancient times. They kiss, and it reverts to the present, where Imhotep is still not completely regenerated. You can tell it's CGI because of how the tip of her nose disappears into his skin as they kiss.

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 O'Connell: Knowing my brother in law, he probably deserves whatever you're about to do to him. But this is my house, and I have certain rules about snakes and dismemberment.

More quotes from The Mummy Returns

Trivia: When the pygmies fall into the river after they blow up the bridge, look closely. As the right hand end falls into the ravine, one end is glowing from the blast, and one of the pygmies climbs on top of it and rides it down, hand waving, exactly like the scene from "Dr. Strangelove, or How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb". Must be deliberate, and definitely worth a look.

More trivia for The Mummy Returns

Question: After Alex translates the hieroglyphs as "This way to Scorpion King," Jonathan quietly responds by saying "It's just my work." What exactly did he mean by that? He's not a translator of ancient Egyptian like his sister Evie, so I don't think he literally meant "work" as his profession.

Phaneron

Chosen answer: He says, "this just might work" meaning he and Alex trying to bring Evie back using the book of the dead.

More questions & answers from The Mummy Returns

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