Overall the film looks gorgeous but the CGI... damn. It looks bad even for it's time and ILM was behind it! How did they manage to do such mediocre job?! One good example is the infamous Scorpion King scene. I remember hearing from somewhere that the reason why the CGI looks so bad is because it's unfinished. Can anyone confirm this and what exactly happened?
shareI heard the same thing too. Apparently they ran out of time and had to release it as is, meaning we never got to see the finished version.
I feel that the the CGI and the reincarnation sub-plot were the only things preventing this movie from being as good as the first one.
Those are exactly the reasons why I gave this one two stars less (5/10) than the first one (7/10). I wonder why they never bothered finishing the effects for the home video releases if it really is true that the time ran out.
shareI don't know but that's why I came to this board. Christ does this look ratchet.
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Yeah, it all had to do with time, unfortunately. This was back in 2001, and CGI was a different beast back then. (Although I personally think that MOST of the effects look good for the time... but definitely not the Scorpion King and a few of the other weaker effects)
The really sad thing is that nowadays a couple students studying computer animation could probably make better effects for the entire scene in less than a month using free digital sculpting and animation programs like Sculptris and Blender.
They probably weren't allowed to finish it for home video releases because the studio didn't want to pump more time and money into the effects, especially after the relatively positive audience reaction to the film overall despite how wonky the effects were... they probably didn't see a point in it.
And FURTHERMORE, this is my signature! SERIOUSLY! Did you think I was still talking about my point?
The really sad thing is that nowadays a couple students studying computer animation could probably make better effects for the entire scene in less than a month using free digital sculpting and animation programs like Sculptris and Blender.
At the time ILM was going full throttle on Pearl Harbor and Jurassic Park 3. They didn't have time to work on Mummy Returns until the last minute.
shareUniversal should had farmed it out to a different company then.
shareMaybe so, but the Mummy movies had a delightful old movie vibe, so effects that look a little wonky aren't a problem. These films (the first two, anyway) were basically just "essence of fun", so I didn't/don't care about the CGI.
shareDon't get me wrong, I enjoy all 3 Brendan Fraser movies. But sometimes it was distracting.
shareInsofar as the Scorpion King's appearance at the end of Mummy Returns definitely needed a touch-up, sure. I think what I'm saying is the effects in the first movie were impeccable, and that's great, but I'm only taking off a "half mark" for the bad CG in Mummy Returns because the story, the characters, the quippy one-liners, and the fun of the picture are worth 99% of the value of the film. They could have done this movie on a Hollywood backlot with these actors kinda goofing around with each other and pretending to fight monsters and it probably would have come off as so charming that I would have enjoyed myself.
shareHaha the film looks gorgeous?
shareYep, no doubt about it. I remember seeing this in the theater way back in 2001 and everyone laughing their ass off when seeing the godawful Scorpion King CGI. It was practically unforgivable considering it had been done better prior to that and the budget being significantly high.
shareThe CGI was definitely a step down compared to the 1999 film.
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