How many Mummies do we need, really?

I have a confession to make. I adore The Mummy. I think it’s funny and entertaining, awesomely tongue-in-cheek. Rachel Weisz and John Hannah make the movie, and Brendan Fraser… well, he’s pretty and funny and is good at looking confused. Rachel’s character, Evelyn Carnahan, is one of my favorite movie characters of all time; she’s brilliant, spunky-without-being-obnoxious, and is gloriously absentminded. In other words, Evie is basically me in celluloid form.

So, I was excited when I heard about the second film. I thought it had the potential to start another franchise along the lines of Indiana Jones (though nowhere near as perfect, Indiana Jones and the Golden Walker 4 notwithstanding), a great little line of archaeology comedies. That makes my little geek heart happy.

And then The Mummy Returns came out. And I began pretending that it doesn’t exist. It’s actually kind of painful to have to mention it here, but I’ll persevere. That Scorpion thingie… we shall never speak of it.

So I’m sure you can imagine my horror when I heard they were making a fourth movie in the franchise, though they’re calling it the third film in the series. Let’s just call it The Mummy’s Trainwreck. First off, they’re again jumping far into the future, like the second film. Second, they’re bringing back Rick and Evie’s bastard of a son, What’s His Name. Only this time, he’s going to be a grown up, and they’re all going to China to battle Jet Li, the Evil Chinese Mummy, and Michelle Yeoh, the Evil Chinese Wizard.

Really, there’s not enough facepalm in the world for this. What the fuck.

But there’s one bright spot in all of this. My beloved Rachel Weisz has gotten the hell out of Dodge. Apparently she found the prospect of more whining from that little craphead kid (in adult form!) as horrifying as I do. Or maybe she was just afraid of having to fight like Egyptian ninja again.