Ah, the motivations of the movie bad guy. They can range anywhere from greed to megalomania to spite to revenge to a need to prove oneself. But Cecil, Gus and Reginald? They just want to live forever, and they plan to use invaluable objects from the museum to finance it. The lynchpin to their plans for eternal life is the Tablet of Ahkmenrah, which erases all the problems they experience in their aging bodies (though their bodies are still old) and allows them to kick ass and take names any day of the week, up against Huns, cavemen, and various others, just so long as they are separate units and not working together toward a common end. They plan to keep the tablet and use it to sustain themselves indefinitely.
But there's a problem with this logic: the tablet's magic only works during the night, unless someone is manipulating it. On its own, the tablet can only make you feel young for anywhere from eight to sixteen hours a day, depending on the time of year. The rest of the time, your body is aging, getting old, getting sick, and doing things that bodies do under normal circumstances. This means that even when they are being sustained, their bodies will decay around them until they become walking corpses. It could become all the tablet can do to keep them alive.
However, there is still the chance that Cecil knows more about the tablet than he lets on to anyone else, which means he would know about this and a way around it, but the ramifications of that (I mean that in its original sense, not my invented one from last night) are unpredictable. In the famous arc words of Once Upon a Time, all magic comes with a price. Given the way the tablet functions, a general pattern of consequences can be predicted. If Cecil extends the effects of the tablet on himself and two co-conspirators into the daylight hours, the same could happen to the exhibits, with undefined range. If Cecil decides to grant himself and his cohorts eternal youth and life, they could become waxworks, with the same consequences for them if they get caught outside at the wrong time as for any other exhibit. There could be a whole other set of consequences if he tries to turn back the clock, with its own set of paradoxes, parallel universes, and everything time travel comes with, maybe even a blue police box or two. Or twelve. He could end up reducing them all to dust if he makes a single mistake, especially considering how big Egyptians were on perfection of images and depictions of people. And that's for results we expect from a logical bad guy.
Then there is another matter: how would Kahmunrah, upon releasing his bird-headed army of the damned from the Underworld, conquer the world with only half the day with which to work and the other half devoted to allowing his enemies to stop him? (The subject of birdmen will possibly be addressed the next night I have available.) He has proven capable to unlock powers of the tablet which are not innate (unlike Cecil, where such a concept is pure speculation), and even though he is losing his mind slightly during the second half of BOTS, he is (or at the very least should be) able to think straight enough to have this worked out. For him, the logical next step is to extend exhibit immortality into the daylight hours so they can go nonstop and march on the world at any time of day. He would know how to extend this to all exhibits working for him, which means the natural consequence is that all exhibits are affected. This could be worldwide or it could be restricted to only the exhibits the tablet has already touched, with the possible side effect that the tablet, while in this state, can bring no more exhibits back to life as everything is unbalanced, and if it is Ra/an agent of Ra, then it would want to mitigate that damage as much as possible. Ra does represent order and stand in constant opposition to Apep, the great force of Chaos, after all.
I'm not sure if the spoiler warning is really necessary, but needless to say, both of these bad guys lose, and order is maintained. But this has the downside of leaving the exact consequences of their actions and intended actions concerning the tablet unexplored, except possibly in fan fiction. Except good luck finding fan fiction which does not feature original characters as the love interests/relatives of, well, anyone. I understand that there is ample opportunity and precedent for it, as explained two nights ago that the creators do this, too, but honestly. Enough is enough.
Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": Deck the halls with lots of tablets, fa la la la la, la la la la. 'Tis the season to start counting down, fa la la la la, la la la la. Don we now our cosplay works, fa la la, la la la, la la la la. As our family give us funny looks, fa la la la la, la la la la. It's that time of year, folks, time for the Christmas special. We're throwing a party at For the Love of NATM, and everyone's invited. So, Santa hats or Ahkmenrah costumes, they're all welcome! And we can go all night!
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