For the sake of the discussion's relevance to what this blog is supposed to be about, I'm leaving Mummy III out of the conversation as much as possible.
The magic in the Mummy franchise, rather unlike the magic in Yu-Gi-Oh!, the other of my contributing muses, focuses almost squarely on life and death. Mummies are resurrected, bad priests are punished with immortality (which means they can't ever enter the Underworld, a big deal in ancient Egypt), and books called the Book of Amun-Ra and the Book of the Dead...do the exact opposite of what you might think, but in a way make sense. Allow me to explain.
The Book of Amun-Ra, called once also the Book of the Living, has the power to make an immortal man mortal, meaning his soul can enter the afterlife and gain the "true" or "proper" kind of immortality that way. The Book of the Dead has the power to raise cursed individuals from their graves, which results in them wreaking havoc upon the living. This is a "wrong" or "improper" (one might even say "chaotic", as opposed to Amun-Ra's "orderly") immortality. The Book of the Dead, therefore is a means to cause chaos and destruction, where the Book of Amun-Ra/the Living is a means to undo the damage caused by those idiots stupid enough to read from the Book of the Dead.
The Mummy Returns, in particular, makes a big deal out of dreams and visions, which is one of the few things they got right that time around, and here's why. The ancient Egyptians made a big deal out of dreams and visions, believing them to be messages from the gods. People were trained in the art of lucid dreaming, which they believed (and I have no idea if this works) would allow them to help advise affairs of state and communicate with other people telepathically. However, if people did, in fact, communicate through dreams, then this means that their souls "met up" somewhere while their bodies slept in some other location, which indicates that their souls can leave their bodies during dreams, thus facilitating the entire exchange. This is a concept I came across in the Kane Chronicles (Rick Riordan), and I believe somewhere else on the net, but I can't be sure. But the basic idea reminded me of the tablet and the gate. One needs the other to function (in this case, communication needs the out-of-body experience), but the other does not necessarily necessitate the first (i.e. the out-of-body experience does not immediately/always lead to communication with other people). The premise in which they used this concept is wrong, but the concept itself is not terribly flawed.
Night at the Museum makes no reference whatsoever to dreams, so a comparison can't be made on that level, but I felt it should be noted at least somewhere.
The level on which these two franchises can be compared, however, is the use of life-and-death magic and its intrinsicness to the plot (I made intrinsicness up, apparently). In both of these franchises, the existence of magic is why we have the plot in the first place (I'm as yet undecided on whether or not Yu-Gi-Oh! would be fundamentally altered if there were no Millennium Items, if the bad guys were just delusional psychopaths with or without a host of other mental disorders, and if the main character was struggling with the same; it would make an interesting "real world" version, however). We would not have the Night at the Museum that we do without exhibits coming to life, and likewise, the plot of The Mummy would not exist without a reanimated priest (the mummy) being the bad guy, unless the mummy was a plot device of some kind. The point is, in the forms in which they currently exist, the magical system is essential to the structure of the franchise.
Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": We all know Egypt plays a role with both of these movies, but let's explore how.
Countdown: 285 Days to NATM 3
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