We have the fans who ask questions about a work, and then we have the fans who go out and try to formulate their own (sensical or otherwise) answers to their own questions. These are the "tropers" most likely to post on a page like this: Night at the Museum's Wild Mass Guessing (WMG) page. While theories don't abound nearly as much as questions do, they are there, and there are some good ones.
For example, someone surmised that Kahmunrah killed his brother when Ahkmenrah inherited Egypt, or shortly thereafter. And they've got a case, too. Kahmunrah claims that his brother was given the throne over him, but he was also a king of Egypt ("Fifth" to Ahkmenrah's "Fourth", which I surmise is an indication of their standing in a dynasty more than anything else, but that's another matter), and thus for both statements to be true, Ahkmenrah must have been survived by his brother. The troper positing this in response to the original assumption goes on: "And Kahmunrah doesn't seem to be someone patient enough to wait for natural causes to do his sibling in." Someone else chimed in with something from the Wii video game (which, full disclosure, I have never played), which states that Ahkmenrah suspects Kahmunrah learned more about the tablet after he (Ahkmenrah) died. This is me trying to make sense of the statement, because the actual phrasing is somewhat befuddling. However, if my interpretation of what they're trying to write out on their keyboard is correct, their concluding statement is also correct: "...which indicates that Ahkmenrah died before Kahmunrah." The general consensus, therefore, seems to be that Kahmunrah, in a fit of rage or having planned it for years (or both), with an assassin or on his own, whacked his brother to take the throne for himself. I added those conditions because let's be fair: we do not, and may never, know the circumstances under which Ahkmenrah died. He may have decided to throw himself at his brother's feet to avoid civil war, for all we know. But it's a generally accepted and perfectly valid interpretation that Kahmunrah (by some means or another, regardless of circumstances) committed fratricide*.
*For the uninformed in legal terminology, fratricide is defined as the killing of one's own brother. For related terms having to do with brotherhood, we have fraternity and fraternal (which is also a type of twins, who aren't identical and thus can't be natural "clones" of each other, but again, that's another matter).
And that, at least on the webpage, goes right into "The exhibits are at least somewhat real when brought to life". Exhibit A: the scene at the end of BOTS which makes a huge point of Teddy's skin morphing back to wax at the end of the night. Exhibit B: the Civil War slendermen being able to fire bullets despite it being highly unlikely a museum would create that sort of circumstance (which begs the counterargument, Jed's case, where "his guns don't fire". He literally says that). Exhibit C: Ahkmenrah, who, according to the troper, went back and forth between fully formed flesh and blood person and decaying corpse. This one I would particularly like to dissect. Ahkmenrah, so far as we can assume, has always been with the tablet: it was given to him by his parents, he was discovered with it (thus buried with it), and it came to the museum with him, and then and only then did things in the museum come to life. However, for all we can tell, he's been coming to life night after night for thousands of years, doing everything he can to keep from going insane, just waiting for...something. Probably a reason behind the seemingly senseless act of locking him up with the tablet upon his death, or waiting for whatever circumstances needed for that to actually mean something to come about. In any event, the tablet has been with Ahkmenrah throughout his journeys, and we can reasonably assume he never really got a chance to decay. He might look like a sleeping teenager inside that sarcophagus for all we know.
As for the guns, I personally suppose the reasons the ones for the life-size Civil War soldiers work and the ones for the miniature Cowboys don't is a matter of size concerns on part of the manufacturer. For life-size exhibits, the manufacturers had space to put in all the moving parts and make it at least resemble a functioning counterpart, even if (for all he knows) it will never be used in similar fashion. For six-inch-tall miniatures, there is considerably less space, and one is even lucky to get something resembling a human face out of plastic (for further proof, see the close-ups in the NATM opening credits; those are some ugly-ass miniatures). For guns the best the makers can do is a small, molded, painted piece of plastic which looks vaguely like the real thing but lacks all the moving parts. Thus, miniature guns don't function while "real size" ones do.
And finally, as for Teddy's skin, I agree with the original poster: "I guess the best explanation is that the transformation only goes in about skin deep." Or maybe it works differently for different types of exhibits. IDK.
Again, the topic of whether the director knows what's up is addressed, as well as the possibility of his having a fondness for Larry (I'm not a homophobe by any stretch of the imagination, but there are a lot of other possible explanations for this one, such as McPhee growing to like and trust Larry as a coworker, albeit one with an unorthodox method), and there's some back and forth about how it came to be that Ahkmenrah learned English, based on evidence from other exhibits and how Ahkmenrah can speak Hun to begin with. My personal headcanon? He was actively engaged in a mutual teaching situation with one of the archaeologists, teaching him Egyptian as he learned English.
At least it's not Area 51. Yet.
Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": A notice concerning my evolving subject matter.
Countdown 280 Days to NATM 3
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