Breaking News

We interrupt your regularly scheduled "For the Love of NATM" Programming for the following breaking news bulletin:

My list for signs of obsession with Night at the Museum has just gone live. It's on the page list at the side of this blog, and comments are welcome and appreciated.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled "For the Love of NATM" Programming.

Night #17 - The Gate, the Tablet, the Underworld, and Religious Validity

Or, wherein I wax theological with respect to the NATM verse. Disclaimer: this has no bearing on the real world whatsoever, so if you want to chew my ass out, go ahead, but bear in mind that I'm only applying this speculation to the world of the franchise only. Which is to say, what I say from here on out applies only to the world inhabited by Larry Daley and exhibits that come to life. This is not that world.

Having said all that, let's figure out exactly what magical Egyptian artifacts say about which is real and which is not from a theological perspective.

Let's get out of the way that it's perfectly okay for a resurrected ancient Egyptian person to invoke Horus and Ra when summoning an army from the underworld, or at the very least the Egyptian underworld. But what does it say when there is evidence that the Egyptian underworld exists but no evidence for any other sort of underworld? In both of these movies, exhibits of people from all sorts of religious creeds are coming to life, everyone from Christopher Columbus and Al Capone to Attila the Hun and the Brothers Egypt. The tablet, being Egyptian, operates on the ancient Egyptian principles of the soul and the afterlife. Therefore, the implication is that no matter what religious background you were raised in or what beliefs you hold in life, in death, the truth is Egyptian. Now, the underworld could be faceted: Christian Heaven and Hell, Duat, and all other forms of afterlife may be represented in the underworld, but for all intents and purposes, the underworld in general operates on Egyptian concepts of the soul and allows for the soul to return to representations of the body under given conditions (see Night #4 for more information).

However, for all intents and purposes, the society in which these movies take place could be our own, with its three major monotheistic religions and general cultural permeation of various elements from these religions, especially the idea of Heaven and Hell in terms of Christian theology. Therefore, letting it get out that there is a gate to the Egyptian underworld, and people can come and go from this underworld and therefore see for themselves that it exists, causes serious cultural problems and may result in societal and cultural collapse for a greater part of the globe. In short, letting the secret of the tablet and the gate get out could result in global chaos.

But secret or not, it appears that the only valid afterlife is that of the Egyptians, unless NATM 3 proves us wrong with the introduction of Lancelot and possibly other British mythological figures and objects, such as the Lady of the Lake and the Sword in the Stone. But until we see whether this is true or not, we are left with the idea that the Egyptians had it right and everyone else in the NATM world is...either mistaken or deliberately lying.

On a lighter note:

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": all the flaws in Kahmunrah's plan, or the trouble with conquering the world

Countdown: 359 Days to NATM 3

Night #16 - Who would win in a fight...?

Who would win in a fight between Cecil and Kahmunrah? I may or may not be the only one who wonders this, but I'm going to make an effort to answer it.

The parties involved:

Kahmunrah - Trained warrior, used to battle, used to commanding and the battlefield in general, fueled by vengeance and driven to prove himself to his parents and the rest of the world, also believes he's right for so doing.

Cecil - Also a trained badass and used to fighting exhibits, thinks logically and is relatively adaptive (though he isn't good enough at this to succeed), driven by desire for the tablet and its ability to grant himself and his cohorts eternal vitality.

The weapons:

Kahmunrah's khopesh and skills against Cecil's gun and skills (Cecil does have access to a gun and the knowledge required to use it, where Kahmunrah does not)

Home turf advantage:

Depends on where this fight takes place: Kahmunrah has Smithsonian Castle and Cecil holds the Natural History Museum of New York. For all other territories (except possibly Egypt), it comes down to skill and the ability to think on his feet (due to combat experience, point goes to Kahmunrah, minus half point for his tendency to crack when things don't go exactly his way, plus half of that back for his ability to make it work nonetheless).

Fighting styles:

Kahmunrah is more likely to get others to do the work for him, because of his lineage, how he was raised, and that given his age, he was probably used to commanding for some time before his death. However, he is no stranger to actual combat and poses a very viable threat to Larry when they actually do throw down. If you look closely, Larry struggles against Kahmunrah when they first start fighting, and Larry is actually nervous enough to pass up an opportunity to kick Kahmunrah in the face to retrieve his weapon (a flashlight, if you've been living under a rock), indicating that even when he's in the zone to fight off a rebellious exhibit (which is what Kahmunrah really comes down to in the grand scheme of things), he knows Kahmunrah can kill him.

Cecil, on the other hand, while able to kick butt, is more likely to cut and run, manipulate, and generally talk his way out of a given situation. (Another indication of his selfishness is that he has no idea what the Huns are talking about when Larry allows them to do a little limb-ripping on him, which means he didn't care about the exhibits enough to learn how to communicate with them to begin with.) When things start to fall apart, he starts by shakily attempting to manipulate the youngest (therefore most impressionable) person present, and when that fails and the exhibits retaliate against him and his cohorts, he takes off with the tablet (alone) on a horse-drawn carriage. His cowardice is not completely evident, but it is there, and it's something Kahmunrah could easily take advantage of.

So who would win? It all depends on how each combatant plays the situation. Cecil could easily slip out and try to escape, but Kahmunrah could just as easily stop him. It also depends on who's on what side at the time of the fight. Both are bad guys in their respective installments, but if Cecil is on the good side, then he is more likely to win, at least in a Hollywood film, and same with Kahmunrah. It also depends on the fan fic writer, especially if the actual creators do not have this situation come to pass in canon.

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": Horus, Ra, falcon-headed warriors from the underworld, and the NATM universe. Are other religions valid? Do other underworlds exist? Or has it always been the ancient Egyptians?

Countdown: 360 Days to NATM 3

Night #15 - "I can't read."

The line is Kahmunrah's, from one of the two novelizations of BOTS and the excuse Kahmunrah gives for why he doesn't just work out the tablet's combination himself. There's a fan fic somewhere on the Far Flung Net that states that Kahmunrah had people to do such "boring stuff" like reading for him, and quite frankly, I believe it. After all, besides being power hungry, he strikes me as either desirous of or used to (or both) being taken care of and having things done for him. That or, being the eldest, he wasn't expected to learn to read.

Ahkmenrah, on the other hand, was taught how to read, perhaps to escape his situation in some way or because he was expected to become a priest or scribe or perform some other administrative function for the royal court under his brother, or a combination of both, depending on when in their lives it was announced that Ahkmenrah would take the throne instead of his brother.

So for the plain and simple facts of station and/or emotional need, Ahkmenrah can read and Kahmunrah cannot.

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": I answer the age-old (or at the very least four-year-old) question of who would win in a fight between Kahmunrah and Cecil.

Countdown: 361 Days to NATM 3.

Breaking News

We interrupt your regularly scheduled "For the Love of NATM" programming for this update.

So I caught Night at the Museum on FX's DVD on TV, where they go into some behind the scenes info and trivia during commercial breaks, and I've decided to take it upon myself to provide you with a summation of all that I've learned:

• The woman interviewing Ben Stiller for a job is actually his mother, who was also Miranda's mother-in-law from Sex and the City, made 36 appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show and was on Seinfeld once.
• Theodore Roosevelt was the youngest elected president at 32 and the first American to win the Nobel Prize. His refusal to shoot an animal while out hunting led to the creation and naming of the Teddy Bear in his honor (and we all love those cute little things). He also survived an assassination attempt in the middle of a big speech, taking a bullet in the chest and deciding since he wasn't dying right there to continue giving his ninety-minute speech. Doctors decided it was too dangerous to remove the bullet and he carried it around with him for the rest of his life.
• In real life, the giant globe and the statue of Theodore Roosevelt are absent from the lobby of the American Museum of Natural History. In fact, all the filming took place at a replica sound stage in Vancouver, Canada, wherein hallways led to nowhere, the front facade opened up to a replica of the facade of the real thing and then nothing, and pictures were used for backgrounds.
• Apparently no one thought they could land Dick Van Dyke and Mickey Rooney for the movie, but they did it and may have ironed their faces onto the guards for modern fans of the franchise. In interviews, they were described as "funny" and "history...Hollywood", respectively.
• Some people consider Cecil's motivation for scaring Larry up for debate, though I personally think he's just trying to be malicious and foreshadow for Larry what he's in for, though Larry doesn't get it.
• Rexy was inspired by a real life dinosaur skeleton composed of two sets of T. Rex bones, including the first complete T. Rex skull ever found.
• Speaking of bones, there are enough bones in the real life museum to make a pile outside that's three stories tall (it's about 50 million bones), and among them is Lucy, the approx. 3.2 million-year-old early human discovered in 1974.
• Tyrannosaurus Rex means "Tyrant reptile".
• The visual effects movie entails sticking to a plan, and a solidly defined one at that, but since Shawn Levy is open to new ideas, the end result is that the back flip Larry does early on is Ben Stiller's idea and results in a better sequence than what was originally sequenced.
• Some guy in a guy in a green screen unitard inspired Ben Stiller to do this.
• Levy wanted Roosevelt to be played by Robin Williams pretty much the entire time. Williams toned down the improv because he was playing a historical figure, but it makes his character more human and less imposing dead white guy.
• Crystal (Dexter) spent a month and a half training before filming started and continued training while filming was going on. She stopped work at six thirty (which Ben Stiller thinks is unfair to human actors who don't have that as part of their schedule), and it is easier to train her to stick her tongue out than to smile. Smiling in monkeys is a sign of fear and aggression.
• The blue whale has an aorta large enough for a grown man to crawl through. It's as long as three school buses and weighs as much as 24 African Elephants. Their underwater calls can be heard for miles.
• Steve Coogan and Owen Wilson were out of the country when they filmed their scenes, and they were added digitally to the shots with Ben Stiller, who improv'd 15 different versions of a conversation (Levy probably pulled that number out of his ass for emphasis, but it makes sense), to which the actors had to come up with proper responses.
• There was also a lot of improvisation between Ben Stiller and Ricky Gervais during filming.
• The Easter Island Head obsessed with dum-dums giving him gum-gum is Ben Garant from Everybody Loves Raymond. Garant primarily considers himself a writer, and this is his ninth film with Ben Stiller.
• Levy himself is Rexy off-camera. He does a lot of off-camera performance, which Stiller calls "hugely entertaining".
• The creative team had a few lines to draw with Rexy. He couldn't be the real thing (since it was fragile enough that touching its tooth would make it all shake), but he still had to be huge, run around, and make sense.
• The costumes (this is an interesting bit) are a fine balance between historically accurate and "loyal to the way we imagine history" while also being fun and eye-catching.
• Neanderthals in general were a lot smarter than we give them credit for. They were capable of controlling fire and such but incapable of art and language, for example.
• Levy found it amazing to see images that he thought up on a movie screen, calls it incredible and said it "kind of makes you hooked." On what is still up for debate.

Sadly, there's no similar trivia splurge for Battle of the Smithsonian, which is playing as I type this.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled "For the Love of NATM" programming.

Night #14 - The Tablet, the Gate, and the Brothers Egypt

"We were really excited about having something that the tablet fits into, and something it was supposed to fit into, for a really long time." -- Paraphrasing Robert Ben Grant and Thomas Lennon, concerning the Gate of Kahmunrah.

Not only is it clear that the tablet once fit into that slot on the front of the gate, there are bits of the tablet stuck in the slot, coinciding exactly with the damaged edges of the tablet itself. This implies that it was forcefully separated from the gate and thus was possibly pretty much stuck to the gate at one point. That the gate needs the tablet to work or it's otherwise a strangely carved glorified piece of wall speaks to the symbolic value of the two pieces.

The Gate of Kahmunrah

Strongly imagerically dark (yes, I made that up), the gate is one of the two focal points of Kahmunrah's plan to take over the world. The trouble is, it needs the tablet (strongly imagerically light) in order to perform any useful work. This is the symbolic counterpart of Kahmunrah's motivation hinging on how he feels about the favoritism shown toward his brother and toward his brother in general. In both respects, he still needs Ahkmenrah.

The Tablet of Ahkmenrah

The light counterpart to the gate and the key to the gate so to speak, the tablet can act independently of the gate, if only in the limited capacity of bringing exhibits to life and doing nothing else. This equates to Ahkmenrah not appearing to be emotionally tethered to Kahmunrah. Note that I said "appearing to be". The tablet still requires outside help for more complicated acts such as opening gates to the Underworld and whatever else it can do. While Ahkmenrah hides it really well, this indicates through symbolism that he still needs someone in a close familial relationship (ideally he wants to reconstruct his relationship with his brother, indicated by the fact that the tablet and the gate were made for each other and once were joined before being forcibly separated some time before the brothers were buried with the separate pieces).

Is there any hope for the Brothers Egypt?

Well, that depends on how you look at Kahmunrah's exile to the Underworld. If he's gone for good, then there's no hope. If he can still come back, as his mummy or another waxwork or statue of some other medium, then there's a chance there. This is a question which only time can answer, in other words.

So the tablet and the gate are symbolic of the brothers, their personalities, and their relationship to each other as it directs their motives and the ways they navigate through life. The one is consumed by the favoritism shown his brother and thus twisted and hell-bent on world domination. The other needs his brother on an emotional level but does not consume himself with it and can hide it rather well. Their lives are both deeply anchored in their feelings toward each other, and they can both be said to need each other, in various capacities. (They don't "love" each other per se, as there is too much emotional baggage to work through for that to truly be said of the brothers.)

They are just never seen together.

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": the tablet and what it reveals about the literacy of the brothers.

Countdown: 362 Days to NATM 3.

Night #13 - The Cause of All This Commotion

The Lincoln statue from the Lincoln Memorial traipses about all over the Smithsonian complex. Amelia travels with Larry between buildings, though often in the company of the tablet (an element missing from Abraham Lincoln's modern-day wanderings). And of course, there is the famous exodus from the Museum of Natural History before the climax of the first movie.

The question raised by all this is, what is the tablet's range, and how does it affect exhibits after awakening them?

It's most logical to suspect that the tablet operates on a one-building basis when it comes to bringing things to life. Given that it really is magic and probably has the backing of the king of the gods, it would have been originally kept in a temple, its influence tailoring to that setting or possibly designed for it from the start. Larry mistakenly believes that the world's biggest museum is coming to life by thinking of the Smithsonian as one building when really it is nineteen, and he is proven wrong when the whole of Aerospace comes to life after he enters with the tablet and before that, when he and Amelia take the tablet into the Lincoln Memorial and Lincoln awakes (complete with a stretch and a yawn). Then evidence from the movies suggests that once animate, the exhibits remain animate until they either return to their places for sunrise or turn to dust.

So no, the world's biggest museum is not coming to life, at least, not all at once.

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": the symbolic reason why the gate needs the tablet to function. I'm putting on the hat I found in my high school humanities class and tying these artifacts to the Brothers Egypt who own them.

Countdown: 363 Days to NATM 3.

Night #12 - "My warriors, come forth!"

Kahmunrah's army of bird-headed warriors were summoned from the Underworld by means of a tablet, a gate, and a command (it's up for debate as to whether or not the chant that Kahmunrah does is even necessary), but to what limitations are they subject? They skip town after finding they have no effect on a gigantic marble Lincoln with pigeon issues, so the question is never entirely answered, but, as with the tablet's possible effects on the three old night guards should they have succeeded, there are several possibilities.

For one, if the tablet was key to their summoning, then logically the tablet can be used to get rid of them, even if it is used to open the gate and send them back to the Underworld from whence they came.

For another, are the birdmen subject to the same limitations as exhibits? This is a key question for anyone plotting world domination through this method. If you want access to your evil army at any time to lay waste to the opposition, then you need to make sure you've accounted for the whole inertness-at-daylight thing. This can be accomplished one of two ways, the first being to extend effective immortality to the exhibits and the second being to know for damned well sure that the birdmen are under your expressly approved leadership for periods of your inactivity so they can carry out your mission while you can't lead them very well. The former possibility guarantees immunity to daylight, and the latter assumes it, and people of various personality types will for various reasons (among them being knowledge, or lack thereof, of birdmen in general) go with either option. In any event, it is a chief consideration when working on taking over the world using an army of the damned.

Thirdly, those birdmen look pretty damned squishy. I mean, sure, they're seasoned warriors who've been around literally since Christ was a corporal, but it looks like there are a lot of very choice places to plant a spear, sword, or bullet. And considering they have bird heads and birds have hollow bones, snapping necks and crushing skulls should be doubly easy. They are armed, yes, but they do not look very well armored. If they ever stuck around for any significant length of time, eventually this topic would be brought up, and someone would wonder or suspect that they are under supernatural protection from their (apparent) patrons, Ra and Horus, both falcon-headed and involved in battle in various capacities, one against the god of darkness and the other as the protector of the pharaohs. Or perhaps they are supernatural in their own right (for instance being spirits of the faceless/unburied dead) and cannot be harmed by mortal means. Knowledge of how this works in detail would be especially useful to resistance leaders in the era of Kahmunrah.

It's really a shame Kahmunrah's army of the damned didn't stick around for us to study. The results of that would have been really interesting.

In any event, next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": What is the exact reach of the tablet, and how long are affected exhibits affected?

Countdown: 364 Days to NATM 3

Night #11 - CHRISTMAS!

Nicky's probably wondering if Ahkmenrah is going to be his new big brother, which would be a cool dynamic to see, actually, and Larry's...I don't even know. Sacajawea decided she would rather stick to what she knows best, and Ahk, well, I think that's the closest his face will ever get to "Yeah, we owned those punks."

As promised, this is the For the Love of NATM Christmas special. We'll have caroling, cosplays, maybe a costume contest or two, secret Santas, and, of course, every form of NATM-themed fun you could possibly want or need. So let's begin, shall we?

Night #10 - "I'm planning on a long retirement."

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!

Interesting Thoughts on Tonight

I noticed an interesting spike in page views today, jumping up to sixty-nine for today alone, and I suspect there are several reasons for this:

1. Rami Malek is hot (no disagreement)
2. Twilight is a cultural phenomenon (there's proof up the ass for this one)
3. People like Weird Al/Blockbuster Buster
4. A combination of all three

What caught my attention was that I suddenly went to a hundred sixty seven cumulative page views for this blog when last time I checked, I was still in double digits. I'm not complaining, but I'd like to put my two cents in to give some meaning to my sudden change in circumstances. Comments are appreciated.

Night #9 - RAMI-fication

In this case, the phrase has nothing to do with consequences for one's actions. Actually, it does. It has to do with the consequences of one man's actions. I'm talking about the hunk in Akhmenrah's best clothes and jewelry: Rami Malek. The phrase, for the intents and purposes of the meme, is used to describe anything with Rami Malek in or on it. Night at the Museum and its sequel have been RAMI-fied. Breaking Dawn Part 2 has been RAMI-fied. There's Twilight merch with Rami's face on it, making it RAMI-fied. One such merchandise item appears in some of the Blockbuster Buster's videos, making those specific videos RAMI-fied. The Blockbuster Buster uses footage from other sources, and that particular clip comes from Weird Al, making that part of Weird Al RAMI-fied. Twilight posters featuring Rami Malek are RAMI-fied. Essentially anything that can have a face on it, and more importantly anything that can have Rami Malek's face on it, can be considered RAMI-fied.

Therefore, we have:

And of course:

But that's just getting started.

This is a sort of commemoration thing for a guy who, in my view, doesn't get enough attention even though he's got his whole life and career ahead of him. Heck, he's been part of two successful franchises thus far, and he's been in one of those ever since the beginning. I believe he gets credited in the opening sequence of NATM 1 (fitting, since he has a bigger part in that one), and I have no way to make a determination on the last two Twilight movies, since Eclipse left me with such bad ending fatigue that I never went back. Besides, I heard they weren't that great anyway, but Rami plays the kid with the elemental powers, which are the coolest powers in that franchise, and since he can control fire and that's the only thing that can do Twilight's vampires in, I think logically he would be in charge. I'd give up my whole savings account to see that movie.

Here's to Rami Malek!

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": Wherein I return to discussing the tablet, because quite frankly there's a lot there to discuss. This will be the first of what is right now a three-part series. Also, the Christmas special is coming up!

Breaking News

We interrupt your regularly scheduled For the Love of NATM programming to bring you this breaking news bulletin:

The Natural History Museum of Utah has released its latest TV spot which is a brilliant nod to the Night at the Museum franchise, from the use of the theme music right down to the night guard going through the halls. And since we're being nodded to, we're now on the road to becoming a phenomenon! Let the fandom rejoice!

Night #8 - "I hated, hated, HATED this movie."

That quote is from the famous film reviewer Roger Ebert, who's critiqued everything from The Mummy to Cars 2 (both of which I like, by the way, as far as they go for entertaining the masses). Personally I like these movies, not nearly so much as The Little Vampire, which holds a very dear place in my heart, but I like them. I place them right up there with the first National Treasure, the first two Mummy movies (Mummy and Mummy Returns), Yu-Gi-Oh, and maybe an Indiana Jones flick or two. They belong in the category of Action/Adventure/Egypt (in some cases the last can be replaced with Ancient World or Conspiracy Theories), or in other words, "Dog Days of Summer movies".

But apparently not a lot of professional reviewers share my opinion. Some concede their entertainment value and their worth for planting the kid in front of for a couple hours and maybe getting lost in the wacky hi-jinks yourself, but others take issue with the special effects, the overemphasis on slapstick comedy over plot/concept development, the acting (namely Ben Stiller; I've read glowing comments on Hank Azaria and Amy Adams concerning their roles in BOTS), lack of a plot period, and that the sequel has fallen prey to the "bigger is better" disease that commonly befalls sequels. I'm no film authority, I'm not even a film student, so while I am starting to notice odd elements of cinematography (the lens effect, for example, which I noticed in a rendition of Henry IV) and similar, I feel unqualified to comment on acting or special effects. Therefore, I will place more focus here on plot development vs comedy elements, plot presence or absence, and "sequelitis".

Plot, Comedy, and Balance

It isn't just slapstick comedy that some people take issue with, especially concerning BOTS. One person noted that the plot "came to a complete halt" at various points throughout the movie to deliver a punchline or have two characters spew witty remarks. Some people call this suspending the plot entirely, I call it comic relief. From my perspective, especially in BOTS, the plot is still in motion, but it "stops", to use that word, at points where it is allowed to do so. When there is enough tension to sustain the movie at a given point and you need something to break it for the sake of your audience, this is a point where you would introduce a moment of comic relief. This can be a slap fight between Ben Stiller and two monkeys (would love to see how they choreographed that, but I'm getting off topic), or it could be delivering witty remarks back and forth, or it could even be taking a break in the action plot to have Amelia and Larry discuss Larry's current life choices and whether or not he's made the right ones (following the plot of Larry finding himself and placing it more under the category of plots and subplots).

Verdict: Comedy is a good thing, and the plot stopping thing, it's so you can take a break from drama.

Plot or No Plot

I don't see this complaint very much, as generally people complain about stand-stills, but I will concede that the set-up in the original NATM is quite slow. This, though, is done to establish Larry's character and relationships with other characters around him, including his son, ex-wife, and the people he's replacing, and to set up the concept that everything comes to life at night and it's up to Larry to manage the chaos as much as possible. Now, I will confess that NATM does something relatively poorly: its subplot of Cecil and his two colleagues trying to frame Larry for robbing from the museum and thus ruining his life. This element of the plot could have used more of the set-up time and been developed further.

Verdict: Plot does exist. You can see in the first movie that the screenwriters are getting their feet wet with the idea, but by the second time around, things pull together really well in that regard.

"Sequelitis"

This is to say, does the sequel fall prey to being "bigger and better" than the original, to the detriment of the film. The great thing about the sequel is that the concept was already set up in the first film, so the writers, director, and actors can take it and run with it. This allows more set-up time to be devoted to the plot and subplots of the sequel. This also allows for more time for action, comedy, adventure, and bad guys being bad guys. BOTS takes the concept of Night at the Museum and transplants it in the Smithsonian, the largest museum in the world (technically nineteen different museums, housing everything from Egyptian artifacts to pop culture icons). Chaos ensues, many henchmen get trapped in a picture. The biggest complaint is that there is too much going on.

In the original, exhibits from one museum were coming to life. In the sequel, exhibits from three museums and the Lincoln Memorial were coming to life. In the original, the bad guys were looking to gain eternal life and vitality, and they only involved themselves. In the sequel, the bad guy is forced to recruit other bad guys to help achieve his ends, to open a gate to the underworld, release his army of the damned, and take over the world. I've read that they pile up the special effects in the sequel, whereas in the original more actors were involved. They've also added characters rather than simply replacing them. This leads into my main gripe with the upcoming third and the introduction of yet more new characters to the mix with the remainder relegated to extras. At this rate, the franchise will expand to a Loads and Loads of Characters universe, to the detriment of character development, and eventually the weight of the people in the verse will cause it to collapse in on itself. They haven't gotten there yet, and as far as too much going on, well, I don't see it. They've already established what the tablet can do, so they have more time to focus on action and conflict, which they do.

When it comes to "sequelitis", my fears are into the future of the franchise. Not only the added characters when they could give Ahkmenrah an origin story or have him reunite with his brother (I'd shoot a guy to see that movie), but the elements implied by Lancelot's presence: Excalibur potentially being a real, magical thing; King Arthur; the other Knights of the Round Table; Morgan La Fey and whether or not she has actual powers; the list goes on, and that's just everything that pertains to the Arthur mythos. Conceding that there are other magical elements besides the tablet, what relevance does the Sword in the Stone have? The tablet is a completely fictional object made up for the Night at the Museum concept and franchise, and a modern invention by default though it plays a little on elements of Egyptian mythology. The Sword in the Stone has a long, established mythological history with a canon on how it works and what it's used for. It was designed by Merlin to serve as support for England's true king. This has nothing to do with exhibits coming to life so far as I understand it. Unless Lancelot is delusional the way Kahmunrah is proud and grandiose, and Excalibur is one of his hallucinations, then I think I can deal with it, but other than that, I have a serious problem with the concept Lancelot's presence as antagonist of NATM 3 implies.

Verdict: Sequel's fine, but future installments are troublesome.

So that's my take on several common points in reviews for both movies, as well as dipping into the third. One person believes no one asked for the third, but given the box office success of the first two, I seriously doubt that. Money talks, honey.

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": your blogger on this series has tried to start a meme. Read all about it and experience some of what she's come up with, next.

Night #7 - Keeping Prisoners

"Yell all you want, Pharaoh. You've been in there fifty-four years, you're not getting out tonight."

But why? After all, when Ahkmenrah is released, it's revealed all he really wants is a breath of fresh air, and after decades of being stuck in a sarcophagus, who can blame the guy? In fact, it's a miracle he's not insane at this point. But before his release, everyone in the museum seems to avoid him at all costs except for only a few: Teddy Roosevelt, due to intrepidity; Cecil Fredericks, out of greed; Nicky, out of curiosity; and possibly Dr. McPhee, as a regular course of his duties. Dr. McPhee likely keeps everything he does concerning the museum restricted to the daylight hours, for various reasons, and any fears he have are probably due to his desire to avoid whatever goes on after hours as much as possible.

Teddy Roosevelt willingly approaches the pharaoh in order to explain to Larry why the museum is in chaos and why the exhibits are moving, but he urges Larry not to make eye contact with the jackal guards and tells the pharaoh point blank that he won't be released. He sounds brave, sure, but that mask could hide any number of emotions toward the pharaoh. It's a good thing Larry doesn't quite understand the fear the other exhibits seem to have for the pharaoh prior to his release, because the absence of that motivation against releasing the pharaoh ultimately contributes to Ahkmenrah's freedom. In fact, Larry releases Ahkmenrah because the latter is most connected to the tablet and would be of some help getting it back and getting the museum back under control. He's right.

Cecil Fredericks also willingly approaches Ahkmenrah's sarcophagus, but he is sure to do it when he is sure he won't be accosted by the guards or have to deal with the pharaoh's constant screaming and banging against the lid of his sarcophagus. He is sure to give Larry the tour before closing time, and he steals the tablet and rotates the middle piece while the sun still shines. But he and his cohorts are all very well aware of what the tablet does for them when it comes to energy, and Cecil implies by "planning on a long retirement" that it will help them live forever (a statement I will go into on another night). Where other museum artifacts are stolen for their worth or as tools to help frame Larry, the tablet is stolen for its power to "give new life" to whatever it touches which can be given life (basically anything humanoid/animal-shaped).

Nick Daley first approaches the tablet when he sees it in a cart full of other museum goods, after hearing of it some time before, thinking his dad was losing his mind and such a thing didn't even exist, and expressing a desire to go home. Nick is actually the first to spot the guards prepping to rip off the museum, and when he picks up the tablet, he becomes a game changer in a game he doesn't even begin to understand. Cecil and Larry both urge him in different directions, the one to put the thing down and the other to turn the middle piece and restore the magic, and Nicky ultimately chooses to trust his father. In doing so, he learns that Larry is not insane and was right the whole time about exhibits who were brought to life every night, but initially, he just wanted no part of any of this.

So why do only a few parties approach the pharaoh and his tablet, and even then under very specific sets of circumstances? Teddy Roosevelt expresses leeriness regarding Ahkmenrah's jackal guards, discussed last night, but the tablet in and of itself is very powerful. I discussed on the fourth night that the tablet has powers centering on life, specifically granting what was dead renewed life, which came with the caveat that everything caught outside the museum would turn to dust at sunrise. The tablet is therefore capable of indirectly causing death, and if opening a gate and bringing exhibits to life are the tip of the ice berg as Kahmunrah claims, then maybe the exhibits don't want to take their chances, and even Cecil is playing it safe. Since he was the one to give Larry the tip to "brush up on [his] history a little bit," chances are good that's what he did to adjust to what exactly was going on, and he picked up bits and pieces about the tablet that made him nervous.

But the tablet in and of itself is just a slab of gold with rotating pieces and pretty symbols on it. When it does anything really interesting, useful, or cool, it's because it's being manipulated by an external party, in both visible cases someone who speaks and/or reads Egyptian. The only thing it does on its own is give exhibits life every night within its designated "domain" (usually a building of some form, in modern times museums). Therefore, to do anything of value beyond its inert power (which is implied, at least by Kahmunrah, to be pretty weaksauce in comparison to everything else the tablet does), someone must be involved to utter an incantation, enter a combination, perform a ritual, or any combination of the three. In all likelihood, if the exhibits fear for the lives that have been given to them by the tablet, they fear that their lives will be taken not by the tablet itself, but by Ahkmenrah, the only exhibit in the museum who can work the thing.

But those jackal guys can be pretty intimidating in their own right.

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": Does it really suck that bad? Opinions on the first two movies of the franchise and a few on the upcoming third. My take, and I explore the question, does it really matter?

Night #6 - "If it can be dreamed, it can be done."

"Hence, the twenty-foot jackal staring at you right now--Don't make eye contact." -- Teddy Roosevelt, as part of the little tour he gives to Larry to help explain why everything comes to life at night. The jackal in question is one of a pair which stands guard over the pharaoh Ahkmenrah, his temple, and his tablet. They answer only to Ahkmenrah, as Larry has to ask the mummy (who he does not yet know is benevolent and could even pass as Nicky's older brother) to call them off before serious harm comes to him or his son. Teddy Roosevelt is the only exhibit seen within any meaningful distance of the jackals before Larry changes things around, and even he seems leery of being around them longer than absolutely necessary.

But who are these feared stone creatures? Humans are not naturally jackal-headed, so they must symbolically represent some persons as depictions of the gods are not expected to be taken as what they literally looked like, but represented their nature as accurately as possible. The guards look like Anubis, who is the guardian of the soul on its way into the underworld to be judged worthy of entry into paradise or eaten alive, depending on whether the person had sinned in life and how egregiously. Gods are not like humans, so it is likely that their souls can inhabit more than one representation of the self at the same time. However, there is another possibility: the guards house the spirits of two of Ahkmenrah's most loyal soldiers/bodyguards, binding them to serve him in death as he guarded the tablet. Both explanations account for there being two which are animate rather than just one as suggested by only one Teddy Roosevelt coming to life despite there being multiple on the premises. But the question never seems to be asked, the topic sidestepped in favor of slapstick humor and the plot. The latter is important, but the former could be toned down a little bit for the sake of concept development. But that's just me.

Next time on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": Why in God's name does Ahkmenrah have to remain in that sarcophagus at all? Why is everyone so afraid of him before Larry shows up? Do the old night guards know anything? Tune in to find out.

Night #5 - Don't let anything in...or out

That is the key instruction Cecil gives Larry when handing over the keys to the then-clueless new night guard, along with a worn but still intact instruction manual, with the key parts in red type, perhaps to be better seen in a tricky situation against all the black type. The first three instructions are as follows:

1. Throw the bone
2. Lock up the lions or they'll eat you
3. Be sure to check your belt. The monkey probably stole your keys

That's the guards' perspective on their nightly interactions with the exhibits. Let's get the exhibits' take, shall we?

"Every night, year after year, one of you guards locks us up in these boxes," says one of the men in the Wild West diorama. Jed adds that someone needs to "pay." The Wild West miniatures actually arrange for Larry to get hit with a train, which would kill someone of their size but merely bounces off of Larry's nose with nothing more than a painful tap. It doesn't even bruise. Dexter steals Larry's keys and even urinates on the man (explain that smell to your kid/ex-wife/both). Meanwhile, the rest of the museum devolves into sheer insanity and Teddy Roosevelt is the only one willing to help Larry out of his pickle, if only just once. And poor Ahkmenrah has to be shut up in his sarcophagus all night and all he wants is out, and some fresh air. His jackals are leery of people passing through their ruler's domain, perhaps finding their motives suspect, but decide to let them leave on their own.

Now, the three old night guards took the extreme measures they did, which Larry adapts to with considerable ingenuity before it dawns on him to help the exhibits cooperate on their own so they could be free, to keep everything inside the museum. As Teddy states and a caveman proves, anything caught outside the bounds of the museum at sunrise is reduced to dust. This proves that the magical act of having life restored to you in the form of a ba in a waxwork, taxidermy, etc. has divinely-set rules (Magic A is Magic A) and if they are broken, you are punished by never being allowed to return, or possibly being erased from existence (the Egyptians believed, and sometimes acted on the belief, that destroying someone's image would destroy the person's soul). That doesn't mean the exhibits have to like it, though, nor do they need it explained to them. Teddy is the one to explain this rule to Larry, and based on the "Oh, shit" look on the caveman's face before he disintegrates, he knows what's coming for him and that his number's up. Amelia, at the end of BOTS, states point blank, "I know what's coming, Mr. Daley." She knows she either turns to dust or gets frozen forever because of the tablet's relocation back to where it belongs, at Ahkmenrah's side. She probably guesses she and her plane are going to turn to dust, because she adds, "I've got a feeling it's going to be a beautiful sunrise." The exhibits know the consequences of getting locked out at sunrise. They don't need to be locked up.

As Larry adjusts to his new role as guardian of the exhibits ("a venerable position in this institution"), the exhibits wreak havoc, which results in him getting fired and rehired twice in quick succession. However, because he knows he can't stop Cecil from stealing the tablet and framing him for it on his own, he decides to break new ground. He first breaks Ahkmenrah out of his sarcophagus, which he is so eager to be free of that he nearly causes property damage, then frees Sacajawea from her glass prison to help track Cecil down, pulls a Dr. Phil on Attila to get him to at least stop trying to kill him, and finally, with some help from the gum-gum-obsessed Moai, gives a rousing speech and convinces the exhibits to stop fighting each other and start fighting Cecil, because "without the tablet, all of this, this whole coming-to-life-at-night thing, it all goes away." And it works. Once the exhibits realize how well they work as teams under the direction of their night guard, and that they can accomplish great things because of it, they don't fight each other any more. In fact, they throw a wild party with soccer, dancing, music, crazy driving (it had to be for the miniatures to get their RC car through a moving crowd of all sorts of people), a T-Rex, and whatever else a wild party at a magical museum comes with.

Larry came off as less nonviolent than the other three guards from the start. He simply did what he was told and tried to work with what he had to the best of his ability. He first adapted to the challenges some of the exhibits, such as the Mayans, might pose, and the huge speech for all of the exhibits was not his first diplomatic effort with the exhibits. In fact, it is to settle the dispute between the cowboys and the Romans which seems to have gone on since they woke up. He lets them roam freely about the Diorama Room and tells them that they can stay out there if they can cooperate. Of course, this fails, but it's not like everyone's first efforts in some area or another were rousing successes. But he already knows going in how to negotiate a peace: you figure out what the parties want, and you give it to them on a certain set of terms. This is probably how he's on good terms with his ex-wife. In all likelihood, perhaps because of his experience with the divorce and his generally people-pleasing nature, he is better suited to managing exhibits who are sick of being locked up than the three old retainers who kept them such in the first place.

Though night guards are the first humans to have contact with the exhibits on a regular basis, there is another element to consider, as well: museum daytime staff. This includes docents and the curator, Dr. McPhee. The only docent we meet is Rebecca, who is a grad student as well and working on a dissertation for her PhD. In all likelihood, she has only been working at the Museum of Natural History for a very short time, a few months to a few years, and clearly has no knowledge of what goes on after closing time. She is not only skeptical when Larry tells her, she accuses him of making fun of her. She sees the proof for herself on her way in for the next morning's shift, watching the end result of Ahkmenrah's spell compelling the exhibits to return to the museum passing right in front of the taxi she's riding in. The rest is, as they say, history (pun intended).

Then there is the curator. Dr. McPhee does not ask how the museum ends up being a disaster after his third night on the job. He does not ask Larry to explain anything odd which happens to occur and in fact tells him flat out not to explain anything. He expects night guards to manage the chaos, and apparently his standard for this is the actions of the three retiring night guards, because Larry doesn't measure up. However, Larry, through his efforts to get the exhibits to work together to recover the tablet, results in not only a media firestorm, but also tremendously boosted attendance numbers, which results in McPhee deciding to rehire Larry and keep him on for good. McPhee's actions indicate that he is considerably more used to what goes on behind closed doors after hours, either that he was in on the secret the entire time or that he knew something supernatural was up but decided not to pursue the matter to maintain plausible deniability. In any event, he expects the night guard(s) to run a tight ship while he's not around, but when Larry's "unorthodox manner" gets better results than what he's used to, he's willing to accept it.

McPhee is also upset with Larry for basically ditching the museum between the first and second movies to pursue his dream of selling glow-in-the-dark flashlights and gigantic dog bones. We have no idea what the night guard situation is like during this gap, but Larry does visit occasionally. Very occasionally. Even with Larry's effective absence, McPhee is willing to work with him to help the exhibits stick around (though this is unsuccessful and most likely a case of too little, too late). When Larry decides to stay with the museum, McPhee begrudgingly admits that Larry is the best night guard he's had (which implies trouble with not only the three old retainers, but however many other night guards served between Larry's resignation and his decision to return to the post).

And the exhibits are also upset with Larry at the beginning of BOTS, feeling betrayed at his abandoning them just when things were getting good diplomatically speaking, and they were starting to bond with Larry and he with them. Attila is snippy, Jed essentially calls him high and mighty, and Dexter is outright hostile, slamming his fingers into a crate lid twice. They value their relationship with the night guard, and they are collectively upset that Larry seems not to. Only Teddy Roosevelt is civil toward Larry and helps redirect the exhibits' attention away from being pissed at Larry and upset at leaving for cold storage away from the tablet. To be fair, he is slightly disrespectful to Ahkmenrah, choosing to engage someone else in conversation almost immediately after being addressed by the pharaoh. On the other side of the coin, Larry takes it upon himself to save the exhibits once Dexter has stolen the tablet and awakened Ahkmenrah's older brother Kahmunrah.

There is a delicate balance at work between exhibits, the night staff, and the daytime staff at the Museum of Natural History. One party just wants to be recognized, another either doesn't know they exist or would rather pretend to not know they exist, and it's up to the third to mediate between them.

Another news nugget: Ricky Gervais is back, which means more McPhee! Who doesn't love that stuttering, unable-to-complete-a-sentence curator who does appreciate Larry's work deep down and possibly knows the whole secret anyway? In any event, it's the guy from the hit comedy The Office, so we're bound to expect some good stuff from him.

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": the jackal guards--whose spirits are in those guys (another way of saying, who do they represent)?

Night #4 - The Tablet of Ahkmenrah*

*For best effects, read while listening to epic music, such as the fight music from the climactic scene of Battle of the Smithsonian, or the lengthy William Tell Overture played during the climactic scene of The Lone Ranger (2013).

Yes, the tablet really is as epic as all that. It deserves to be introduced to awesome music with lots of pomp and circumstance and fanfare. Because it can do really, really amazing things. It brings things to back to life every night, everything from mummies and dinosaurs to tiny plastic figurines of cowboys and Romans, waxworks to works of taxidermy, even mammoth stone statues of jackal-headed bodyguards. Beyond bringing things back to life, it also gives the three old retainers of NATM 1 enhanced vitality, even though it doesn't reverse the aging process. Once the tablet is active, Cecil, Gus, and Reginald have enough energy to kick ass. They open such a can on Larry and try to go against the exhibits, but the exhibits have fifty years of harsh treatment to serve as motivation, and there are more of them. (This is a dynamic I want to go into at some point.) In BOTS, the tablet is also revealed to have the power to open the gate to the Underworld, allowing for the release of a half-bird, half-man army of the damned (that they split shortly thereafter is their business).

In both movies, the pieces of the tablet are shown to at least rotate and depress slightly in their places (these two contradict each other on principle, unless you press the pieces in the right places to push them down without turning them, but this tablet is magic). It is also a reasonable expectation to have there be writing on both sides of the tablet, some of it laying out key instructions even. Since the pieces can rotate a whole three hundred sixty degrees, there are symbols on both sides, and there are nine rotating pieces, this opens the way for (according to the Combinations and Permutations Calculator) 4.42*10^43 possibilities, using numbers to represent hieroglyphs, with eighteen being used, one on each side of each rotating piece, allowing, like any sane language, for repetition. Knowing that there are eighteen symbols to choose from and nine can "face front" at any given time, this narrows it down to 3124550 combinations (which is still a lot). What I'm trying to get at with all this is something stated in the writers' commentary for the original Night at the Museum: originally the tablet was a puzzle that could be rearranged, such as to magically compel someone to obey the holder of the tablet, or to obey Ahkmenrah, or that all exhibits come to life to serve Ahkmenrah, or whatever else. They ditched the concept deciding it was too complicated, but it's very easy to make a franchise out of such a concept. I also mean to say that perhaps part of the concept has been retained and/or will be resurrected later on (maybe Lancelot knows something about that, or that Shepseheret knows more than initially suggested by the lack of news about her casting with relation to NATM 3). It is very possible that the tablet can be made to spell out a different spell each time, and it just so happened that when Nicky turned the piece at the end of NATM 1 to spell out what Ahkmenrah needed to know, or was able to prompt a brain still struggling to adjust to the hustle and bustle of a museum in chaos after however long being shut up in a sarcophagus.

The symbols also correspond to numbers one through nine (take this to Giorgio A. Tsoukalos and you will more than likely receive the following response: ANCIENT ALIENS!), which may or may not be a coincidence, and in fact the combination is a secret pass phrase, which also happens to coincidentally coincide with the first several digits of pi. This was never gone into very well, so sadly I am forced to speculate. It could be aliens. It could be the gods telling them how to do this (and who in their right minds disobeys the gods?). It could be the will of fate that it worked out this way. Nobody knows.

But speaking of gods, the fact that the tablet's powers all seem to revolve around life and death, especially around the underworld and the realm of night, led me to conclude that the tablet is powered by Ra. Ra was the ancient Egyptian god of the sun, who steered his boat across the sky during each day and through the Underworld every night. He was king of the gods until his daughter-in-law/daughter Isis tricked him into giving her his secret name through use of poison, which she used to not only heal him, but send him to some undisclosed location, never to be seen again. Now, there are two options with this theory:

1. Ra blessed the tablet before he was banished, and it was passed down through a specific family up to Ahkmenrah's generation, when he was buried with it upon death, because he was chosen in some way (bit of trivia that I've never been able to find again is that Ahkmenrah means "in the likeness of Ra") to guard the tablet in eternity. Perhaps because he was the most fit for the task.
2. Ra resides within the tablet, waiting for release and carefully observing who around the tablet acts in what way and lending his power to its purposes. He brings light and life to the realm of dead, but only after sundown, hence why the exhibits only come to life after the sun sets and that the tablet can open the door to the Underworld and allow its denizens access to the upper world. There are other implications of this theory, such as that he may or may not compel certain people to act in certain ways in order to ultimately gain his freedom, or the question of whether or not there's a better reason he was sealed away than just one woman's ambition. In this case, the tablet was still passed down from generation to generation until Ahkmenrah was buried with it, but Ra would have been able to make a more informed choice about who would serve as the best guardian.

Either way, based on the tablet's abilities and general information about Ra, he is the best fit as its "patron deity" and the source of its power.

So yes, to paraphrase Cecil, the tablet is "very cool." To quote Larry Daley, "It's freaking awesome!"

In other news, just as I promised: according to the IMDb website for NATM 3, we should be expecting a character named Augustus (another name for Octavius, if in fact our Octavius is the Octavius in question). This could be an older Octavius, or it could be another trick out of the Once Upon a Time creators' playbook. You keep a character's real name under wraps (i.e. Peter Pan's casting call described him as Rufio before we knew in fact they were looking for Peter Pan himself) and use an alias to either satisfy the eager fans with regard to a name or to stoke the speculation fires. In this case, if this is a borrowed play from the creators of not only OUAT but Lost as well, then the latter is certainly more likely. There can be two Teddy's, for instance, but they do not share space or screen time, which begs the question, as brought up by the writers in the commentary for BOTS, about the Teddy statue out front. Does it not come to life because there can be only one? Or is it because it's technically "outside"?

And the point about only one Teddy brings to mind ancient Egyptian ideas of the afterlife which influence how the tablet operates, it being an Egyptian artifact after all. The Egyptians believed in a soul divided into five parts but which inhabited only one image of the deceased at a time, preferably the dead body but could also inhabit a statue which took the likeness of the dead guy, up to and including waxworks, plastic figurines, and taxidermy. Egyptians believed in exactness and attention to detail for that very reason. In case the body or the statues were destroyed in an effort to erase someone from existence or due to various natural causes (up to and including grave robbers being sloppy), there was a backup "body" for the part of the soul (the ba, I believe) which needed something to inhabit to recharge it's batteries after a long day of being dead. Each person has only one ba, which preferably wants to rest in a body. The reason the wax Teddy comes to life instead is because wax is closer to flesh than bronze.

The tablet, infused with life-giving power, allows souls to return to their bodies or reasonable facsimiles of their bodies. One of its related powers is to open the gate to the Underworld and allow its denizens to dwell among the living. The upper world must be something special.

Next time on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": the dynamic between guards and exhibits, and why being a night guard under the tablet is unlike anything else.

Night #3 - Battle of the Smithsonian

"I am Kahmunrah, great king of the great kings...I am half-god, once removed, on my mother's side. Rightful ruler of Egypt, future ruler of, well, everything else." --Kahmunrah.

Kahmunrah is by no means humble. He introduces himself grandiosely and has a hugely elaborate plot to take over the world which relies heavily on the solidarity of his legions of the damned (who, spoilers, ditch as soon as they see the Lincoln Memorial come to life and work out some of his pigeon issues) and the cooperation/coercion of others. With him in charge, of course.

According to the screenwriters' commentary, the end result of Hank Azaria's acting strategy as he played Kahmunrah resulted in such a blend of comedy and drama that it looks like Kahmunrah is going insane the more he's trying to hold this elaborate scheme together. This is an indication of desperation on Kahmunrah's part to make sure his efforts pay off and his plan goes off without a hitch (or with as few hitches as possible). Which then further implies (in my mind) that he needs his world domination plan to work.

When Kahmunrah and Larry are interacting for the first time, Larry mentions that he knows Ahkmenrah, the younger Brother Egypt, who now lives on New York. Kahmunrah's response? "He knows Baby Brother, the favorite son...You know, Mother and Father always gave him the best of everything, and I do mean everything. They even gave him the throne, the throne which was rightfully mine." This bit of insight into the family dynamics is just the tip of the iceberg. Parental favoritism implies feelings of neglect but could also indicate other forms of abuse or that Kahmunrah is a "secret", which is to say either adopted at birth or was taken in by the Pharaoh as the child of their mother from another marriage, also at a young age. It could very well be a combination of any of these circumstances, and it is in fact very likely that Kahmunrah was passed over, in spite of being older, because he isn't really of royal descent, considering that the throne (usually) went to the eldest legitimate son for the smoothest succession possible. Given Kahmunrah is claiming parental favoritism, chances are good he has no idea the real cause of his parents' actions toward him and his brother.

It's also very likely that Kahmunrah was neglected or otherwise abused by his parents (who could encourage the same behavior in others because they were in charge), suggested most visibly by the fact that he becomes unglued when his scheme for world domination is threatened. The plan itself is, following this line of thinking, an outward expression of a psychological/emotional need to be important. Common sense and too much Dr. Phil dictate that he learned this behavior from his interactions with his parents and others coming up, which may have been directly controlled by his parents, as abusers are wont to do. Therefore, Kahmunrah lashes out by seeking power for himself. It's a means of compensation and a form of justice, at the very least in his mind, which over the course of his life became his obsession. His plans became more and more grandiose as time went on, leading to the plot of Battle of the Smithsonian.

Kahmunrah's role in BOTS is that of the slightly crazy bad guy who just happens to be the older brother of the good pharaoh from NATM 1. Besides being proud in his introductions of himself, he willingly allows Larry to lead him into a trap with an on-the-fly, cockamamie story about a "Cube of Rubik" (feel free, take a wild guess) which will "turn all who oppose [him] to dust". Taking his gullibility into account, a man of any age with half a brain should be able to tell when he is being lied to. Kahmunrah doesn't put two and two together until his group of guards is attacked by a giant octopus. Pride also led, indirectly and in relatively small measure in comparison to other villains, to his defeat. He assumed his new recruits would be loyal to him (considering they've proven it throughout the second act and into the third, he has a good case for this), but Larry is able to break the alliance apart relatively easily, playing on the pride of the three lieutenants as well, and possibly their desire to attain greater favor in Kahmunrah's eyes by delivering the tablet to him. This results in the epic fight between Kahmunrah and Larry at the end, which leads to his being thrown in the Underworld.

But pride is a natural extension of the aforementioned development of a fixation on power. That fixation also results in what looks like insanity while he is forced to watch his plan start to crumble and fix it as time goes along, from the attack by the giant octopus to losing all of his troop in the V-J Day photograph to learning that the tablet's combination has been changed to believing that Larry is escaping--which he was expressly forbidden to do--to being forced into a position where he has to take on Larry himself. As BOTS progresses and Kahmunrah faces hitch after hitch in his plan for world domination, he starts to lose it. He senses he can't keep this plan together, but the implications of letting it fall apart are too much for him, so he becomes desperate to do whatever it takes to get what he wants.

Summation of Kahmunrah: proud, slightly deranged, deeply psychologically scarred by mysterious dynamics with his parents, likely someone's bastard somewhere along the line.

Ahkmenrah redux: Ahkmenrah speaks one line at the beginning and a short passage at the very end. In the beginning, he is quickly disregarded by Larry, an offense likely not to go forgotten, but instead to be carefully hidden by Ahkmenrah's natural orientation toward peace and harmony between as many people as possible. He is never seen interacting with Larry again, but is instead giving a presentation to a bunch of tourists, among whom are two unimpressed girls. He is enthused about the tablet's power and wants to be able to tell as many people as possible about it, and shows visible disappointment/distaste/possibly anger at the girls' skepticism.

Next time on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": My foray into the tablet and its powers, as well as a theory as to its cause.

Night #2 - Night at the Museum 1

Released in 2006 and based on the 1993 Milan Trenc children's book of the same name, the original Night at the Museum introduced us to a concept: every exhibit in a given museum coming alive every night. In the children's book, it was just the dinosaur skeletons. In the movie, every exhibit in the museum comes alive to drag poor, hapless night guard Larry Daley along for the ride until he gets used to them and they get used to him. The movie, in another divergence from the children's book, provides an explanation for the night lives of the exhibits in the form of the mystical, 24-carat gold Tablet of Ahkmenrah. The tablet holds a place of honor in a makeshift "slot" on a stele behind the young pharaoh's sarcophagus (young is a relative term, since he's a three-thousand-year-old mummy), where Ahkmenrah spends his nights screaming for his release and his days being dead. When he is released, he spends his time following Larry around, speaking about eight lines, riding behind Nick on Rexy, and not much else.

Though the camera does not show Ahkmenrah very much and his actual personality even less, a few conclusions can be made. While the exhibits are in the throes of trying to kill each other, he seems like one of the most level heads in the room and even mediates between Larry and Attila while they do nothing but spout incomprehensible gibberish and Attila struggles to express...something. This allows Larry to pull a Dr. Phil on Attila and then return to the problem at hand. The scene strongly suggests a diplomatic nature and one prone to peace and logic versus violence, especially when surrounded by individuals of the opposite persuasion.

The second most striking item that gets screen time, and is related to the first, is that he seems reserved and/or awkward about his emotions. Even when he should be panicking ("They've got my tablet") he sounds like he's explaining the circumstances of the situation from the perspective of a third party. When he makes the tablet compel the exhibits to return to the museum, he doesn't quite seem how to express his joy. This says two things: one, that he is not used to expressing emotion period, not just negative emotion, and two, that he was somewhat unsure he knew what he was doing and/or feared he would screw up.

However, Ahkmenrah also exhibits, at times, a sense of blunt honesty ("You would not believe how stuffy it is in there.") and is fairly open when he doesn't quite understand something. He is either too polite or too aware of the time crunch to ask Larry what he's talking about when it comes to his custody arrangement with his divorced wife. However, he will willingly ask Larry what he means when he says he doesn't have the tablet (the more pertinent matter at the time and also suggesting of a sense of discretion instilled in him by a lifetime in a royal court) and lends out his guys for the war effort, so to speak.

Ahkmenrah gets a marginal amount of screen time, approximately eight lines (maybe more, maybe less), and is generally treated as a minor character by the movie itself. However, what we are shown is a well-raised prince. He is diplomatic in a room full of bloodthirsty lunatics, emotionally reserved (perhaps out of fear of showing weakness to potential opponents), but still a boy at heart. He has no idea what he's doing sometimes and will show his quirky sense of humor when the occasion allows for it. And he still throws himself into the party at the end, dancing and either playing soccer with the Huns and Christopher Columbus or being chased around by exotic fowl. It's relatively ambiguous as to which. Either way, he's having a good time and letting the world know it. He presents an interesting dichotomy of boyhood and perfect sophistication, the direct results of his young age and noble birth.

Next time on For the Love of Night at the Museum: Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian. More on Ahkmenrah (for he does appear, the myths are true) and analysis on his brother Kahmunrah. Also, we will drift into tablet territory as we see the life-giving slab of gold open the gate to the Underworld and raise an army of the damned!

Night #1 - Intro

"For the Love of Night at the Museum" is a bit of a misnomer, as while this will be a NATM-centered blog, I will focus primarily on two characters I feel don't get nearly the love they deserve, as characters or as per their positions in the franchise: Ahkmenrah and Kahmunrah, whom I will refer to throughout as the Brothers Egypt (a nod to Ivan's use of "Mr. Egypt" to address the elder of the two). Of course, other characters will feature, but my focus will primarily be on those two.

The second aim of this blog is to keep you (the readership) as informed as I as we come into the year preceding the release of Night at the Museum 3. (If you know nothing else about me, I am a known obsessive, especially about movies like this, who I see have yet to find a franchise killer, and about the Little Vampire (blog here), so I tend to get abreast of these things earlier than most.) In keeping with this aim, as soon as I know something pertinent (or at least not repetitive) I will post it here. My first such bit will come later in this post.

Also, just as in my Little Vampire blog, I will provide videos, pictures, links to good fan fiction, and other material. In the case of these movies, I can also supply funny/useful story notes from the writers' commentaries (such as how early on, the tablet was a puzzle that could magically make people follow orders and other such things (this and the fact that the pieces are known to move in their places will be discussed in a later post as part of a theory on how the tablet works, an extensive theory)). Also as per the Little Vampire blog, you (the readership) are invited to comment, message me however that works, or email me on the links provided there. However, that message still holds true: If you are a Nigerian prince, you can forget it. I will be monitoring my email.

Now, for the first nugget(s) of news I promised you earlier. No plot details for NATM 3 have been released yet, but I do know that we'll be seeing Larry, Teddy Roosevelt, Lancelot (apparently the movie's villain), an Egyptian woman named Shepseheret, Nicky Daley, Attila, and Neanderthals. I confess that I was very, very skeptical when I first heard of Lancelot's appearance. Was this franchise seriously going to have the Sword in the Stone be a real thing? They were seriously bringing Excalibur, Camelot, and the like into Night at the Museum. Then I tried to console myself with the idea that this was a move the Once Upon A Time creators would pull: you release information about relatively minor characters while keeping the main plot under wraps. Then I read more closely that Lancelot was going to be a bad guy. That made me feel better for whatever reason, perhaps that it would be likely he would be insane, or thought of as insane. And this Egyptian woman is making me wonder about her identity and relationship with the other two Egyptian characters. I know she has to in some way be connected to the Brothers Egypt, or else it wouldn't make any sense to have her in the movie at all. Everyone else I'm alright with, because they're holdovers from previous movies (Except Larry. I mean, how many times can we watch him find himself? It's really starting to get old).

Filming will begin in February, and they will be shooting in Vancouver (the city stand-in famous for its role in OUAT and others) and London (When I first heard of this, I thought: Tablet origin story! Sadly, I fear this is not to be). The release has been scheduled for Christmas Day 2014, so Merry Christmas, all my fellow NATM fans!

And don't let anything in. Or out.