Night #48 - A Night With the Nameless Mooks

The henchmen we originally see with Kahmunrah are completely human, and there are only a few of them, as opposed to the nearly identical bird-headed masses he summons out of the gate to the Underworld near the climax of the film. Considering the ancient Egyptians were hugely into properly preserving the persons, names, and stories of dead people, this suggests two things: the first is that the birdmen are the souls of an infinite number of soldiers killed in battle over the course of ancient Egyptian history, and that Kahmunrah's original troop of men (also wax figures) are the survivors, considered important enough or desirable enough for Kahmunrah to have them buried with him. This would in turn imply that these men are a personal body guard for Kahmunrah, the elite out of all his forces and the only few whom he trusted with his life...until they get tossed into V-J Day, 1945, never to return. Kahmunrah displays no comparable level of trust in the people he recruits to replace them, and he has no reason to. He doesn't know these men from holes in the wall.

In any event, the men he originally surrounds himself with are all nameless and virtually expressionless except when chasing Larry around and giving commands to each other, so one must, if one is detail-oriented enough, wonder what in God's name they're thinking. I just so happen to be detail-oriented enough, and I do wonder what they're thinking. Being trained professionals they don't express much, so in truth it's all a mystery. They do obey Kahmunrah's orders, and there's nothing to indicate that they're being coerced into doing so. Even without being explicitly told they point their spears at Larry (this one can be rather easily explained: from their perspective, he just appeared out of nowhere), and they know what they need to do so well that a command for "chase down" is all they need. They can work out the rest: spears when necessary, fire at will, attack anyone who appears to be helping Larry, kill if you must (they don't need to do this, thank God).

But I do have several questions for them which I don't see getting answered any time soon, most likely because nobody seems to care:

1. Do these men know of the possible psychological defects Kahmunrah exhibits? Do they care?
2. How did they come to work for Kahmunrah in the first place? Everyone has a story, and personally, I 'd kind of like to know theirs.
3. Are they now forever trapped in 1945, forced to hide in the background so no one notices a thing?
4. What do they discuss in their free time? Does Kahmunrah let them have free time? (He should, if he doesn't want them to collapse at random times and fall asleep.)
5. And the question which has puzzled me about Egyptian characters from the beginning of this franchise: Is that really legitimate ancient Egyptian?

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": It's the Filming Special! Filming will start tomorrow, Ladies and Gentlemen, and I'll launch into the first of what may be a series covering various topics concerning NATM 3, mostly plot speculation and questions about why certain characters will or will not make an appearance.

Countdown: 323 Days to NATM 3

NATM 3 Update: This link full of pictures. That is all.

Breaking News!

These are officially a thing:

That is all.

ETA 9:03 PM: The pics come from these links.

Night #47 - "Kahmunrah the Trustworthy"

"Alright, they didn't call me Kahmunrah the Trustworthy for nothing. Ha! They didn't call me Kahmunrah the Trustworthy. They called me Kahmunrah the Bloodthirsty who killed whoever didn't give Kahmunrah exactly what he wants in the exact moment that he wants it, which is right now, when I had also better get the combination and the tablet!" Barring the fact that this can easily be shortened to "Kahmunrah the Spoiled Little Shit", this is an indication of Kahmunrah's volatile temper. Because Larry is an enemy in his eyes, he sees no reason to exhibit a filter at all with him. However, because he still needs the help of Al, Ivan, Napoleon, and their men, he sees more of a reason to be amenable to them, if a little bit pushy.

But what happens when he does get what he wants? Suppose his plan goes off without a hitch and he takes over the world, and all goes exactly as he had planned it. What happens then? The reason I ask is because not only is Kahmunrah in danger if he pisses off the people who helped him get to that point, the people who actually helped him are in danger, as well. Kahmunrah is far more likely to throw a huge fit and kill someone rather than talk out a particular issue, and he is also more likely to off someone for outliving his or her usefulness to him. One of the many points which causes me to wonder is when he actually does summon his undead army and they all march out, ready to kill on command. Up to the point where they all decide to leave on account of the giant marble Abraham Lincoln statue coming to the rescue of the good guys, birdmen can still be seen marching out into our world in ranks. There is absolutely no indication of how extensive this army is or what their powers/vulnerabilities are, so it's very easy to assume, for someone like the three lieutenants who have never seen this before, that the army goes on forever and is practically invulnerable. Of course, the army is capable of being scared shitless by giant marble presidents, but that's about as far as our knowledge extends.

Supposing the evil army did stick around to conquer the world (barring such unforseen circumstances as giant marble presidents), where would that leave Al, Ivan, and Napoleon? Their shock upon seeing these things come out of the Underworld by means of magic indicates that they have absolutely no clue what they're dealing with. They have a knowledge base of zero when it comes to ancient bird-headed spear-wielding creatures. That leaves Kahmunrah, whether he wants to be or not, in sole command of his army (unless he managed to get the three others to coordinate their clearly different commanding styles, but it's highly unlikely he would actually teach them about what they're commanding). This was also his goal from the beginning. He simply needed external help to get to the tablet which he would then use to summon the army, which would be his real tool in world domination. Looking at it that way, unless he does arrange for "jobs" for Al, Ivan, and Napoleon, those three are left out in the cold.

Any number of things could happen from here, and by here I mean the point where Kahmunrah is either completely in charge or nearly there, facing a last holdout of rebels but otherwise ruling a near complete wasteland (which is what usually becomes of conquered areas). One, Al, Ivan, and Napoleon are sidelined and left wondering what to do next, which may or may not lead to them signing up with the rebels (in which case they would offer valuable insight into Kahmunrah's mindset and what his plans were, which would help turn the tide of battle in their favor). Two: Kahmunrah, either fearing this, believing the three men to have outlived their usefulness entirely, or both, kills them. Three: Kahmunrah, fearing their rebellion, believing them to have outlived their usefulness, or both, but not wanting to kill them yet (possibly to torture them later or because he doesn't know how to do it to his satisfaction at the time) puts them in jail (a dungeon, a crate back in storage at the archives, or some other remotely secure holding area); this prompts the three to plot an escape and almost certainly sign up with the rebels/sell their information to them and make sure they get paid up front.

Kahmunrah is prone to violence, however, and can be visibly divided between so desperately wanting to kill someone and needing to keep that someone alive because said someone has something he needs (for instance Larry knowing the tablet's combination). On the other hand, if that person no longer has what he needs, he has indicated, especially by the line "If you didn't know this combination, you would be so dead right now, it would be unbelievable", that he is willing to kill indiscriminately (for further proof: "I will kill you and your friends in the blink of an eye"). When he has a problem, he kills rather than try to deal with it. That's why, out of the three options presented for Al, Ivan, and Napoleon should Kahmunrah be successful in his plot, Kahmunrah's killing them as soon as they are useless and anger him by their presence is the most likely--and the most troublesome.

Because wanton killing is indicative of psychological instability.When you would rather kill someone than settle an issue with that person, you have a serious mental break to attest to somewhere in your past. This may be due to the extreme pressure Kahmunrah was under just to make himself feel important (between the lisp, being illegitimate and not knowing it, and being passed over in favor of his brother because of it, no one took him seriously and that was a problem he probably spent his entire natural life trying to rectify and something he's clearly doing in his life as a museum waxwork, as well), or it may be due to a psychological disorder. It could be something suffered in battle, in the form of shellshock or head trauma, something he was born with, or something he developed over the course of his life considering all that has taken place.

The truth is, Kahmunrah is nuts, and because of this, he is a danger not only to his enemies, but to his allies, as well. And that's why I'm worried.

For more information:

Night #3

Night #12

Night #18

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": wherein I pose various questions of Kahmunrah's original henchmen, you know, those guys who chased Larry and Amelia around for the first half of the second act before getting trapped in the famous V-J Day Photograph

Countdown: 324 Days to NATM 3.

Night #46 - Punch Clock Villain

From TV Tropes: "These are characters that have no real grudge against the heroes, but are simply doing a job they're getting paid for." Granted, you can't really pay museum exhibits. However, you can "[offer them] the world, literally." If you're new to this blog, this is the offer Kahmunrah makes to Al, Ivan, and Napoleon as he recruits them to replace men he lost to the V-J Day photograph and Larry and Amelia's "good, old-fashioned American ingenuity" (or complete desperation to catch a break, depending on your perspective). If you're not new to the blog but need a recap anyway, there it is. After all, as my chemistry teacher says, "A recap is always a good thing."

Though our first introduction to Al, Ivan, and Napoleon is through their meet and greet with Kahmunrah several minutes into the second act, we can learn a lot about their general motivations through the way this first meeting plays out. They don't seem to take Kahmunrah very seriously at first, two out of three inquiring about the dress (tunic) and the third planning on doing so. However, the offer of sections of the world must sound very appealing to them, otherwise they wouldn't have climbed aboard. (One wonders how these three guys were even recruited individually. Did Kahmunrah question each one and go through, like, thirty historic bad guys before deciding on these three?) As Ivan said, "If we're talking about world domination, than of course, I'm interested."

Who, by show of hands, wouldn't be interested by the prospect of being in charge of at the very least a huge section of the world, if only for a little while? Though I can't be entirely sure of this, the majority of us can say that at one point or another, we thought about what it would be like if we were in charge. The same is very likely true for Al, Ivan, and Napoleon, and that's why they signed up for Kahmunrah's bid for world domination.

However, though they work for the movie's main bad guy, they are only "evil" in their own right when serving this capacity. Otherwise, at the very most they would probably individually cause some mischief, start small-scale museum wars with each other, or simply ignore each other entirely and go about their own individual business. Though we don't see them (or any of the Smithsonian's exhibits) the first night the tablet is there, it's a reasonable guess that one of those three dynamics existed between Al, Ivan, and Napoleon, possibly the last if they had to be brought together by Kahmunrah in order to even come to know each other.

And while they do agree for various reasons, possibly just out of boredom, to work for Kahmunrah and help him take over the world, they clearly show with their shock at the opening of the gate to the Underworld and the appearance of the bird-headed warriors that they got much more than they bargained for. In truth, only Kahmunrah and Larry seem genuinely unfazed by the appearance of the creatures, and if Ahkmenrah were to see them, it's likely he would be just as unsurprised by their appearance. Not so for a 1930s gangster, a Middle Ages Russian Czar, and an eighteenth-century French general/Emperor. Having no cultural familiarity with the concept of a gate to the Underworld or birdmen, or no familiarity with Egyptian magic in general, seeing it actually happen would be a huge shock. (Also, there's an element of "Oh, shit, he was serious" in their surprise and terror as well, indicating that perhaps the three generals figured they just found something to kill a night or so indulging a madman, rather than actually helping him bring back an army of freakish zombies which he would actually use to conquer the world.)

Left on their own, Al, Ivan, and Napoleon would very likely have no grudge against Larry or Amelia, but because they were tapped by Kahmunrah after the good guys trapped his men in the V-J Day Photograph, they now have to try to stop the good guys. They may be interested in taking slices out of the world after Kahmunrah conquers it, or they may just be bored out of their minds, but Kahmunrah "pays them", and therefore if they live up to their end, they have no reason to believe he won't live up to his.

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": I go into considerably greater detail about why I have reason to fear for the lives of Al Capone, Ivan the Terrible, and Napoleon Bonaparte.

Countdown: 325 Days to NATM 3.

Night #45 - "That brazen little monkey stole the tablet" Part 2

Last night I considered one side of the question: Was Dexter bribed to steal the Tablet of Ahkmenrah and take it to the Smithsonian? I examined why it was possible he was, and now I'll discuss what personal motivations Dexter might have for acting of his own free will and ultimately shocking...no one.

Dexter is first and foremost a prankster, and this is most prominent in the first Night at the Museum movie. He filches keys off night guards so often it made the third slot in the instruction manual: "Double-check your belt. The monkey probably stole your keys." Not only does he steal keys, he uses them to open a window on one occasion, inadvertently allowing a caveman to escape and get caught outside while the sun rose, turning him to dust. He also opens the loading dock, but this he does to release the other animals on purpose, knowing that on a night like that, Larry would have way more on his plate than usual and thereby simply driving him insane. He is also known to bite noses, urinate on people, and engage in slap fights simply because he can. This shows he knows he has the poor sap (Larry) right where he wants him and will live it up as much as possible.

But much as Dexter wants to just have fun at the expense of everyone else, chiefly the night guards, he also has a soft spot for Larry, shown by his protectiveness of him toward Able, claiming Larry as "my human" and demanding that Able "back off". This kick-starts a name-calling fest between Able and Dexter which results in the three-way slap fight between Dexter, Able, and Larry, with Larry just trying to get them back under control and just get along long enough to "focus on slapping the enemy". He is also protective of the tablet, as shown in the alternate ending and discussed last night.

However, at the start of Battle of the Smithsonian, Dexter is blatantly hostile toward Larry. He not only flat-out states that he doesn't want anything to do with whatever's coming out of Larry's mouth, he slams the crate lid into Larry's fingers twice. In fact, nearly every exhibit being shipped out is very hurt and angry that Larry is allowing it to happen. Dexter just happens to be among the most vocal of their number. Therefore, if he were to steal the tablet of his own free will, he would do it to make Larry pay for letting the "family" get sent into storage and thus making everything in storage come alive and cause all kinds of problems. He might not have planned on the crate being attacked by Kahmunrah, but he probably felt a sick sense of glee at being able to interrupt Larry's life to have him come work on their problem.

At this point, the floor is now yours, dear readers. State your thoughts below but please, do behave.

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": Speaking of characters of moral ambiguity, I get to discuss our three favorite henchmen from BOTS, their possible motivations and a little more on what would have become of them should Kahmunrah have succeeded

Countdown: 326 Days to NATM 3

Night #44 - "That brazen little monkey stole the tablet" Part 1

This is probably another thing over which only I puzzle, but this is also a question I would like to put to you guys, the readership, in the form of a debate. As such, this will be a two-part post, and each part will deal with one side of the question. The question up for the questioning is: Was Dexter bribed to steal the tablet and take it with him to the Smithsonian?

Pro: Yes, yes he was.

Why would he need to be bribed? In the alternate ending to BOTS, on the DVD, he is shown taking a protective stance in front of the tablet when the three old ex-night guards question Ahkmenrah regarding its safety. Blatant as his disregard for rules is, this shows that he understands that the tablet is the thing which gives all the exhibits life and therefore messing with it is a bad thing. This suggests, however subtlely, that he wouldn't steal the thing of his own free will.

Who would bribe him? Even Teddy Roosevelt, who is perhaps the exhibits' leader, is perfectly fine letting the tablet stay in a museum which is currently being gutted of roughly ninety percent of its exhibits. However, Ahkmenrah, who owns the tablet and therefore has top charge of its safety, likely would not. After all, a nearly completely emptied museum through which only construction workers pass through during normal working hours looks like prime pickings for anyone looking to steal a sizeable slab of magical 24-kt gold, especially Cecil, Gus, and Reginald. Ahkmenrah would be a complete fool to leave the tablet in such a dangerous situation knowing the obvious threat is still out there.

There's another reason Ahkmenrah would sneak the tablet out of the Museum of Natural History under the noses of practically everyone else: having been raised a diplomat from birth, basically, he would be very, very good at reading people, and he would pick up from Larry's general demeanor as he visits the museum, specifically that Larry is moving a million miles an hour without bothering to rest on any one subject for very long, a sign of workaholism and possibly also a clue that he doesn't want to stop and realize that he made a wrong choice. Ahkmenrah therefore picks up on the same thing Amelia does later on, but while Amelia is upfront in discussing it with Larry, if it's the case that Ahkmenrah bribed Dexter or otherwise involved him in the theft of the tablet, Ahkmenrah has chosen a course of action.

Relocating the tablet serves two purposes: he transfers it to another, more crowded museum where he's sure it will be safe, at least from threats of whose existences he is aware, and it sets Larry on a course back to where he belongs. Involving Dexter allows him to cover up his actions. After all, everyone knows Dexter as the klepto trouble-maker capuchin who loves a good joke at the expense of everyone else, the night guard(s) especially. No one would suspect that he'd been working for someone where the heist of the tablet is concerned. Therefore, everyone just assumes Dexter stole the tablet out of spite or some other personal motivation.

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": The other side of the debate: why Dexter was self-motivated to steal the tablet, and then, my dear readers, the floor is yours!

Countdown: 327 Days to NATM 3

Night #43 - Back Story? What Back Story?

This is something which probably only puzzles just me, but, barring all actual historical figures which the tablet brings to life as a matter of course, it seems like the only characters whose back stories we learn anything about are the Brothers Egypt. Sure, we know that Larry's father's name is Milton, he has an ex-wife with whom he has a middle-school-aged son, and he had trouble keeping a job before becoming a night guard, but that's really about it. We know considerably more about Ahkmenrah and Kahmunrah. For instance: they were both alive approximately three thousand years ago, and something happened which resulted in a funky succession, which resulted in Kahmunrah's jealous rage. It can be reasonably surmised that he then killed his little brother and took the throne himself. Fast forwarding to about fifty years ago, Ahkmenrah and presumably Kahmunrah are unearthed; the former is taken to England and then to New York, and the latter, in a bit fuzzier fashion, ends up at the Smithsonian (or at least a wax model of him does).

But Larry's the main character, and the Brothers Egypt are respectively a plot device and a bad guy. And it's not even Ahkmenrah doing any actual work when it comes to moving the plot forward: it's his tablet, and he just happens to be the poor kid who owns the thing and who everyone seems to be scared of for some reason. This seems remarkably disproportionate.

However, the Night at the Museum movies follow Larry's story in the present and his character development as he moves forward. Whatever back story we learn for him serves only to inform his motivations and choices. The back story of the Brothers Egypt, on the other hand, must not only inform the motivations and choices of each individual brother, but also to clue the audience into various aspects of the tablet and the gate. Neither element exists in a vacuum, so to discuss the one necessarily involves discussion of the other. Therefore, with more bases to cover, more facts come to light, resulting in a fuller story, at least by comparison.

But if we need the backstory of the Brothers Egypt more than we need that of our everyman protagonist, why aren't they a bigger part of the story as a whole? Well, this question assumes that each installment is part of a cohesive whole, rather than each being a cohesive whole in their own right. No one ever seriously thought there would be a Night at the Museum 2 until the first Night at the Museum proved to be such a huge blockbuster success, and besides, the first Night at the Museum is narratively complete. The second could've been tweaked to form a perfect segue into the third, but instead they chose to make Battle of the Smithsonian narratively complete, as well, and chances are, Night at the Museum 3, 4, 5, 6, and however many others there will be will also all be narratively complete: these are kids' movies, despite the fact that they have fans who have, like myself, been following basically from the beginning. People sit their little kids in front of these movies and kick back for a couple of hours to dork out to the wacky hijinks on the screen, and as such, these movies can't be tremendously terrifying or intense. This does not mean they can't employ crafty little devices (I'm looking at you, "Page 47") to hook people into a later installment, especially if they know one is a possibility while making the current project piece of the franchise. But to play it safe, the captains of the ship are choosing not to have the bad guys win a movie or two, even though that's the way the real world works. Let kids be kids for a little while, and I will respect your decisions insofar as they serve that purpose. That doesn't mean I'm required to agree, but that's neither here nor there.

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": I kick off a two-parter proposing the first of two sides of the debate: Did Dexter steal the tablet of his own free will?

Countdown: 328 Days to NATM 3

Night #42 - "I know you've got moxie in you yet."

Moxie, besides being a soft drink, is a slang term which is defined as "the ability to face difficulty with spirit and courage," "aggressive energy, initiative," or "courage, daring, or spirit." However, the way Amelia uses it in conversation, especially with Larry, the meaning is perhaps more closely related to "muchness". Muchness is defined by Websters' as "the quality or state of being great in quantity, extent, or degree," but the term has a different meaning when used by the Mad Hatter in the 2010 Alice in Wonderland: personal essence, positivity and inspiration, the general sense that all is right with the world. Alice has lost it and thus finds trouble coping with a world where she must conform to all sorts of rules which she views as nonsensical. Larry has lost it likewise, only he lives in a world which values outward signs of success and upward mobility rather than the deeply personal sense that you're right where you're supposed to be.

There seems to be a trend here. It looks like moxie/muchness is tied to a blend of having to conform to the world and not really wanting to. Larry, for instance, becomes so absorbed in his work that he does it every night, practically, evidenced by Nick's displeasure in his statement, "So you're working tonight." "Kids are full of Muchness." Nick is included in that statement. He looks at his father's life and the life he's living with his father and, even though materially everything is good, he views Larry's having meetings over Chinese takeout at eight PM as "work" but staying up all night keeping tabs on exhibits which come to life by means of magic and making sure they all stay inside as "the coolest job in the world." Nicky, being about twelve, can still see the magic and wonder in the world and values it more highly than how cool he looks to his friends with Guitar God VI "or whatever."

Amelia is also able to take one glance at Larry and see that he's lost something vital to how he views the world. As her own way of saying that Larry doth protest too much when he states that he actually likes his new line of work, she states, "I know what you said, Mr. Daley, but what I see in front of me is a man who's lost his moxie." She sees Larry, even though he's a success, as someone who's losing himself in his work to escape what he feels for leaving the museum. Therefore, he lost something about himself when he left the museum to become an entrepreneur and start showing the signs that our society at large attributes to success. He lost his muchness, and Amelia isn't shy about letting him know it.

So how did he lose it in the first place? Why did he lose it? is the better question to ask, since it was of his own volition that he left the Museum of Natural History in the first place. At the beginning of the first Night at the Museum, it's made clear that he has a huge series of ideas in his head that he wants to bring into reality, but pursuing them is destroying his relationship with his son and forcing him to move around constantly, which is why he becomes a night guard in the first place. He finds by the end of the movie that he's cut out for it exactly, but he still leaves. Why? Because he still doesn't see how well being a night guard fits him, and he's still hanging onto that dream that his inventions will make him a lot of money and he can finally settle down with Nicky and be happy that way. And because he was inspired by real events in his life, specifically those pertaining to the museum, by the start of Battle of the Smithsonian, he's achieved this.

But what has Larry achieved? He works around the clock, his son is upset with him for giving up the museum, he has a high stress life, he's always doing two things at once trying to manage everything he has to manage, and he's always on the go. When we see Larry in Battle of the Smithsonian and he's shown being a success, he's always walking around, not really making eye contact with anyone, he's on his phone half the time, and even when he talks, it sounds like it's ninety miles an hour. He moves from one person to another at the drop of a hat (something Ahkmenrah is sure to have noticed and maybe been angry about). Even while he's in disguise as a night guard, he behaves in this fashion. He's not even above outright lying just to cover his own butt. It isn't until Larry is conversing with the captive Jedediah while Kahmunrah is opening the gate to the underworld that he finally slows down and actually engages. For two thirds of the movie, he's focusing on what he's going to say and do and deal with next, not what's actually happening around him.

Is Larry beyond hope? No. Jedediah attests to that. Despite the fact that on the last night, he's angry with Larry for not being around at the museum, and even though when he made his distress call he and the other exhibits were under direct attack, he looks at Larry and he sees "a hangin' suit, all gussied up but dead inside." Jed was in more than "a bit of a pickle", but he knew that if Larry had any of who he used to be left, he would come to the rescue. If Larry wasn't too far gone, he would turn up and do everything in his power to contain the situation before things got out of hand. Larry's first thought was to relocate the tablet, which is actually quite wise on his part and shows there's still a little bit of night guard left underneath all that businessman.

During Larry and Jed's intimate conversation while Jed is stuck in an hourglass and Larry is in a room full of people who don't like him, Jedediah expresses that Larry is the one who needed the exhibits, and in this, he's one hundred percent correct. Only after Larry has spent time working at the museum does he gain the inspiration needed to make his various inventions take off, and all of them (at least all of them that were named) draw on various exhibits and other museum-related things for their properties: the Unlosable Keyring, the Super Big Dog Bone, the Glow-in-the-Dark Flashlight. One can almost imagine him discussing these with other exhibits before he quit, like looking at his flashlight and thinking aloud, "Wouldn't it be cool if this glowed in the dark?"

He does still visit the museum, though Dr. McPhee hints that these visits are becoming more and more infrequent as time passes ("Haven't seen you for a few months"). He doesn't seem to be the only one who's picked up on this, either. All of the exhibits are upset with him, save possibly Teddy (Sacagawea's reaction is never seen, and if it is, she's blank faced practically all the time) and Ahkmenrah (who probably is angered when Larry passes up a chance to converse with him for more than two seconds in favor of talking to some other exhibit). Dexter and Attila are most notably bothered outside of Jedediah. In fact, if one ponders it a bit, one picks up on the prevailing attitude of, Why does he bother? Why does he keep showing up if all he's going to do is use the exhibits for inspiration to keep being a success? Why doesn't he just leave them behind entirely and make their lives easier? But for whatever it's worth, he does come back from time to time.

Jedediah is not the only one to pick up on the fact that Larry can still be saved. In the midst of escaping from a bunch of assorted bad guys on the Wright Flyer and Amelia needs to perform repairs literally on the fly, she is forced to turn the "wheel" (really a stick) over to Larry, saying, "I know you've got moxie in you yet." Essentially, she just said, "You can handle this and you know it," with a hint of, "This is what you need to help you feel alive again." By this point, Larry is still protesting. He plans, when this is over, to go back to his life as a success and take care of business. He probably has a few more inventions buzzing around in his head to get started on after the pitch meeting with Wal-Mart and whatever else he has lined out. In fact, up to Kahmunrah's seizing control of the tablet and the combination needed to open it, and consequently his army of birdmen, this seems to be Larry's view of his life. He's going to step out of this weird waking dream and get on with his life as he knows it.

He doesn't come into his own and realize that everyone around him is right until all-out war has broken out between good guys and bad guys and he's thrown in the midst of it. As per the first Night at the Museum, he plays Dr. Phil to one of the exhibits, in this case Custer, and then makes his way through the fray as he tries to figure out exactly what he's going to do about chief baddie Kahmunrah. He brings Amelia in on it because he knows she wants something to do with her life and because she remembers the combination where he doesn't. (Numbers don't seem to be Larry's "thing", but that's neither here nor there.) He proceeds to get the bad guys to fight amongst themselves, distracting them from battling the good guys, and then he moves on to engaging with Kahmunrah in what is quite possibly the most epic scene of the movie: the sword-flashlight battle. At the end of it, when asked what he is by an amazed Kahmunrah, he says, with care and precision, "I'm the night guard." Larry has come home, and he did it in the heat of battle.

Now there's a very good chance that not a lot of us will find ourselves locked in heated combat with museum exhibits who have been magically resurrected, but you can still find your moxie, too, if you've lost it. This may require being faced with death, or it may require considerable time spent soul searching (though for your safety, I strongly recommend the soul searching), but it can be done. How, you may ask? There are a few things I'd like you to consider if you've lost your moxie (or muchness, whichever you prefer, as I use them interchangably throughout):

1. Are you struggling to conform to the dictates of society? Conformity isn't a bad thing, not at all. What I mean to say by this is, is being what society asks you coming in conflict with something inside you? This could be your moral compass, or a definition of success that you've believed in for years but didn't mach what your society defines as success. Or, this could be that you're having trouble with what's "proper" as Alice in Alice in Wonderland had ("Who's to say what's proper? What if it was agreed that proper was wearing a codfish on your head? Would you do it?"). Perhaps societal rules are deeply nonsensical to you in some way, shape or form. If this is the case (and since you really can't change the society in which you live), perhaps it's time you stepped back and re-evaluated your life.

2. Do you feel like something is missing? This is admittedly very obvious and well within the bounds of common sense regarding this topic. However, I personally often find that common sense is severely lacking in the vast majority of the population, so the question needs to be asked, anyway. The idea behind this one is simple: if you feel like your life is lacking in some way, then you've probably lost your moxie somewhere along the line. (However, if what you've lost is common sense, then you have a different issue entirely and probably shouldn't be reading this article.)

3. Are you having fun? This is a tricky fish right here. Someone on the Far-Flung Net expressed concern at teaching kids that all they should do with their lives is have fun, in the traditional sense. However, what Amelia means when she expresses this sentiment to Larry is not "spend all your time goofing off". It's "enjoy what you're doing with your life." You don't have to be a multi-millionaire to lead a life that's worth living. All you have to do is love what you do. This could be swabbing decks, this could be teaching kids, this could, in point of fact, be making millions of dollars on the stock trade. Just so long as whatever it is, you wake up every morning and want to go to work and start your day. There's a famous saying which goes, "If you love what you do, you will never work a day in your life", and those are words to live by. (There's debate, especially at Forbes, about whether this is actually good advice, but it's a better starting point than most, believe it or not.)

4. What matters? Get your priorities in order. People say that if you live to make a million bucks, you lose sight of "what really matters": family, friends, the goldfish, you name it. There are people who have huge bank accounts, who you would think have everything they could possibly want, but their lives are under microscopes, their every problem on display for the world in some cases. Sometimes they suffer separation from their spouses and families because they have to work constantly to maintain their level of success. Maybe they've just had a messy divorce or someone had an affair because of this. These people exemplify where Larry would be if Dexter had never stolen the tablet, or if he had never truly realized his calling at any point during the movie.

Larry learned that he lives for the exhibits at the Museum of Natural History, and if you've lost your moxie, you need to step back and figure out what you value most. This isn't what you should value. It's what you actually value. If you realize you want to spend more time with your kids, do it. If you realize you want to spice up your sex life and you're married, sit down with your spouse and reconnect, however you choose to do that. Decide what makes your life truly worth living, and reconnect with whatever that something is.

These are essay questions. These are questions you spend hours, sometimes weeks, planning out the answers to for scholarship applications. These are questions you ask yourself in all seriousness when you try to find your center. And once you answer them correctly (there is a right answer, it's just different for everyone) and adjust your life accordingly, you'll wake up one morning and realize that you've got your moxie back.

To learn more about moxie/muchness:

How to Reclaim Your Muchness

Finding My Muchness (this website includes pages on what muchness is as well as a blog and a page where the site mistress hawks various things)

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": I ponder why it seems like the only characters for whom backstory seems to be explored is the Brothers Egypt (this will by nature bar discussion of actual historical figures such as Amelia Earhart, Teddy Roosevelt, and Attila the Hun).

Countdown: 329 Days to NATM 3.

Night #41 - The Pile of Loot

Last night introduced both clothing and personal possessions but covered mainly the message conveyed by clothing. Tonight, we turn our attention to the near-infamous Pile of Loot which Kahmunrah has nearly fully assembled by the start of the third act and upon which he is clearly seen planting his ass and examining at least one of the Smithsonian's many pop cultural treasures: Dorothy's Ruby Slippers from the 1930s Wizard of Oz. Amongst mounds of gold coins and jewelry (the coins can be seen scattered across the floor when Octavius brings in the Lincoln Exit Machina) can be found, according to this post at the Smithsonain's website on BOTS, a Lite Brite, a Suzy Homemaker toy oven, Archie Bunker's armchair, some hula hoops and brownie cameras, and a collection of bundt pans. Also, referring to this picture:

It looks like that's Abe Lincoln's top hat within spitting range of a crook, one of two traditional accoutrements of the kings of ancient Egypt. The flail, I believe, is right over Shawn Levy's back.

This image shows a Red Wagon, a guitar case, a tennis racket, a sale sign, an astrolabe, two picture frames, a vase, a basin, and whatever the hell that tube thing is.

Here we also see a violin among this truly impressive collection of random stuff, as well as a model hand holding a pitcher.

There's a clock, a wooden wheel, a shield, a tiny little gold teapot, and there are, in fact, hula hoops. Also, it looks like there are some pretty costly drapes and rugs amidst the pile of junk, as well.

Kahmunrah literally has everything here. He recognizes that gold still represents wealth and has value, but beyond that, either he doesn't quite know what our society ranks as "classy" and "of value" and what ranks as garish to the point of ridiculousness, or he doesn't care. Given his personality as made explicit by Battle of the Smithsonian, he very likely simply gave himself over to picking and choosing what he wanted from the collection of the Smithsonian Castle. He may not know what counts as garish or not, but it isn't hard to imagine him taking a certain amount of glee in seeing what our society puts on display for all the world to see and taking possession of it.

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": I tackle a topic which I've been mulling over for some time: moxie. What is it? How do you lose it? How do you know someone's lost it? How can you tell if there's a chance to get it back? When is there no hope? All of those questions and more will be addressed, so stay tuned.

Countdown: 330 Days to NATM 3

NATM 3 Update: So a couple of actors from the planned Expendabelles (I don't even know, but I guess it's a female Expendables, and the fourth installment in that franchise) are picking up parts in NATM 3. We all know, of course, of Pitch Perfect's Rebel Wilson, but apparently Ben Kingsley is also joining the cast as...an Egyptian Pharaoh (gee, haven't seen that one before). Let me guess. That guy's Ahkmenrah's father/son/another brother who hates him. Also, the cast is picking up a guy named Theo Devaney as Lord Nelson, most likely a prominent British Museum patron, or an old dead white guy that was somehow historically significant. Alexander Cooper AKA the Mysterious Stranger has been dropped from IMDb's NATM 3 Cast list, so maybe the Mysterious Stranger isn't making an appearance. This just leaves the night guard and the pharaoh (Wilson and Kingsley respectively) as the two mysterious identities six days away from the start of filming, and there's still that question in the back of my mind: Lancelot? Really? Maybe this'll be good, but I still stick by my fan-desired ending of Kahmunrah kicking ass and taking names in BOTS so his brother can save his soul in the logical third.

Night #40 - Clothes Make the Man

That's how the saying goes, at least. Clothes and personal possessions define status, whether or not someone is a professional in a given field, and what the man's general tastes include. They are the most nonverbal, upfront way for someone to state to the world: this is who I am, this is what you're getting when you interact with me. They are the easiest way to determine whether someone is worth your time or not, outside perhaps of body language or body odor.

So bearing all that in mind, what can be said about Kahmunrah?

First, some images. Take a close look and consider what you see:

(You can't see this, but images of the Horus warriors are flanking the gate on both sides.)

Personally, I look at these images and wonder what this guy has with birds. Honestly. His outfit's covered with bird motifs, all the way up to his wickedly tall hat, he summons an army of bird-headed creatures from the underworld, the gate is adorned with little birdies... Okay, the latter is kind of to be expected, since two of the chief gods of ancient Egypt are falcon-headed, so it makes sense that Egyptian artifacts would be adorned with them. But consider Kahmunrah in isolation.

Even by the standards one might expect from the ancient Egyptian people, this guy loves his birds. I'm not talking about pretty little songbirds, either. I'm talking birds of prey, large enough, with enough beak strength and sharp enough talons, to make quick work of as many small mammals as they so choose. Kahmunrah is by temperament vicious, war-like, quick to anger, and more likely to fight you physically than, say, his little brother, so it makes a certain degree of sense that he would naturally identify with the fighting aspects of birds of prey. But the level of love he displays for birds is kind of creepy.

This could be for any number of reasons: he's just as enthused about falcons as I am about The Little Vampire, for example, or he's weirdly aroused by seeing falcons kick butt and being able to kick the same level of ass just as effectively. Or, and I think this makes the most sense, he identifies so strongly with birds of prey because of his need to gain control over others that he deems smaller than himself (falcons vs mice, for example). It's a bizarre permutation of the Napoleon Complex where not only does he feel small because of how he was raised, he seeks to overcome this by overpowering others (see this link for more information concerning why Kahmunrah would feel this way). He therefore takes the falcon as his model for how to go about his life and pursue his goal/obsession. Given his tendency to go overboard (again, please refer to the above link), he covers himself in falcon-themed paraphernalia showing his strong association with what the bird represents to him, and the army he chooses to summon from the land of the dead is one of falcon-headed spear-wielding men.

Even so, in the immortal words of Gus, "He looks like a weirdie."

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": Part two of whatever Kahmunrah's general spectrum of tastes seems to be: that pile of treasure that he spends half the movie planting his ass on.

Countdown: 331 Days to NATM 3

Night #39 - Notes From the Commentary Underground - Epilogue

Welcome to the final section of Notes From the Commentary Underground. We've gone through the screenwriters' commentaries for both movies, and we've done the same for the director's commentaries. However, and this may or may not be a little known fact (read as if said by Kahmunrah for best effect), Shawn Levy also does commentary bits for each of the deleted scenes on the DVD, for those interested in listening to them. So, scene by scene, here's what Levy has to say about each and every bit which had to be cut.

Brunden, the Director's Cut: The longest and original version of the meeting between Brunden and Larry, described as a "master class" or "clinic" in improvisation, as these two took a page an a half scene the point of which was for Larry to steal Brunden's key to gain access to the archives to find his friends and improvised twenty pages of dialogue, most of it arguing over touching the gate and culminating on Larry busting out the moves as a Jedi Night Guard. And stealing the key card. He does that, too. But the scene couldn't run on as long as Levy wanted it to because Brunden never comes back.

World Twister: This is two scenes in one: the first is the "absurdist, silly idea" of the bad guys playing Twister to divy up the world once they conquer it, and the second is Al facing his future, where he "becomes fat and imprisoned" for tax evasion. This is where Levy brings up the idea that the audiences were restless to get back to Larry/Amelia and not spend too much time with the rogues.

How Many Bad Guys Can You Fit in an Elevator?: Another quirky little shot of all the bad guys from various points in history cramming into an elevator and just standing around awkwardly listening to elevator music.

Moon Rover: This was the second of two dramatic scenes which were originally back to back, essentially, and this followed the moment where Larry simply couldn't tell Amelia that she's a waxwork statue. The idea behind cutting this one was that it was too much, in essence, to have two dramatic scenes right after each other with the ticking clock of Jedediah in an hourglass waiting to die, and it felt like the last element was getting lost in the midst of all that drama. However, this line still remains one of Levy's favorites: "I was always where I belonged, in that cockpit, with blue sky all around, doing what I loved."

Takin 'Em Down, Gangster Style: This riff of Al Capone pretending to shoot everything up like he's seen in gangster movies is what landed Jon Bernthal the part. Bernthal was a nobody as far as anyone who was anyone who was tied to the project was concerned, but he auditioned by doing this riff, and he did it so well that he landed the part.

The Alternate Ending: Levy didn't feel this had a proper place at the end of the movie, but the actors came up anyway to reprise their roles for a "surprise tag". (I should note that the entire ending involving Ahkmenrah is a near perfect demonstration of his diplomatic tendencies, as he not only tries to look like he takes the girl's disbelief ("No seriously. What's it do?") in stride in spite of his enthusiasm about what the tablet can do, he also puts on the same face when asked about what happens after closing time, where he chooses the perfectly neutral response "In a safe place, I assure you" rather than something more vicious, as it's pretty plain he wants to. The kid may be all of nineteen, but damn, he knows what he's doing.)

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": Clothes make the man, and so do personal possessions. So what does all of Kahmunrah's (predominantly bird-themed) stuff say about him? Tune in to find out.

Countdown: 332 Days to NATM 3

Night #38 - Notes From the Commentary Underground - Part 4

Or, More on Movie Magic, as we now consider director Shawn Levy's take on his piece Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian. Again, there aren't very clear subdivisions of the material discussed, so a general summary will be provided.

Levy and Stiller both agreed that no announcement of a sequel at all would be made until they were sure they had a story that was worth it. So many sequels are bigger in scope and pile on more spectacle than the original but this does not typically make them better films than their original works. They knew that going to the Smithsonian would automatically create scale, but in order to produce a worthwhile sequel, they needed a deeper theme/character journey, and in this case it was the story of Larry "who has found success but lost joy" and needed to "find his way back to his better self." Therefore the sequel opened with Larry "almost unrecognizable" rather than "picking up where they left off", so Larry is now a successful businessman even though he no longer has "the coolest job in the world", and needs to go on this journey to find what he has lost.

Ben Stiller had the idea of his character being a "Jedi Night Guard", where he has greatly advanced from "Night 1 Larry" in that he can kick butt and do cool things with a flashlight, which serves several purposes in Battle of the Smithsonian: One, it allows him to impress Brunden and gives him the opportunity to steal the guard's key card (in the first movie, he had to teach himself magic in order to save himself from Attila, so this makes sense); two, it saves Larry's ass in the climactic battle with Kahmunrah, since he has no other weapon and he's up against a guy with a sword; three, it presents a symbolic tie-in to Star Wars, specifically Return of the Jedi, where Larry learns to accept his role as "Jedi Night Guard" and decides to stick around for a lot longer than he did following the first movie.

There is a lot of emphasis from other characters (Teddy and Amelia, to name two) on Larry actually not knowing what makes life worth living. Teddy believes that Larry doesn't know the key to "true happiness" and Amelia looks at Larry and sees "a man who's lost his moxie".

Hank Azaria, besides his two different serious vs silly takes for each scene, would also do the script a few times before going offroad with some of his other jokes, which he'd written beforehand. Also, he went through roughly ten different accents/voices for the pharaoh Kahmunrah before settling on Boris Karloff with a lisp. Furthermore, he was originally lined out for temporary voicing of the Thinker and Abraham Lincoln, but as no one could be found who was worthy of replacing the great Hank Azaria, he officially plays three parts in this movie.

The close-up of one of the Horus warriors coming out of the gate was insisted upon by the studio in order to sell that these things were really coming out of the underworld to wreak havoc and help Kahmunrah take over the world and whatnot. It had to be added in a week before release, pretty much, but as I said, the execs insisted.

Some of the concluding scenes, such as Stiller and Ricky Gervais improving and doing their whole-heart scene, were not actually essential, but he believed that "the movie is better for it." Levy is a big believer in leaving stuff in "not because the movie needs it, but because it's good."

Speaking of improvisation, like the first Night at the Museum, much of the middle section is the work of the actors making stuff up. This includes everything from Larry interacting with Brunden to Larry arguing with Kahmunrah over the fate of Jedediah and the rest of his "museum family". Levy in particular enjoys the fact that "the argument devolves into a couple of six-year-old boys". Also, a lot of contributions to the movie were not the work of the director, and actually it results in a better piece (on which we can all agree, yes? I hope so, if you're reading this blog).

A lot of the deleted scenes were cut because the audience in the test screenings wanted not to stray too far from the Larry/Amelia storyline, and one in particular, where Christopher Guest's character Ivan the Terrible is interrogating Larry, landed right in the middle of the narrative structure, where the ante is suddenly upped and Kahmunrah gets the idea to use Jed as a hostage to get the information he suspects Larry to have. This scene in particular came off as interruptive because of that fact.

Sadly, that deleted scene is not on my copy of the DVD, so it won't be making an appearance in the Commentary Underground epilogue. But plenty of "rogue scenes" will, so be watching!

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": The epilogue to Notes From the Commentary Underground. That's right, folks, I'm talking about the deleted scenes!

Countdown: 333 Days to NATM 3

Night #37 - Notes From the Commentary Underground - Part 3

We now move into the sequel, Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, and specifically right into the screenwriters' commentary. As per the last screenwriter commentary, all the way back in part 1 of Notes From the Commentary Underground, there is a running gag, a little bit of story/tablet information, and everything else. They also still believe that if you're bothering to put up with the screenwriters yammering for an hour and a half (or more, as the case may be) then you basically need to trot your ass outside and get some fresh air, or read a good book, do something.

The Running Gag:

Instead of "It's magic" (which should be pretty well established by the nature of the franchise by now), the running gag of the commentary track is a concept for NATM 3 where the movie is set in a big rig. The idea is to have Dr. McPhee, Larry Daley, and Dexter commandeering a big rig to get a random wholly mammoth to Atlanta on a deadline which requires speeding ("Are you aware this big rig was doing a hundred and ninety miles an hour" or something like that) and Shania Twain for some random reason. As the commentary progressed, the concept came to involve a Mounty and a random detour through either Canada or Seattle, Larry the Cable Guy in some capacity, and the taglines "We've got mammoth troubles" and "We've got a mammoth problem" (the second comes off more naturally in my opinion). And for some reason they try to convince the police that it's really just a huge, hairy elephant, but Shania Twain knows the secret, but that's neither here nor there.

Story/Tablet Tidbits:

The screenwriters were actually pretty excited about having something that the tablet fit into and "where it was obviously supposed to be" for a very long time.

Speaking of the tablet, apparently it thinks that the museum is a temple/pyramid, hence its operation on a building-by-building basis, and there was considerable back and forth on whether or not the tablet would stay or go, but the writers decided that the tablet should stay, since "Larry would be a real fool to knowingly let it go" out into the world from its safe, sheltered little museum home. This meant that Dexter had to steal the tablet in order to make the plot happen, hence Larry having "less time to prepare" and needing to jump right into the story, basically.

Interesting little character tidbit: Hank Azaria (Kahmunrah) did two takes of every scene, one where he was dead serious and the other where he was sillier than a "road lizard" to use Jed's phrasing, giving editors the choice of which they wanted to use. One cut was just all his silly stuff, which made for a good laugh but didn't give the flick any forward momentum. What eventually happened was that serious and silly were blended together to give the effect that "the wheel is coming off" as the movie progresses and his plan is falling apart at the seems because he has to actually, oh I don't know, implement it.

Stiller made this decision where his character remembers everything's just wax, so he just has to wait until sunrise and everything will work itself out, and he sticks to it no matter what the living hell is going on around him, something the screenwriters admire in his performance in BOTS.

Originally this was a riddle of the sphinx, a giant cat that spoke only in ancient Egyptian (in which case what would Kahmunrah need anyone for?), and for a while it was called "Night at the Museum: Riddle of the Pyramids".

The "Lincoln Ex Machina" was in the plan from the get-go. Stiller also enjoyed the idea of Lincoln having a vendetta against pigeons ("really would've had it with the pigeons, just enough with the pigoens"), and originally he wanted to know what happened to his hat.

Picture the cherubs as voiced by the guys from The Sopranos, as "tough mafiosos from New Jersey".

Miscellany:

"Boom! Bang! Fiyapowa!" is this film's version of "Dum-Dum gum-gum" in that it's just as memetic.

One of the running curiosities (rather than just a running gag) was the idea that everything seems to be unlocked in this movie. They suspect that in reality, everything is locked up, considering the high "historic and intrinsic value" (National Treasure) of essentially everything on display or in cold storage at the Smithsonian complex.

The screenwriters are quick to hyperbolically praise themselves when it comes to their remarkably small parts as the Wright Brothers.

There's a book by Graham Hancock about pi and the pyramids, called Fingerprints of the Gods, which claims that all these cultures around the world learned pyramid building from Atlantis. Take of that what you will. Also, they only needed enough digits of pi to fit on an ATM keypad in order to open the gate to the underworld. Graham Hancock also wrote The Sign and the Seal, about the Ark of the Covenant.

They want to see an Oscar the Grouch origin story, answering the questions of how he ended up in the can, why he's evil, and whether or not he wants to take over the world by flooding it with garbage.

The Horus warriors (originally to be Kahmunrah's henchmen from the beginning but deemed just too damned scary for kids) are representations of Horus, the patron god of the pharaohs of ancient Egypt. (I'm pretty sure the pharaoh was believed to actually be Horus incarnate, or the son of Ra, or both, but I can't be sure.) However, they like the idea that your evil army cuts and runs at the first sign of trouble, rather than being steadfast as they always are in movies.

One of the writers did a piece on the psychological abuse of monkeys, known as Monkey Torture. It can be found on the DVD release of The State.

The process of actually writing the script is as follows: they come up with an approximately twenty-five page outline, then divy it up into sections in an alternating fashion, which they then email back and forth. Each time they recieve an email of the script, they go through it from the beginning and make notes and changes as needed so that by the time the script is finished, it's essentially draft twenty-five. The script is guided along the way by studio people so that it doesn't surprise anyone upon its completion. This process they feel is twice as fast when they're in their basements emailing back and forth rather than half as fast, as it would be if they were in the same room trying to finish it. The writers in this case have the advantage of knowing both the Smithsonians and the Natural History Museum really well and therefore being able to use the exhibits for character inspiration.

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": Notes From the Commentary Underground - Part the Fourth

Countdown: 334 Days to NATM 3

Night #36 - Notes From the Commentary Underground - Part 2

The disclaimer from last night still stands.

This is the summation of the director's commentary for Night at the Museum. It can't be subdivided into parts the way the writers' commentary can, so I will have to suffice with a general summation of what director Shawn Levy discussed for an hour and a half. In truth, it was really a nice, long list of interesting facts about movie magic and the process of making Night at the Museum happen.

The opening act was quite different from the finished product. For instance it was once much longer, including such scenes as Larry trying to pitch a restaurant to a bunch of dentists, and it didn't include the opening title sequence which quite frankly establishes the movie as more than a comedy. The title sequence by Picture Mill sets up the, for want of a better word, "muchness" of the movie. By this I mean not only the grandeur of things coming to life but also the tale of a man coming into greatness and redeeming himself in the eyes of his son, who also learns to come around to his dad and see him as a pretty okay guy, rather than the fountainhead of all disappointment in his life. So the title sequence was added, and the first act was essentially gutted, since "the movie didn't want to take too much time" in getting around to putting Larry in that museum, in his new position as the night guard.

A lot of the second act is Ben Stiller and others riffing off of each other and cracking each other up in between takes trying to get to a final cut they can actually use. Also, scenes with the miniatures, including the two main little guys (no offense to the characters themselves) were filmed with the miniatures' actors out of the country, and here's how it would work: Stiller would do his lines to a toothpick, and more often than not, since Stiller likes reacting to something that actually exists, an off-camera reader would be imployed, reciting the lines of the character(s) represented by the toothpick. One of these, as an interesting aside, gave us the great gem of "It's Octavius, Mary." Then, two months or so later, the actors playing the miniatures (Owen Wilson and Steve Coogan, just so you're convinced that I know what I'm talking about) would return, and they would be filmed on a green screen arena of some form or another while an off-camera reader, usually Levy, recited Stiller's lines. Since Stiller improvised twenty different versions, each of these had to be written down to get twenty different possible responses, and then these shots would be spliced together into a finished scene which thankfully comes off as real enough to take all the way to the bank (otherwise I wouldn't be doing this). Also an interesting aside, the special effects company responsible for the movie, Rhythm and Hughes, said it was the most improvisational effects movie they've ever worked on.

It took a little doing for Levy to realize that Night at the Museum is more than about being funny, and in fact he came around to this half way through the director's cut, and in fact he made a pact with Stiller regarding this subject: the movie would be edgier than most action/adventure spectacle movies, but it would have more heart and spectacle and action/adventure than most comedies. This also played into the addition of the title sequence which establishes the film and ultimately the franchise as more epic than it was originally intended to be.

A little something on Levy's directing style: he likes to remain open to good ideas wherever they may come from, and it pays off. In fact, I think he learned that in going through the shooting/production process for this movie, and he does express that "this is the movie of which [he is] most proud" and that especially Stiller helped make him a better director, if more demanding. Also, he has a tendency to shout out lines on set as they come to him, right in the middle of shooting, for example "Yeah, it's cool. It's freaking awesome!" and Rooney's "Keep a lid on it, Butterscotch!"

And a personal fave from the commentary, concerning Nicky discovering the tablet and quoted word for word from the director's own lips:

"If you actually think about this scene, it is inane, okay? The kid comes in, there's a shopping cart of stolen golden goods conveniently left there, the kid coincidentally picks up the tablet which coincidentally has the middle piece out of whack, which Ben coincidentally notices and understands the logic thereof, and by the way, the bad guys, for some reason don't advance because Ben's in the way of their walking path? I mean, it makes absolutely no sense. It also makes no sense that the bad guys wouldn't want the kid to activate the tablet because if he activates the tablet, they get their superhuman strength, so they'd actually be more formidible. So this is a scene that to this day I'm amazed that we get away with it because there is so much that doesn't work that I'm just thrilled that by the third act...we've got the audience and they're willing to go with us here."

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": Notes from the Commentary Underground - Part the Third

Countdown: 335 Days to NATM 3

Night #35 - Notes From the Commentary Underground - Part 1

Given this is the first of a series, I shall preface by stating that the opinions are those of the commentators, not mine. If I do feel the need to express an opinion, I will set it apart from the rest of the paragraph as a parenthetical aside or as a separate paragraph and set my thought or thoughts in italics. This series is a condensation of the opinions expressed in the commentary in real time and through human speech patterns into cohesive wholes that express inter-related themes.

The first section is the writers' commentary for the first movie, Night at the Museum, so the commentators whose opinions I'm grouping and condensing are Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant. The three main "groups" of sound bites I recognized were concerning the tablet, anything supporting the running gag, and the miscellany, or everything else.

The Tablet

It was the Staff of Ahkmenrah for a while, but also the tablet used to be a puzzle with eight pieces and nine spaces. Each piece had a hieroglyph on it, and only one could be moved around at any given time, like those puzzles that made pictures or sequences of numbers (I've got one at home which is numbered one through 24 and is a 5X5 grid), only this tablet could be made to say a variety of things, anywhere from "Everything in this tomb shall serve Ahkmenrah for eternity" to "Everything in this museum shall obey the guards of Ahkmenrah" to "The guards shall obey Ahkmenrah", and the idea was to have Cecil move the pieces around to say "All of the guards shall obey the holder of this tablet", so that Larry would have to magically do whatever he said. The idea was later simplified into a tablet with nine rotating pieces (I discuss on Night #4 that the tablet can still be made to state different things due to this property of the pieces), but the writers still think it's very, very cool.

The idea for an Egyptian artifact which brought everything to life in the museum made sense to the writers (this was not in the original children's book), and they felt it was based in "logical historical belief". "Egyptians would have created some sort of magical thing to keep everything alive in a tomb to keep a pharaoh company."

The Running Gag

The running gag is their explanation for why exactly certain things happen within the movie 'verse, which is "It's magic." They use this to explain how Rexy can move, how the Romans speak with English accents, and one even stated that this is his response for questions he cannot properly answer. They use this explanation for why the Huns can't or don't speak English, and also for the scene after the climax, where Teddy and Larry are taking inventory of the exhibits as they reenter the museum. In that case, they use the line to refer to anything which needs to be pulled out of someone's rear end and needs an explanation in case anyone asks. "It's magic."

Their second running gag is the notion that we as Americans "generously offered" to rescue the cultural artifacts of such places as Egypt, Easter Island (which is, in fact, deserted), and various places in Africa, put them in museums and charge people to come see them, taking the proceeds and sending them back to the countries of origin for these various artifacts.

Miscellany

They talk a lot about the Metropolitan museum, across Central Park from the Natural History Museum and which is home to half of the exhibits, including the Temple of Dendur (this is the actual spelling, I checked) upon which Ahkmenrah's temple was based, and essentially everything from the northeast wie afcng from the Met. Furthermore, there are corridors under the Met which are full of art. Apparently there is also a picture of a young Rockefeller relation who was eaten by cannibals. The mannequins the Civil War guys are based on are in the fashion wing of the Met, and were added because the writers wanted something cheap and not tremendously complicated to shoot or coordinate. (The mannequins in the Met fashion wing are based on Christie Turlington, as an aside.) The blue whale is also from the Met.

The writers admire a lot of the casting work that was done for this movie, and they are impressed that Dick Van Dyke is, perhaps for the first time, playing a villain (at about this point they go into the dark side of life as a Victorian-era chimney sweep).

Various aspects which remained intact throughout the revising process are: Cecil scaring Larry in the wicker outfit, Larry getting tied up in the Western diorama with a train getting ready to ram into his nose, everything involving Ahkmenrah, the My First Keys that Larry slips to Dexter, the "second morning" where Larry got fired, Cecil's escape on a stage coach, and the series of news reporters discussing the climax's aftermath.

Other points of note are that they think this movie is a good value (you pay for a night, but you get three), that there is no globe or wax Teddy in the real life museum, there are two dinosaurs fighting in the opening hall rather than just Rexy, the set is a huge contiguous system of hallways "some of which resemble the Natural History Museum a great deal", "you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a Rockefeller wing of anything", Cecil's warning ("Don't let anything in...or out") was in the trailer, they really like their system of cranking out scripts, they feel the T-Rex chasing Larry around is "irresponsible", the actual museum is four stories tall and covers a city block, half the stuff they wrote they didn't think would actually make it into the final cut (they actually felt they could do whatever they wanted because "99.9% of movies don't get made"), monkeys are a complete mess to work with and sometimes come with dysfunctional couples who treat the monkey like it's their baby, also monkeys "pee all the way to the bank", they thought it was clever how they figured Ahkmenrah could speak English until someone decided he should speak Hun as well, and the writers have several other theories for why the Romans and Ahkmenrah use English accents: among them are importance/daddy issues and magic.

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": The second section of Notes From the Commentary Underground, the director's commentary.

Countdown: 336 Days to NATM 3

Night #34 - "I am Larry...son of...Milton"

So from that we can easily judge that Larry's father's name is Milton Daley, but that has nothing on how the Brothers Egypt refer to themselves. Next easiest is Kahmunrah's "great king of the great kings", which speaks to his pride more than anything else as he is verbally placing himself above every other great king in history. Note: the ancient Egyptians believed that having something written out a certain way made it so, making fiction a very powerful political tool. For example, Hatshepsut used writing to claim that she was of divine parentage and chosen to rule by her father, who was dead by the time she took the throne as she'd served as regent for her husband/brother/nephew/some such weird relation for some number of years prior to taking the throne herself. This also plays into the idea that if someone tells himself something long enough, he begins to believe it, which leads back to Kahmunrah's past of being neglected and/or abused by his parents and passed over in favor of his younger, more legitimate brother Ahkmenrah, therefore why he wants to raise himself above everyone else. It makes him feel important to refer to himself as "great king of the great kings" and become the ruler of the world, therefore the most important man alive. And to serve that end, he would speak of himself as already having attained that position to add to the idea that it is so.

However, the great challenge is Ahkmenrah's self-referral: "I am Ahkmenrah, fourth king of the fourth king, ruler of the land of my fathers." It could very well be that this is a case of odd generational math, such as in the Bible: "So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; from David until the carrying away into Babylon are fourteen generations; and from the carrying away into Babylon unto Christ are fourteen generations" (Matt. 1:17, King James Version). If Ahkmenrah is speaking of himself in similar terms, this would mean four generations (four kings) separate him from the "fourth king". Ahkmenrah dates himself by stating that the tablet was given to him three thousand years ago, roughly a thousand years before Christ and establishing himself, according to Wikipedia, at the beginning of the Third Intermediate Period (Note in reference to last night: if the tablet and the gate were made closer to Egypt's creation/foundation, this gives it ample time for it to become one of the Egyptians' most prized possessions as it is by the time of Ahkmenrah). I doubt the writers are fully aware of this, but at this period in Egyptian history, there were several dynasties at once, which is (perhaps unintentionally) represented in the conflict between the two brothers, or at least the one-sided perceived conflict on the part of Kahmunrah.

Ahkmenrah's introduction also serves as the greatest demonstration of his humility with regard to his status as well as his greatest point of comparison with his fellow Brother Egypt. Where Kahmunrah states that he is above every other king that ever lived or will ever live (especially in this day of constitutional monarchies, I've gotta give him that), Ahkmenrah simply states that he is the eighth in his dynasty to rule Egypt.

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": The first in my new series Notes From the Commentary Underground.

Countdown: 337 Days to NATM 3

Night #33 - Legends are Lessons

It's a shame that not everyone pays attention. Take, for instance, the Egyptian legend of Seth and Osiris (and Isis, and Ra, and Horus, and several others). The story goes that after Isis tricked Ra into letting her banish him using his secret name, Osiris assumed the position of king of the gods, and was a good and just ruler. However, Osiris had an older brother, Seth, who was jealous of his position and decided to take it himself. So, to achieve this, Seth murdered Osiris and cut up the body, scattering the pieces all over Egypt. Isis, who is for some reason distraught over this, goes to gather all of the pieces (some versions tell that the penis was eaten by a catfish, making the fish unlucky and putting a ban on eating it) and reassemble them. She wraps the body in linen and magically resurrects Osiris, but only long enough to conceive by him her son Horus, who then went on to avenge his father's death in a long, drawn-out battle with Seth.

However, we know next to nothing about the family lives of the Brothers Egypt aside from the fact that Ahkmenrah was favored over his older brother and the implication that Kahmunrah was neglected/abused by his parents, both of which compound into his plan to take over the world. But we also know that Kahmunrah implies, by his statement that he is the fifth king of Egypt after it comes out that his younger brother is the fourth king in the first movie, that he may have killed Ahkmenrah. He does state that he feels the throne of Egypt is rightfully his, and he certainly doesn't seem patient. Therefore, either he killed his brother to make sure Ahkmenrah doesn't become a symbol for anyone who might resist him, or Ahkmenrah killed himself because he saw that Kahmunrah waging war on him could tear the country in two. In any event, following Ahkmenrah's death, Kahmunrah makes it pretty clear that he took the throne. This element of the history between the two brothers closely parallels the murder of Osiris by his brother Seth, also for political reasons.

But if that is one commonality among many, then can we be led to assume this is a family rife with political homicide? If Isis duped Ra into abdicating, essentially, then did Ahkmenrah and Kahmunrah's mother do something similar to the Brothers' grandfather? Did she connive her way to power as well? If Kahmunrah is not legitimately the pharaoh's son as Ahkmenrah is (refer to Night #3), then was it part of her bid to make it so? Did she try to give him a good life by doing this? Or was she just as conniving as Isis was in trying to seize power through her husband? Further, does this indicate that Ahkmenrah has a son who avenged his father's death by killing Kahmunrah (this son may or may not be the child of this Shepseheret woman) and then assumed control of Egypt?

Perhaps all that is true. After all, in death, Ahkmenrah refers to wherever the tablet resides as his "kingdom", as in, "Now bestow the tablet upon me so I may assume command of my kingdom." If the museum is his kingdom and everything in the museum is dead, then Ahkmenrah is a king of the dead, therefore adding weight to his role as the Osiris figure in his dynamic with brother Kahmunrah, the most probable Seth figure in the account of Ahkmenrah's death and the succession after him. And adding weight to the notion of Kahmunrah as the Seth figure is his own notion that he is the rightful heir of his father, thus the most natural and orderly. Seth was not always regarded as evil, and in fact he went with Ra every night through the Underworld and was a key warrior in the fight against the snake demon Apophis/Apep. Kahmunrah views himself as keeping order, his own fight against the chaos demon. Amongst all his other motivations, he sees himself as doing the right thing for the sake of the universe (admittedly that particular motivation has been buried under a great deal over the centuries).

All of that having been said and assuming Shepseheret is Ahkmenrah's wife (or sister, or both), I've just found another reason to be leery of her presence in the franchise. Assuming she is some other relation to the Brothers Egypt, then I simply don't want to rush in, personally. We'll have to wait and see in regards to this mystery woman.

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": Understanding how the Brothers Egypt refer to themselves in terms of titulary.

Countdown: 338 Days to NATM 3

Breaking, Breaking, Breaking News!

Screw the format, this is important. NATM 3 has been moved up to December 19, shaving six days off the countdown and making (at the very least) me very happy.

So the new countdown is 339 Days, and everything will be reset accordingly going forward.

Night #32 - F.U.N.

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": I shift back into serious mode after my break, with my two cents on the Brothers Egypt in myth.

Countdown: 345 Days to NATM 3

Night #31 - Rock Out!

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": The F.U.N. Song from Spongebob, Kahmunrah VS Larry

Countdown: 346 Days to NATM 3

Night #30 - THEME MUSIC!

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": NATM stills on techno.

Countdown: 346 Days to NATM 3

Night #29 - Brotherly Love (or not)

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": THEME MUSIC! Longer version of the fight music from the climactic BOTS scene as well as the unrelated but still epic theme music from The Lone Ranger.

Countdown: 347 Days to NATM 3

NATM 3 Update: According to this page right here, Night at the Museum 3 will not only start filming the first of Februrary (and wrap around mid-May, which really seems like a short time to film something, especially a Museum movie, but they do say the dates are subject to change), it will be set in the British Museum in London, include Jedediah amongst the cast (no word on the monkeys), and, "with only three days scheduled out of studio so far" will probably, like any other Museum movie, showcase the chaos of things coming to life every night. But I do have a question: Why in all living hell are they going to London? And since they are going to London and this is a comedy, there's a high probability of at least one spotted dick joke.

Night #28 - Love is in the Air

If Jed/Oct is your thing. However, I did promise you all a shipping soap box, so here it is.

That ought to do it for the soap box, so I'll step off now.

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": A tribute to the Brothers Egypt.

Countdown: 348 Days to NATM 3