Night #107 - Let's Play Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian - Part 1

Now let's be clear before I jump right in: I'm by no means a video game nerd, so as I go through this next series of videos, I won't be looking for video game "quality". I don't even know how to define such a term. What I will be looking for is adherence to and expansion upon the plot line of the movie upon which this game was based. I don't own the videos or the video game in question, I had nothing to do with putting any of this together. I'm just doing a spur-of-the-moment series I hope will be fruitful in supplying interesting bits of trivia to nourish and help develop our headcanons and amuse our friends.

That having been said, let's jump into "Let's Play Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian"!

So apparently the woman narrating hasn't seen BOTS at all and is grading on a completely different scale than I am (apparently comparing to something called G4). Here it's made clear that Larry doesn't know the renovation is happening in the middle of an interview, rather than implied when he turns up at the museum like in the movie, and in this case he races off to see what all the hubbub is about. Slightly different opening but keeps the concept of the original. Alright, I'll bite.

"Unlike the massive sandstone tombs raised by the Egyptians, the Central American pyramids like this Aztec example used a stepped construction with a temple or altar on top. The Aztec people dominated central Mexico in the 14th through 16th centuries before being defeated by Spanish invaders." - Just one of the many audio tour sound bytes from this part of the game, but I wrote it down because EGYPT! The narrator, as an aside, spends a lot of this part going around collecting random things and unlocking audio tour sound bytes before actually getting the plot rolling. I can respect that, especially since she claims to be a huge nerd for everything in the Natural History Museum.

This part also gives us the detail that apparently Larry was up to "juvenile antics" (no shock) and has yet to actually clean out his locker (that's actually a quest in this movie, the first one; this actually sounds kind of fun, or it would if I had a gaming system and the money).

That is the most shittily-rendered Rexy I have ever seen in my entire life. And I thought Ben Stiller looked bad in this game.

Who voices Jed and Octavius for this? They sound so much better in the movies. They really do. (According to the IMDb on the subject, that's Dustin Leighton and Dave Wittenberg, respectively. I get that they try to sound like the real guys, but seriously. It's just terrible.)

Jed wishes for Larry to "Vaya con Dios," which means "Go with God". Apparently Rexy's feisty.

Riding Rexy bareback must be the single most uncomfortable thing in existence, especially if you have two fruits and veg.

"Hooray property damage." LOL straight up. Apparently our narrator is having fun riding Rexy and causing trouble.

So that was part one of this madness. Not a lot happening: we get the sequence of Larry arriving at the museum and dealing with the exhibits (namely Jed and Octavius, and Rexy), but other than that, not a whole hell of a lot. But Part Two is titled "Flashback", and the still YouTube is displaying for that shows Ahkmenrah and magic stuff going down. I thought it was Kahmunrah at first, full disclosure, but either one of the Brothers Egypt is fine with me.

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": The promise of the Brothers Egypt entering into this game at last. We'll see how they deliver, and here's hoping Ahkmenrah has a bigger part in the game than he does in the movie. Voiced by Crispin Freeman, so no high hopes for aural or visual resemblance to Rami Malek, but we'll see what goes.

Countdown: 266 Days to NATM 3

Night #106 - Hail to the King!

I've been spending so much time focusing on Kahmunrah that I don't want to neglect his poor baby brother, now, do I? I'm aware that I've posted Ahkmenrah videos before (here), but I have yet to give the kid an actual, proper solo tribute, so here it is.

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": There's a series of videos on YouTube which take you through the entire BOTS video game, and I'm going through each and every one of these videos, seeing which parts line up with and expand upon the movie. Come sail away!

Countdown: 267 Days to NATM 3

NATM 3 Update: According to the NATM 3 Wikipedia page, not only is Dick van Dyke on board as Cecil, but his two cohorts are back as well: Bill Cobbs and Mickey Rooney as Reginald and Gus, respectively. Looks like the three old guys are still at it. Wonder what antics they'll be up to this time, and how it plays into the theory I discussed a while back about Robert, whether there are four or just the three potential adversaries there that aren't getting hyped up (again, a total Once move, and for those unfamiliar that means you build up something of little significance as something with great significance while something with great significance lurks in the background for as long as possible). Oh, this is juicy.

Night #105 - The French Taunter VS Kahmunrah

Ace Ventura is really just randomly thrown in at the end. The real show is the back and forth between the French Taunter and Kahmunrah.

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": How about a little love for Baby Brother, yes?

Countdown: 268 Days to NATM 3

Night #104 - More Kahmunrah Madness

Kahmunrah at his best! With some back and forth between Dr. McPhee and Larry at the end. (Does include the scene from last night, but if you don't mind watching it again...)

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": The Ultimate Mash-up: Kahmunrah and Ace Ventura against the French Taunter from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. This is going to be epic!

Countdown: 269 Days to NATM 3

Night #103 - "Don't! Croth! Thith! Line! With your hand."

Because let's face it. I couldn't resist.

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": More Kahmunrah madness! A compilation of Kahmunrah's best scenes.

Countdown: 270 Days to NATM 3

Night #102 - Rumor Has It....

There's a lot of plot speculation out there concerning Night at the Museum 3, mostly because the plot synopsis hasn't been released yet, that fact has been made explicitly clear multiple times, and fans are curious to the point of rabidness by nature. However, amid all the theories, I've found one that has caught my attention and won't let go. It can be found here, and goes like this:

• Robert, Cecil's son, may have let loose Sir Lancelot to keep Larry busy, when he finds a great weapon.

This is one of those where I can't help but wonder all the particulars to: How did it get to this point? Will Lancelot find out he was being manipulated and switch sides? What weapon are we talking about here? Egyptian? And speaking of, where do the Egyptian characters come into play? Are they the weapon's guardians aside from being related to Ahkmenrah in some fashion? In a sense it reminds me of The Mummy Returns: tease a bad guy as the main one (really he's a secondary) while the real Big Bad goes to work. As you may recall, I was at first very disturbed by Lancelot being a bad guy in this movie, especially it's Big Bad. It implies so many things about the Arthur mythos which, quite frankly, feel out of place in a franchise whose whole premise is centered on ancient Egyptian magic. I had hoped he was insane or ineffective, but this theory would work out so well, too. It accounts for a lot of the characters who aren't being hyped up nearly so much as Lancelot (a la the Scorpion King), and it feels a lot more like it fits within the franchise as a whole, rather than just having random Arthurian characters appear out of nowhere for no good reason.

It also takes into account the revenge concept which (at the very least) popped into my mind as soon as I saw that there would be a Robert Fredericks in the movie to begin with. I sat and pondered the possible relationship between these two for perhaps a lot longer than I needed to, because considering the ages of the actors concerned, father/son is the most likely, and also something I almost recognized on sight. Having a son who wants to avenge wrongs done to his father makes a great deal of sense, at least in the world of drama (and some slightly outdated value systems which are still perpetuated to this day (I say that because in today's world, the "real world", nobody has time for elaborate revenge schemes, and it's more likely to be a wasted effort than not)). And that's if it even is a revenge scheme. Robert Fredericks, for all we know, probably has more up his sleeve than we know right now. What if he's not even a bad guy, but merely doing this to test Larry's skill to recruit him into some ancient secret society of Night Guards dating back to ancient Egypt (a la Now You See Me but without stage magicians)? That would actually mean a fascinating turn for the franchise, with the chance to explore the mythology a lot more closely and thoroughly.

This is one of those theories that hints at a lot more, and a lot more interesting, bits and pieces than many others, and it can go in more than one possible direction. Personally, if either of the above situations I've discussed are the way NATM 3 goes, I've got a very good feeling I'm going to enjoy it come opening night, when my butt's in that theater chair.

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": A break from all the seriousness with one of the most funny (and famous) scenes from BOTS

Countdown: 271 Days to NATM 3

Night #101 - How to Write a NATM Fic! (The Serious Version)

Last night I gave all of you a humorous take on the proper writing of a NATM fanfic, but tonight, we're getting serious. Sit back as I take you through my method and mindset and see how I do the best I can at what I love: writing, with the disclaimer that this probably won't work for everyone.

Now, the trash I sporked last night is something I don't get past the summary or a couple paragraphs of, because I can pick it out relatively easily, especially with all the time I spend on the internet looking into all this stuff. It does help me identify what hasn't been done, however, and in the case of Night at the Museum, what that seems to be, overwhelmingly, is an engaging story about modern day museum problems concerning Larry and the exhibits we all love so dearly, and pretty much no one else. That, coincidentally, is something I want to explore. Therefore, I have a niche, and I feel like I'll enjoy it.

Write what you want to write about, or else it'll show. If you want to put yourself into a fanfic and fall in love, that's none of my business. I just won't read it. I happen to like a particular plot line and love to explore the heck out of it, and that's what I tend to repeat in my NATM fics time and time again. For the uninitiated, that plot line happens to be a family reunion with or without the forces of chaos to contend with. It just so happens that this is something no one in the fandom seems to like doing. Therefore, it's something fanfic readers haven't seen very much of, and if they're into that sort of thing, then I have a ready readership as soon as I finish the writing.

I don't publish chapters sporadically whenever I choose to finish them. My particular method is to write the entire thing out in Notepad (for some reason my personal favorite, maybe because of the aesthetics of seeing the text in the program, and no page breaks, which can become bothersome to me), and break into chapters later. The chapters are then published on the regular basis of about one per day or couple of days (it takes longer if I am tremendously unlucky). This process allows me to work through the story organically and cohesively, make it all sound similar and read similarly, and come up with a proper title before I even start the publishing process. And besides, this way, if I don't finish, it never sees the light of day, and nobody likes a dead fic (nobody I know of, anyway).

I have on this blog a series of posts about alternate universes, and there is one where I feel it's perfectly acceptable and even necessary to have original characters: the span of time between the first two movies, after Larry quit his job to be a success. There needs to be a replacement night guard (or possibly several). That's a situation which calls for an original character. However, if all you do is have your OC bone one of the exhibits (by the way, weird)--and if I see another AkhXOC I'm going to kill someone, to paraphrase his big brother--then I don't want to read it. If there's a story in there somewhere, like following someone getting back on the straight and narrow after battling drugs or the streets or something by becoming a night guard, then I'm cool with that and might actually read. That's good stuff.

Then there's plot lines which explore what happens when the exhibits are placed in various impossible situations: what happens when Cecil wins? What happens when the tablet activates during lunch hour? What happens when Dexter accidentally screws something up with it during late night hours, causing trouble? The tablet is the focal point of all these examples because it has the most potency to affect the plot, being the thing which grants eternal life to all exhibits in the building (at least at night). There are a lot of good plots out there that don't require OCs, so why use them? (JK, I know the answer to that one. I just don't wish to discuss it.)

I also put a lot of thought into what characters would do if this or that or the other thing happened to them. For example, who would win in a fight between Cecil and Kahmunrah? (You guys remember that post? If not, it's here.) Or how would the brothers react seeing each other again after thousands of years of literally no contact whatsoever? In order to do this correctly, have it play out believably, I have to develop a very, very solid foundation of understanding of the personalities of each character involved, hence my very involved personality-themed headcanons. And I have to keep these in mind when I work out how the characters would interact with each other, because our personality informs our behavior. The Stoic isn't going to start gushing upon sight of some pretty girl and thus run into a pole, is he? That would have to be some woman. I make a great effort into making sure key character interactions make sense. And let's face it, if I'm not happy with some section of my work, I fix it.

TL;DR: Make sure you understand the characters' personalities well enough to make sure their interactions in unusual situations is believable. Finish first, make everything feel cohesive, have a title to match, and then post (and make sure you at least make one pass through each chapter before releasing it to the light of day; if you're not confident in your spelling and grammar abilities, beta readers exist for a reason). There are plots where OCs are okay, but there are many more where you can use the ones you're given; try to avoid OCs if possible.

Happy writing everybody!

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": An interesting theory has come to my attention concerning possible plot lines for NATM 3, so put on your thinking caps as I discuss it here. That's next.

Countdown: 272 Days to NATM 3.

Night #100 - How to Write a NATM Fic!

Wow, hard to believe it's been a hundred nights already. By this time a few years from now, we'll be like Scheherazade. (If you don't know who that is, A Thousand and One Nights, good stuff.)

In any event, tonight I shall regale all of you with how to write a proper Night at the Museum Fanfiction, one that you can truly, proudly share with the world.

To begin, let's take a look at your characters. Being a fanfiction, you will of course need to incorporate characters from the franchise itself, but that doesn't mean Larry needs to be your main character. You can totes write about Jed, Octavius, or Ahkmenrah if you wanted. OR you could bring in an entirely new charrie so we can all bask in your awesomeness and originality. But if you do this, she'll need to be one of a few things: night guard, distant (or not so much) relative of Larry, Dr. McPhee, or both; and she'll eventually need to fall in love with Ahkmenrah and win his undead heart even though such a relationship would never work realistically because she's a human and he's magically animated night after night and thus immortal. But who cares about all that? It's true love! They don't need to worry about temporal barriers and shit like that! Who am I kidding?

You can have basically whatever plot you want, so long as you set it at the museum. You can have time-travelling wizards come in and recruit your MC and her love interest for some weird mission or another, or you can have new exhibits come in, or whatever. Just remember, though, all this takes back stage whenever you have to have the characters bond and fall deeper in love. And have sex in the security office/on the reception desk/in the middle of the Hall of African Mammals/on the bench in the Hall of Miniatures/wherever two madly in love people can conceivably have sex. You can have no plot at all, just so long as you include the romance and coitus.

As far as everything else, if you've done the first two right, nobody should care. All you do now is publish chapters as sporadically as possible and wait for the praise to wash down on you as often as it does on God. And wait. And wait. And wait.

***

Well, I had fun. I think by this point my soul is sufficiently cleansed, and it's always nice to rib a couple of the trends I see in the world, if only once in a while just so people are aware that they exist. Tomorrow night, I'll give the serious version of all this wonderful advice, but I personally always find posts like this good for a laugh. I hope you did, too.

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": But seriously, how do you write a proper fanfiction?

Countdown: 273 Days to NATM 3

Night #99 - Soul-Cleansing Pic Spam

By now you are all probably aware of the disastrous turn that the Jack Hunter trilogy has taken for me, and so, for my spirits and yours, I will be filling your screens with pics and gifs of the Brothers Egypt, below the cut. Enjoy them, my loves.

Night #98 - This Blogger and the Star of Heaven

*Unmarked Spoilers Abound*

The first two installments of the miniseries have followed Jack Hunter and an assortment of others, good, bad, small time, big time, on first the quest for the Iris of the Star of Heaven (that staff thing at the end of Lost Treasure of Ugarit) and then for the Eye of the Star of Heaven (we haven't seen this yet, as the search in Quest for Akhenaten's Tomb has been unsuccessful). Here, the search for the Eye of the Star continues, and so do everyone's troubles with the Russian Mafia, some of whom, as you may recall from last night, are members of Akhenaten's death cult. I hope by this point you've given up any believable portrayal of mobsters, Russian or otherwise, but if not, the first five minutes really put the nail in that coffin, at least in my view. The head mobster for this movie, someone named Petrovsky (how much more Russian can you sound?), is fifty percent sass and fifty percent needless killing, just in that opening few minutes. It's one of those moments where I actually pity Littmann (the bad guy who looks like Ian), because he has to put up with this shit, and if he protests, there go his brains, all over a fine Persian rug. It's a shame that later on I'm reminded of how much of an asshole he really is.

And that brings me to the rest of the opening. It's a very clunky opening sequence, starting with a shootout in the middle of Cairo I think. I had a very hard time piecing together what was happening until well into the fire fight, but I guess the government agents were trying to kidnap Littman and Hunter intervened because reasons. Then we had Littmann and his mob bosses, discussed above, and Hunter back at base dealing with his supremely catty ex-girlfriend. Seriously, this woman threatens to use her position to make Hunter's life hell because of Hunter's developing relationship with Nadia. A government position is not the proper venue for your personal issues. And that leads me to my other major issue with this character: Why is she so bitchy with Hunter in general? After it's revealed back at the end of Ugarit that she's a government agent, all she's does is be self-important, stuck-up, a know-it-all, jealous, possessive, catty, bitchy...you know what? Just watch this video:

That's my feelings for this woman summed up by the best. And what compounds the matter is that she holds a government position and is currently working on saving the world from a very dangerous magical force. We have no time for any of her bullshit, and yet she spews it anyway. I think it's really sad that by the third act of what is technically an incredibly long movie, I feel this strongly about one of your characters, in such a bad way.

But then we saw Tariq (the comic relief character, whose name I've apparently been misspelling in my notes the entire time) at the airport, and my spirits lifted. Which is another tremendously sad part about this movie, because for the first forty-five minutes, he carries it squarely on his shoulders. For the rest of it I have to put up with listening to the main characters avoid their emotional problems and try (at a snail's pace in spite of the constantly harped time limit) to track down the Eye of the Star. If you remove Tariq from the first half of Star of Heaven, there's a sure bet that eventually, you'll want to shoot yourself. That's what this movie will do to you without Tariq in it and right up until we get to the part where the bad guys take the good guys hostage.

Which brings me to this: throughout the entire series, Littmann has consistently reminded me of Ian Howe from National Treasure, except with almost no redeeming qualities whatsoever and an accent more Slavic than British. Other than that, he essentially fills the role of Ian: gets the good guy out of custody, for example, or is the rival treasure hunter (except he's backed by mobsters, and based on his reaction to one of their phone calls, spoiled, prissy mobsters at that). The two even look alike and fall for the same fake-clue gambit (Ian at the end of NT, Littmann at the end of Akhenaten's Tomb). I see Littmann and Ian instantly pops into my head. Except Littmann is, as I said, an asshole.

Of course, once we get to the part where Littmann kidnaps the heroes (for want of a better word, because one of them is highly suspect in my view, but I'll get to that later), it starts to feel more like a Jack Hunter installment than it did in the first half. However, if you're anything like me, your journey through the first half left you so scarred and battle-weary that the second half feels like a chore, as well. There's the generic treasure hunts, racing against time and each other, and for some reason everyone's having a freakout because Littmann has both pieces of the Star of Heaven.

The Iris of the Star, as demonstrated in Ugarit, is basically a gigantic solar-powered laser. With the Eye and the Iris together, it's a gigantic solar-powered laser. I am extremely disappointed by this, because they built up all this hype that the Star of Heaven was this extremely powerful artifact that made the wielder a god on Earth. Instead it makes the wielder...the wielder of a gigantic solar-powered laser. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but a one-note weapon, whole or otherwise, certainly wasn't it. But everyone had to fight to keep it out of the bad guys' hands regardless.

Which brings me to the good guys. As usual, we have our compliment trio who have carried us through the first two installments of Jack Hunter, but we bring in someone from Nadia's past this time, some guy named Fuad. He's the son of an antiques dealer, and both of them are Christians living in Istanbul, Turkey. The father objected to him marrying a Muslim, and he just ended it right there in spite of past and present declarations and (remarkably stupid) acts of love. This guy I just didn't get. He was fully willing to hand over the good guys into Littmann's hands just to save the life of the woman he loved, especially when he had a gun and a clear shot. Why didn't he just shoot Littmann? Why did he have to take Jack hostage? I know love makes you do stupid shit, but this is beyond any believable level, especially when he clearly knows he ain't got a shot with this woman. I wasn't sure if this guy was a good guy or a bad guy during the first and last ends of his appearance, either, so I literally have no idea how to feel about his dying, even though it's heartbreaking at the time.

The good news is these people didn't finagle much with history or mythology, so there are few things to fault when it comes to mistakes they may or may not have made. The only notable incident is when Hunter is explaining to his bitch of an ex-girlfriend what the coins mean. Here I thought they were just left behind on accident, but apparently (this movie would have us believe) two were placed in the eyes of the dead. Now, I'm not sure about that detail, but I am well aware that Romans buried their dead with coins to serve as passage to the Underworld (not Heaven; if, as you say, Octavius (NATM!!!!) raided the tomb, then Christianity wasn't a major religion yet, and the Romans didn't hold chiefly to the idea of Heaven, but rather to the idea of the Underworld, where all souls were bound, good or bad). There was a ferryman on the river Styx who wouldn't let anyone pass without the proper fare, though what you can buy with the proceeds in the Underworld is beyond me. Then there was the decoration of the box in which the Eye was found (Egyptian, Ugaritic, and Christian symbols, oh my!), but I almost couldn't get past the instant link I made in my head to the idea of the Ark of the Covenant. This box is considerably less ornate, and I can't imagine why there would be Christian symbols on an Egyptian holy box unless they were added later, but nevertheless, as soon as I heard mention of it in the first half, I thought, Ark of the Covenant, and immediately went into holy-shit-they're-doing-it-again mode, fully expecting another Western-based morality tale.

I didn't get that, thank God, but what was delivered was exactly what you'd expect. Good guys win, bad guys die (that bitch I ranted about above included), world changing artifact kept from humanity forever, happiness all around.

Final Verdict: The first two held such promise and were such fun! Why did this one have to be absolute torture? The only good thing about it was Tariq (there's a shocker in his plot line, too, if you can sit through this long enough to get to it), and without him, there would probably be no more me at this point. Or no more computer. Therefore, Tariq shall henceforth be credited not only with my life, but that of my device and the continuation of this blog.

If you make the attempt to watch Star of Heaven, let me know so I can pray for you.

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": I'm going to post a lot of random pictures of Ahkmenrah and Kahmunrah just to take the edge off this hell.

Countdown: 275 Days to NATM 3

Night #97 - This Blogger: The Quest for Akhenaten's Tomb

This installment is irrefutable proof that these are not stand-alone films, because you need to have seen Lost Treasure of Ugarit for this to even begin to make sense. That having been said, this one was a bit harder to stomach, because it dealt much more with ancient Egyptian history (in this case New Kingdom, specifically the reign of Akhenaten/Amenhotep IV) in connection to Ugarit, and it didn't score very high, not in my judgment. I went fact checking online. Ugarit was a real place and was destroyed, but apparently there were phases to this, and we can confirm that the city was basically gone by Year 8 of Ramesses III, almost a hundred years after Akhenaten's reign. The flick claims that Amarna is northeast of Cairo and only by a few kilometers, which is also baldly wrong. Amarna is much more to the south. Third most blatantly wrong fact of the day, Jack Hunter (the alleged expert) asks if the obelisk, a stone object, was carbon dated. That technique applies only to living things. For nonliving things, other methods of radioactive dating are used, or the objects are dated based on rock layers in which they are found, or by some other surroundings-based means.

They didn't touch ancient myth, however, which earns it bonus points over The Mummy Returns. One thing I am starting to pick up with this series, though, is the use of sunlight and sun disk imagery, which makes sense given the subject matter (one of the world's first monotheists, who insisted on worship of the Aten, or sun disk, as the official state religion) but kind of muddies the water a bit. This genre has a tendency to make things which aren't western or based on Abrahamic faiths, western and based on Abrahamic faiths, and I have a good deal of concern about something like that proceeding forward into part three of the trilogy/miniseries. But since Atenism is a real thing and has been correctly attributed to the right person (the one most famous for trying to bring it about), I'm cutting some slack, perhaps more than I should.

The third and final general area of concern for this installment is the catfight angle. They bring in a woman from Jack Hunter's past and put her in a position where she and his current interest go at it in subtle and not-so-subtle ways until finally they come to blows and one of them dies (you'll be happy about this, trust me). To me, it wasn't even all that necessary, and the "big reveal" of "I don't trust her" being the correct viewpoint despite coming from a catty bitch feels contrived. Just because she's the protagonist's romantic interest doesn't mean she's right. You could've had her falter in her judgment at least this once instead of always hitting the nail on the head. Would that have been so hard, Jack Hunter movie makers?

All that being said, this is about as enjoyable a ride as the first Jack Hunter, and so far the miniseries is managing to stay afloat. Action, adventure, epic escapes, neat music, and the comic relief who somehow manages to always pull through at the end, which is a lot more enjoyable than the above catfighting scenario, mostly because the comic relief is actually funny in these movies. It's enjoyable to listen to his one-liners and watch him pretend to bumble about before kicking some ass (which he does in this one, with a fire extinguisher to boot), or even just bumble about. Hell, even his bitching is enjoyable, and you'll see what I mean if you get to the end of this one, especially.

This is also the installment which builds on the setup from the previous. It's revealed who the bad guy's mysterious client is (an even bigger bad, a Russian mobster who's apparently part of Akhenaten's death cult (why that would still be around is beyond me)), and the big reveal at the end of the first is expanded upon and dealt with, revealing yet another jealous, possessive bitch. I don't see why this has to be a thing in the media, making our women jealous and possessive of the male leads all the time. I mean sure, we'll be upset if somebody we love is with someone else, but we get over it (in most cases). This kind of consistency (three times for one series, more than a coincidence, and I kind of pity Jack Hunter in this regard) is inconsistent with real life occurrences. For example, why would the woman from Hunter's past still want him? Why would she care if he's moved on, and why would she instantly hate the woman he's moved on with? SPOILER ALERT: She's already with someone else. It shouldn't even matter, unless she's trying to play a mind game. And that's another thing. There are a lot of mind games going around. So much for straight up honesty, filmmakers.

In any event, try not to think too much, or else you'll start ranting at the computer screen (or wherever you watch these things) as I've done. It is a good ride and it builds on what we've learned from the previous installment, marking this a true miniseries and definitive proof that you need to watch these in order for anything to make any sense. As I said last night, treat it like a really, really long movie.

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": The Epic Movie comes to a conclusion in the third installment of This Blogger: This Blogger and the Star of Heaven. Will the miniseries keep it's momentum? Will This Blogger see the end of the hunt for the ultimate weapon, the Star of Heaven? Will the comic relief continue to be the comic relief? Will this join the body of my secondary muses? That's all next.

Countdown: 276 Days to NATM 3

Night #96 - This Blogger and the Lost Treasure of Ugarit

Apparently this is a miniseries, but it feels like a trio of Indiana-Jones-inspired stand-alones, or sort of stand-alones. It's called Jack Hunter, and part one is specifically called Jack Hunter and the Lost Treasure of Ugarit. The story follows a treasure hunter (there's no archaeologist about it) named Jack Hunter who originally wanted nothing to do with his professor's "quack theory" of a treasure somewhere in Syria but thanks to survivor's guilt feels he has no choice when the professor gets murdered. There's a Syrian woman who doesn't want to be stuck with him but he grows on her, her mentor who really isn't all he claims to be (which is actually a surprisingly interesting development in the series overall, thus far), and a blond, accented bad guy who is also physically attractive.

This installment was clearly inspired heavily by the Indy movies, but it also felt a bit like National Treasure: the government agent getting dragged along essentially against her will, the foreign bad guy (though in this case with no redeeming qualities whatsoever), the experienced treasure hunter protagonist... It's really a shame there isn't an "Agent Sadusky" type to round it out, because I liked that character in National Treasure. Anyway, moving on.

If you want to sit back and enjoy the ride, and you can muster about an hour and a half's worth of patience before it grows into its own story, you might enjoy this one. I did, though not nearly as much as last night's Prince of Persia. It was interesting to see the turns the tale took during the last fifteen minutes, and since it has to carry through a miniseries/rest of the trilogy, then that's a good thing. I just hope it keeps up through the rest of the trilogy, and I'll keep you posted if it tanks or not.

Final verdict: think of it like a really, really long movie and this is the first act: this is where a lot of the set-up happens. If you approach it like a stand-alone, you'll probably be sorely disappointed.

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": This Blogger: The Quest for Akhenaten's Tomb

Countdown: 277 Days to NATM 3

Night #95 - The Sands of Time are Racing Against You

Or, my review of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.

This is one of those based-on-a-video-game movies, but before you judge it based on that alone, hear me out. This was a hell of a ride. I had fun watching this movie. The characters are quirky and the relationships are believable. The "damsel in distress" is pissed off most of the time more than anything else, the trio of brothers has their ups and downs but they're brothers deep down at the heart of it, hell, watch it for the dirty, dishonest businessman who doesn't want to pay taxes to the Persian government, because that guy was funny.

The basic story is that for some reason (which is explained later on as the characters, mainly the male lead Dastan, piece it together from the evidence they gathered over the course of the movie) the Persian army is attacking a holy city, wherein resides a princess named Tamina and a holy magical dagger that nobody knows is magic but the residents of the city until Dastan starts messing with it. The attack being successful, all looks like it's going well until Dastan is framed for his adopted father's murder and forced to flee with the princess, and they back and forth like an old married couple until they finally learn to agree on how to get the dagger back to where it belongs.

It's explained in the prologue that Dastan was adopted by the king (thus saved from a life of being an orphan on the streets) because he saved a boy from being killed for thievery or something like that, and the boy later becomes his bestie and right hand in his unit of what one of his brothers likes to call "street ravel". But the great thing is, blood or no, these three brothers are brothers. They fight, they argue, they know how to piss each other off, and they love each other. And it's wonderful. Which is what makes it so depressing when you see Dastan trying to convince his brothers he didn't murder their father, and them trying to kill him in response, and so heartwarming when you find him succeeding, until that dastardly uncle shows up and ruins the party, which swings it right back into bone-crushingly depressing.

Which leads me into this: If you've seen this movie before, or maybe even if you haven't, you know there's something up with the uncle from the get-go. Maybe it's his shifty eyes and stance and how he can't look at his brother the king half the time, or maybe its his monotone voice which just screams "cold-blooded". Or maybe it's that he never seems to be enjoying anything. Whatever it may be, if you're paying attention, or maybe even if you're not, you'll pick up on something sketchy with the uncle pretty much right off the bat.

Watching the relationships play out, notably between Dastan and Princess Tamina but also between Dastan and his brothers, is very enjoyable, because you see things which would happen in real life. I mentioned already that Dastan and his brothers fight a lot, but Tamina and Dastan aren't exactly in Insta!love. In fact, it plays out more like the budding relationship between Rick and Evy from The Mummy than Cinderella and Prince Charming. And that's a good thing, because it's considerably more enjoyable to watch than that boring old love-at-first-sight stuff. It also makes the character development much more believable.

Bottom line, this one you should watch, and maybe even own on DVD to watch again and again and again. It's a great ride with quirky characters you would actually believe exist, and while the plot is a little bit silly, nobody goes into a movie like this expecting Chopin, or at least I hope they don't. If you haven't seen it yet, go watch it! Now! Shoo! Get off my blog and track that movie down. I promise you won't regret it.

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": And now for something I've never seen before: the start of my trilogy of reviews concerning a trilogy I only just learned existed: Jack Hunter.

Countdown: 278 Days to NATM 3.

Night #94 - A Notice

My content has been shifting of late into the larger realm which Night at the Museum occupies in my head. In this realm are all of its secondary muses, such as the Mummy Trilogy and Yu-Gi-Oh!, and it may include Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, as well, and possibly a newly-discovered series called Jack Hunter, the B-movie cousin to Indiana Jones. I will certainly review both of those in the very near future, but as for anything else, it may be nonexistent or so scant as to be unworthy of splitting into three posts as I've done in the past.

But over the course of the rest of the year, as we close in on the premiere of Night at the Museum 3, there may be posts related to any number of these secondary muses. You have been notified.

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": Prince of Persia - My take on the matter, and on its status as a Museum secondary muse.

Countdown: 279 Days to NATM 3

Night #93 - "At least it's not Area 51. Yet."

We have the fans who ask questions about a work, and then we have the fans who go out and try to formulate their own (sensical or otherwise) answers to their own questions. These are the "tropers" most likely to post on a page like this: Night at the Museum's Wild Mass Guessing (WMG) page. While theories don't abound nearly as much as questions do, they are there, and there are some good ones.

For example, someone surmised that Kahmunrah killed his brother when Ahkmenrah inherited Egypt, or shortly thereafter. And they've got a case, too. Kahmunrah claims that his brother was given the throne over him, but he was also a king of Egypt ("Fifth" to Ahkmenrah's "Fourth", which I surmise is an indication of their standing in a dynasty more than anything else, but that's another matter), and thus for both statements to be true, Ahkmenrah must have been survived by his brother. The troper positing this in response to the original assumption goes on: "And Kahmunrah doesn't seem to be someone patient enough to wait for natural causes to do his sibling in." Someone else chimed in with something from the Wii video game (which, full disclosure, I have never played), which states that Ahkmenrah suspects Kahmunrah learned more about the tablet after he (Ahkmenrah) died. This is me trying to make sense of the statement, because the actual phrasing is somewhat befuddling. However, if my interpretation of what they're trying to write out on their keyboard is correct, their concluding statement is also correct: "...which indicates that Ahkmenrah died before Kahmunrah." The general consensus, therefore, seems to be that Kahmunrah, in a fit of rage or having planned it for years (or both), with an assassin or on his own, whacked his brother to take the throne for himself. I added those conditions because let's be fair: we do not, and may never, know the circumstances under which Ahkmenrah died. He may have decided to throw himself at his brother's feet to avoid civil war, for all we know. But it's a generally accepted and perfectly valid interpretation that Kahmunrah (by some means or another, regardless of circumstances) committed fratricide*.

*For the uninformed in legal terminology, fratricide is defined as the killing of one's own brother. For related terms having to do with brotherhood, we have fraternity and fraternal (which is also a type of twins, who aren't identical and thus can't be natural "clones" of each other, but again, that's another matter).

And that, at least on the webpage, goes right into "The exhibits are at least somewhat real when brought to life". Exhibit A: the scene at the end of BOTS which makes a huge point of Teddy's skin morphing back to wax at the end of the night. Exhibit B: the Civil War slendermen being able to fire bullets despite it being highly unlikely a museum would create that sort of circumstance (which begs the counterargument, Jed's case, where "his guns don't fire". He literally says that). Exhibit C: Ahkmenrah, who, according to the troper, went back and forth between fully formed flesh and blood person and decaying corpse. This one I would particularly like to dissect. Ahkmenrah, so far as we can assume, has always been with the tablet: it was given to him by his parents, he was discovered with it (thus buried with it), and it came to the museum with him, and then and only then did things in the museum come to life. However, for all we can tell, he's been coming to life night after night for thousands of years, doing everything he can to keep from going insane, just waiting for...something. Probably a reason behind the seemingly senseless act of locking him up with the tablet upon his death, or waiting for whatever circumstances needed for that to actually mean something to come about. In any event, the tablet has been with Ahkmenrah throughout his journeys, and we can reasonably assume he never really got a chance to decay. He might look like a sleeping teenager inside that sarcophagus for all we know.

As for the guns, I personally suppose the reasons the ones for the life-size Civil War soldiers work and the ones for the miniature Cowboys don't is a matter of size concerns on part of the manufacturer. For life-size exhibits, the manufacturers had space to put in all the moving parts and make it at least resemble a functioning counterpart, even if (for all he knows) it will never be used in similar fashion. For six-inch-tall miniatures, there is considerably less space, and one is even lucky to get something resembling a human face out of plastic (for further proof, see the close-ups in the NATM opening credits; those are some ugly-ass miniatures). For guns the best the makers can do is a small, molded, painted piece of plastic which looks vaguely like the real thing but lacks all the moving parts. Thus, miniature guns don't function while "real size" ones do.

And finally, as for Teddy's skin, I agree with the original poster: "I guess the best explanation is that the transformation only goes in about skin deep." Or maybe it works differently for different types of exhibits. IDK.

Again, the topic of whether the director knows what's up is addressed, as well as the possibility of his having a fondness for Larry (I'm not a homophobe by any stretch of the imagination, but there are a lot of other possible explanations for this one, such as McPhee growing to like and trust Larry as a coworker, albeit one with an unorthodox method), and there's some back and forth about how it came to be that Ahkmenrah learned English, based on evidence from other exhibits and how Ahkmenrah can speak Hun to begin with. My personal headcanon? He was actively engaged in a mutual teaching situation with one of the archaeologists, teaching him Egyptian as he learned English.

At least it's not Area 51. Yet.

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": A notice concerning my evolving subject matter.

Countdown 280 Days to NATM 3

Night #92 - How does that thing work, again?

Ahhhh, the headscratchers: those questions we ask ourselves once the Fridge Logic sets in and we can't find a satisfactory answer, in-universe or otherwise. In the case of Night at the Museum, there are quite a number of them (to be found here), and as such I will only cover a few, some of which I happen to find interesting.

One such "troper" (as people on the website like to call themselves) brings up an interesting question: during the winter, the sun sets in New York roughly an hour before closing time proper, and many of the exhibits are either too stupid or too aggressive to stand still and make like exhibits, which then brings up the question: how did no one notice anything weird? Someone else answers with this:

• Sunset may not literally be the activation point for the tablet, but instead simply a bit of poetic license to indicate the general timeframe in which it will usually start working. It's just easier to judge by sunset than say "When the third star of the fifth constellation is at thirty degrees from the horizon of the sea."

Which is an interesting take on the matter, to be sure. But this is a tough nugget to chew on, and it comes with the territory of all sorts of such similar movies. For instance, for the past week I've been discussing any and all things The Mummy (starting around the late '90s), and it has come to my attention that no one but the main characters notices that mummies and reanimated terracotta soldiers are running out and about doing God knows what and trashing everything in their wake (except in Tale of the Mummy, where there's a whole police investigation into the matter which takes place throughout the entire movie and makes headline news multiple times). People in American renditions of such things tend to be perfectly oblivious to the strange and awe-inspiring all around them, which is completely unrealistic compared to real life. Trust me, if weird shit goes down, people will take notice.

Another troper asks about what on Earth happened to Brunden, to which I say, sir, damn good question.

What about the mess at the Smithsonian? Well, that's also a really good question, because it's not like you can explain away the disappearance/potential permanent alteration of priceless, timeless, classic exhibits without somebody getting arrested/jailed for life/fined their entire life savings and 401k/any combination thereof. Either the guards are clueless or the janitors are good, but one must also factor in that this is Washington, D.C., so...

Someone else ponders why Larry was slow to show interest in Amelia, only to have it pointed out that Amelia, a wax figurine forever and for always, has no scent, thus no pheromones, which led to another discussion: why were they so worried about Jed being trapped in an hourglass? In all fairness, in my knowledge of these movies, Jed's imprisonment in an hourglass is the first exhibit-on-exhibit attempted murder that we know of. Sure, Cowboys and Romans spent fifty years fighting, but it was more of a turf war than anything else ("This here giant's on our land."). There was no actual life threatening occurrence before this one. Given it's new territory, nobody had any idea what would happen. Thus, they actually were convinced that Jedediah would (or could) die.

Which is a nice-ish lead in into the questions about where in the living H-E-Double Hockey Sticks pi came in. There are a variety of opinions on this matter: one which states that by the time of Ramses the Great, the Egyptians already had something that was within 1% of the actual value of pi; another states that it was sheer accident, because that's what would've happened anyway if you measured everything off with a wheel; and then there's the question of the decimal system, which is never really resolved (as I recall, the decimal point itself was removed, and according to the commentary, they only needed enough digits of pi to fit onto an ATM keypad-esque type thing). There's a third movie coming out, so hopefully all will become clear (or there will be new mysteries to chew on, one of the two).

There's also this nice little bit concerning what does and does not come to life, which shows a clear and implicit understanding of Egyptian mythology:

• Most of the stuff that comes to life are things that either were or represent living beings. As far as I recall, the gates don't start moving on their own, the furniture doesn't start scampering through the hallways, and the trash cans don't start calling "Feed me!", so it doesn't just imbue everything with life and motion. As planets aren't alive in the same sense a Pharaoh or a Tyrannosaurus Rex or Teddy Roosevelt were alive, they don't get animated.

And finally there's an interesting question about where the replacement night guard was, met with two interesting suggestions: 1) the guy had the days of renovation off, and 2) the guy spent the entire time in his office because the exhibits could behave themselves (which is something the exhibits apparently disapproved of, hence their discontent with Larry's having left).

There's plenty more on that page to ponder if you like, but I hope I provided a summation of the more interesting, thoughtful stuff.

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": Tomorrow night, it's Wild Mass Guessing night! See which fans hit and miss and which might have a point. That's next.

Countdown: 281 Days to NATM 3

Night #91 - The Brits Do It With ACCENTS!

And with more horror. And better.

The movie's proper title is either Talos the Mummy or Tale of the Mummy, depending on where you look, and I found the extended European version here, which, from what I've read of the American version (some forty minutes shorter), I recommend over the latter. This has more detail, more flesh, if you will. The mythology is considerably more on target with real life ancient Egyptian beliefs than the American Mummy trilogy, including such elements as the concept of "second death", the destruction of the soul due to the destruction of the name and image of the deceased (which was attempted on the mummy in this version, this one was very, very bad), why such a thing would even be attempted, the significance of the name containing the true essence of a person in Egyptian belief, and the element of the wedjat eye symbol (the left eye of Horus as removed during his fight with his uncle Set) serving as a strong protective symbol against negative magic. However, they also include a nice nod to the "curse culture" which appeared the world over following the discovery of King Tut's tomb, summed up in this line from one of the archaeologists in the opening: "What sort of respectable mummy would get buried without slapping a good whammy on his tomb?"

As far as the middle third, the section of a horror movie which tends to include the most jump scares, I've discovered the catharsis of seeing what's causing all the fuss after the build up (and I didn't get this from my experience with The Conjuring, which made it worse). The scene which comes to mind is the death of one of the lady on her way to her apartment, where there's all this intense build up with her being chased by some unseen force and suddenly you see a pile of animate bandages in humanoid shape, and oddly, I found that such a relief. As such I consider it, on a scale of 1 to The Conjuring, a nice intermediate.

I was impressed by the female lead, Sam, especially toward the end, when she was forced to face the thing which has been terrorizing pretty much everybody since the start, and she puts up a good fight. Without giving too much away, she tries to set the thing on fire and orchestrate her own escape from it. If you're actively looking for a feminist heroine, especially in the horror genre, look no further.

However, there's something I'm puzzled by. Why are all the "organ donors" foreigners? And the seeing-eye dog? Is there some significance to their not being Englishmen and -women? I know they imply that Talos the mummy is a foreigner to Egypt, being Greek, but that doesn't automatically mean the "organ donors" need to be from outside England (or their organs, in one case a liver comes from South Korea). Sadly this is never explained, and it would've been nice if something like this was offered. Which brings me to the ending, which doesn't wrap things up quite the way it should, either, but I think that was done on purpose. Bottom line: you're right to be nervous about the detective, and if the world is screwed, it's in the form of an Antichrist. And that in turn brings me to the Jesus symbolism of Sam in the climax. That's all I'll say on the matter so as not to give too much away, but still.

It's a general gripe I have with movies focusing on Egypt and its mythology and bringing western religions into it. The Mummy had the plagues and the 12 Medjai tribes. This version has the Jesus symbolism and the Judgement Day plot point (someone does bring up Hell, only to promptly be corrected by, of all people, a little Muslim kid (who I happened to really like and wish we could've seen more of, but oh, well)). It's considerably more toned down than the American version, and it in turn makes room for correct Egyptian mythological/magical elements. In that way, the movie is a considerable improvement upon the American version, and I recommend it even above the American The Mummy. That is, if you want a proper "monster movie". If you want summer fun, American version. Or hell, watch 'em both.

Final verdict: a lot better than everyone says it is. Definitely check it out.

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": I discuss some of the so-called head-scratchers from the Night at the Museum TVTropes page.

Countdown: 282 Days to NATM 3

Night #90 - Character Journey in Action and Comedy

In Night #78, I discuss Larry's journey in the Museum movies, which is essentially a step-wise process of finding his way home. For Rick O'Connell, the protagonist of the first two Mummy movies, it's a lot more understated, if it exists at all. The guy got out of the French Foreign Legion three years before the start of the movie, but his unit was stationed where the movie is set, so we see that back story anyway. We hear in the second movie that he was orphaned and lived in Cairo, where he received a creepy Medjai tattoo and somehow picked up what to say to a given query ("I am a stranger, traveling from the East, and I seek something which is lost," or something like that, to which the response is, apparently, "I am a stranger travelling from the West, and it is I whom you seek."). Other than that, we get jack.

And as far as the growth of the character goes, from what I can see an exceedingly large chunk of it happens off-screen, between movies (except a moment in Mummy III when Rick and his son Alex come to a random understanding after Rick comes back from the dead). It serves to up the motivation, as the bridge between the first and second is enough time for the main couple to have an eight-year-old son, who is later used to motivate the protagonists into going along for the adventure. Over the course of a given movie, however, the most blatant example of this that I can pick out among these three is in the first movie, wherein at first Rick wants to ditch the clutzy librarian Evelyn as soon as possible, but they develop this bond over the course of the movie as mummies attack, plagues ravage the land, and things generally get worse, resulting in an interesting flash-forward for people who do develop relationships this way, in other media or in real life, in Mummy III, when practically the only thing which turns Evelyn on anymore is the thought of their old mummy-hunting career. Other than that...

But the discrepancy makes sense. The Museum franchise is a series of family-oriented spectacle-comedies, where the director specifically states he wanted a solid story to base the series off of, for each movie so far made and, we can reasonably assume, for the upcoming third, as well. The Mummy franchise is primarily about action and adventure and characters doing awesome things. The Mummy is about spectacle and awesomeness above the characters themselves, because that's a convention in the genre. As a typical comedy functions the same way, the only reason the Museum movies have the characters and journey that they do is because of the director's insistence on the point, as well as, according to Mr. Levy, Mr. Stiller's insistence, as apparently they're a tag team on this. In any event, one functions as an example of its genre while one goes the extra mile, and therein lies the difference.

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": The Mummy Week bonus round! The Brits do it with accents!

Countdown: 283 Days to NATM 3

Night #89 - Magic and Mystery in the Sands

This is where Night at the Museum and The Mummy start to differ. Night at the Museum never touches Egyptian soil, but The Mummy (at least the first two) stays firmly planted there at least 90-95% of the time. However close or far the characters in each franchise may be to the place itself, Egypt is still a clear and obvious presence in both of them.

I discuss in Night #77 that Night at the Museum plays off of Egypt's prominent association with magic and mysticism, still prevalent in popular consciousness, and The Mummy is no different. However, the Mummy movies also play heavily on the idea of the Mummy's Curse, a notion that the ancient Egyptians, on top of booby traps, protected their dead with magical means, as well. The notion is for the most part false and largely unfounded (there are few examples of the Mummy's Curse phenomenon in real life, and the most famous example, that of the mummy of King Tut, wasn't even cursed), but it still remains popular, or at least popular enough to make movies out of here and there, whenever somebody needs a project.

Nothing is Egyptian by coincidence, though how the theme of magic and mystery is dealt with depends with the franchise. For the Mummy movies, it's a big effing deal. That thing you magically brought to life? Yeah, it could probably cause Armageddon. For Night at the Museum, not quite so much. That thing you magically brought to life? Yeah, it might cause Armageddon, but it also might try to play fetch with you, want to mind its own business, mistake you for a miniature but still want to mind its own business, meddle in your love life, tie you to tiny railroad tracks, or whatever else. Museum exhibits have a wide range of reactions they might take, creating vast opportunity for a night guard (or anyone else) to run into problems. The reanimated mummy, not so much. He wants his organs back and he wants his princess. And he'll cause the Ten Plagues and whatever other sorts of madness he possibly can, but that's played more as a side-effect of his resurrection than something he's actively doing, except for breathing out flies in the direction of the protagonists. Magic and mystery in the Museum movies may cause problems or it may not, but is generally neutral. Magic and mystery in the Mummy movies is usually equated with danger: read from the Book of the Dead, accidentally unleash Hell. Open magic chest which has been buried for centuries, get a bracelet stuck on your son's wrist, accidentally unleash Hell. The problems are generally corrected by a blend of magical and mundane means: for the first case, take out the priest's immortality, then stab with sword; for the second, stab unimportant bad guy with freaky destiny spear thing while important bad guy gets karmic retribution.

The themes are played differently for different purposes: the one helps create comedy and the other action and suspense, but they are the same themes. Egypt is a land of magic, and sometimes playing with magic is a very, very dangerous thing indeed. After all, there's a reason we never found out what would've happened if Cecil won.

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": Chia characters! ...I hope. Taking a look at character development from movies of two distinct genres which nonetheless deal with the same concepts.

Countdown: 284 Days to NATM 3

Night #88 - Magic, Mummies, and Tombs

For the sake of the discussion's relevance to what this blog is supposed to be about, I'm leaving Mummy III out of the conversation as much as possible.

The magic in the Mummy franchise, rather unlike the magic in Yu-Gi-Oh!, the other of my contributing muses, focuses almost squarely on life and death. Mummies are resurrected, bad priests are punished with immortality (which means they can't ever enter the Underworld, a big deal in ancient Egypt), and books called the Book of Amun-Ra and the Book of the Dead...do the exact opposite of what you might think, but in a way make sense. Allow me to explain.

The Book of Amun-Ra, called once also the Book of the Living, has the power to make an immortal man mortal, meaning his soul can enter the afterlife and gain the "true" or "proper" kind of immortality that way. The Book of the Dead has the power to raise cursed individuals from their graves, which results in them wreaking havoc upon the living. This is a "wrong" or "improper" (one might even say "chaotic", as opposed to Amun-Ra's "orderly") immortality. The Book of the Dead, therefore is a means to cause chaos and destruction, where the Book of Amun-Ra/the Living is a means to undo the damage caused by those idiots stupid enough to read from the Book of the Dead.

The Mummy Returns, in particular, makes a big deal out of dreams and visions, which is one of the few things they got right that time around, and here's why. The ancient Egyptians made a big deal out of dreams and visions, believing them to be messages from the gods. People were trained in the art of lucid dreaming, which they believed (and I have no idea if this works) would allow them to help advise affairs of state and communicate with other people telepathically. However, if people did, in fact, communicate through dreams, then this means that their souls "met up" somewhere while their bodies slept in some other location, which indicates that their souls can leave their bodies during dreams, thus facilitating the entire exchange. This is a concept I came across in the Kane Chronicles (Rick Riordan), and I believe somewhere else on the net, but I can't be sure. But the basic idea reminded me of the tablet and the gate. One needs the other to function (in this case, communication needs the out-of-body experience), but the other does not necessarily necessitate the first (i.e. the out-of-body experience does not immediately/always lead to communication with other people). The premise in which they used this concept is wrong, but the concept itself is not terribly flawed.

Night at the Museum makes no reference whatsoever to dreams, so a comparison can't be made on that level, but I felt it should be noted at least somewhere.

The level on which these two franchises can be compared, however, is the use of life-and-death magic and its intrinsicness to the plot (I made intrinsicness up, apparently). In both of these franchises, the existence of magic is why we have the plot in the first place (I'm as yet undecided on whether or not Yu-Gi-Oh! would be fundamentally altered if there were no Millennium Items, if the bad guys were just delusional psychopaths with or without a host of other mental disorders, and if the main character was struggling with the same; it would make an interesting "real world" version, however). We would not have the Night at the Museum that we do without exhibits coming to life, and likewise, the plot of The Mummy would not exist without a reanimated priest (the mummy) being the bad guy, unless the mummy was a plot device of some kind. The point is, in the forms in which they currently exist, the magical system is essential to the structure of the franchise.

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": We all know Egypt plays a role with both of these movies, but let's explore how.

Countdown: 285 Days to NATM 3

Night #87 - The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor - My Take

I promised you something entirely different, and sure enough, just as I was well aware it would, Tomb of the Dragon Emperor delivered. This isn't even technically a mummy movie: there are absolutely NO mummies involved. At. All. There are reanimated terracotta soldiers, there are zombies, but there is nary a mummy to be found.

The story is set in China and involves Chinese soldiers and the O'Connell family of heroes from the first two movies, and a reanimated terracotta emperor who was cursed by a witch, and Shangri La, and Yeti. Yes, Yeti. It's clear they set this up like the first two movies, but this is nothing like the first two movies. Aside from the severe lack of mummies, mentioned above, they keep calling the reanimated soldiers and emperor "mummies" even after explaining in detail in the first movie exactly what this entails. Even without the explanation, these can't properly be called "mummies". They're much closer to what happens night after night in Night at the Museum wherever the Tablet of Ahkmenrah is. And besides, they're CHINESE!

I don't know jack about Chinese mythology, and only a smidge more about the history, but last time I checked, the Great Wall was not built as a show of power over conquered tribes within China, but rather as a means of defending the country from invading Huns/Mongol Hordes. Han, I'm also pretty sure, is a fictional construct for the purposes of having a vengeful dead guy after the protagonists' hides, but there was a real emperor who unified China. His name is Qin Shi Huang. He's on the internet.

My last major "gripe" (if it can be called that in a movie which structrually and story-telling wise is next to senseless) is that the terracotta soldiers, who were magically turned into clay (which sounded like torture, if the emperor's reaction is anything to go by), froze in perfect position and were buried in ranks. I'm not sure if the forms of the soldiers were constructed over them, as the reawakening of the emperor seems to suggest, but since the movie doesn't explain any of this, we'll never know. But that's discipline if they literally did freeze like that. And the Yeti. I just don't understand the point of having them around except to save the characters, but by that point, I just decided, oh, screw it.

Final verdict: skip if possible. If you insist, I pray for your soul. Don't try to make sense of this. DON'T.

Final question: why the yak?

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": Well, now that I've sat through my Egypt theme's heaven-purgatory-hell trilogy, it's time to compare it to NATM and bring this blog back around.

Countdown: 285 Days to NATM 3

Night #86 - The Mummy Returns - My Take

I like The Mummy. It's fun and enjoyable and its flaws aren't so glaringly noticeable that you start taking yourself out of the movie because of them. It's my favorite in the whole trilogy, a good time-killer if you ever need to waste away two hours of your life but don't want to be dragged to a current release because it just doesn't sound appealing.

That having been said, The Mummy Returns, the 2001 sequel, is much sloppier. There is a lot they're trying to accomplish with the story, but it doesn't quite fall together right. The premise is an elaborate tale which tries to convince us that the heroine is a reincarnated princess destined to fight the femme fatale for all eternity while she tries yet again to bring back her zombie priest lover, and they're also trying to resurrect the Scorpion King, some old dead guy who sold his soul to Anubis (I'll rant about this in due time, believe you me) to be able to conquer the world, so they can get to his army and do the same thing. As I said, there's a lot going on here, but the execution was very, very shoddy.

And I'll start pointing out how with the very, very, very very very very BIG mythology mistake this movie chooses to base it's entire premise on: they paint Anubis in the same light as the Christian Devil, as in, he dealt in souls and made Faustian contracts for no apparent reason. In The Mummy Returns, he does this with the Scorpion King, creating the undead army which becomes a plot point later on. That Anubis was some sort of evil deity is sorely mistaken. In reality (-ish), he guarded and guided the souls of the dead through the Underworld, one of the most dangerous places in the universe, full of lakes of fire, demon creatures of all shapes and sizes, and who knows what else. The story goes that he also helped judge the souls of the dead as good or evil by manning the scales on which this was done; this job was later taken by Osiris, but Anubis seemed to take it very well: he helped mummify the body, for one thing, and showed no signs of conflict with the arrangement, for another. And on another note, the ancient Egyptians already had a devil of sorts, a gigantic water snake which represented all that was wrong with the world, whom they called (whenever they dared) Apep and whom the Greeks called Apophis. Apep/Apophis would have made a great second bad guy/deity bad guy for this movie, as he was already built into the mythology that way, but for some reason Anubis is the acceptable target, even though assumptions about Anubis's evil character that Hollywood tends to make are categorically wrong and could be attributed to another Egyptian mythical character instead.

There's another huge mistake that the movie not only makes, but chooses to build its plot around: the concept of reincarnation (for some reason Hollywood translates that word as "coming back looking exactly like you used to in the past life in question", probably so they don't have to hire more people, even though genetically it's next to impossible for such an occurrence to take place in real life). The Egyptians had a huge life-and-death culture, creating an entire world where the soul goes to spend eternity (or it gets wiped from existence if it's evil). There's no room for reincarnation of the soul in the Egyptian death mythos. At. All. But here the idea is, playing a huge role in a story centered on ancient Egypt, and the ancient Egyptian characters don't bat an eyelash (at least the zombie priest doesn't). The idea of reincarnation shouldn't make sense to a religious/magical/political figure from ancient Egypt, because the ancient Egyptians didn't believe in reincarnation.

Already the premise is based on false (deliberate or otherwise) information, so on that grounds alone it hasn't got a leg to stand on. But there's another problem with creating a devil-esque character, no matter on what grounds: the morality tale aspect of it, which is something this movie feels like it's trying to accomplish, but it does this by tossing in Bible references--not so many as to be distracting, but it does it nonetheless. First we have someone serving the role of "Devil" (in this case Anubis), but we also have the "12 Tribes of the Medjai", which, now that I consider it, is eerily reminiscent of the 12 Tribes of Israel, as if they're still trying to shove an Abrahamic structure of thinking down our throats when let's be honest, it doesn't do anything for the story and it doesn't even have an impact on the viewer unless the viewer is discerning enough to notice. So there was really no point in the effort. (As an aside, having 12 tribes of Medjai also serves the purpose of having a gigantic army on the side of good to help fight the gigantic army on the side of evil, making it considerably more realistic than one to, say, a hundred thousand, good and evil respectively.)

I've got a bunch of other questions about this movie, too, such as why ancient Egypt apparently has an elaborate system of star-shaped keys, or how Rick would know how to respond to Ardeth's stranger quip, or how in the living hell does nobody notice that somebody shaved a double-decker bus right in the middle of London (or, for that matter, all the undead mummies wandering around trying to kill the protagonists)? Or, let's talk about that scene where two scantily-clad ancient Egyptian women are fighting with sais, which I am damned sure didn't exist back then, let alone in Egypt. And another thing: when these women are flipping around and about, how are they not flashing anyone their Sweet Paradises? I'd guess they took special care with their skirts, tucking everything in in such a way as to make sure that didn't happen, but in a world where you can cover a woman in body paint and nothing else and still have it be okay, this is a kind of sketchy explanation. And a third thing: I had no idea the mistress/prostitute had any right to clothes. I thought she was supposed to be naked all the time, but in this movie, she's allowed fabric. Did the pharaoh want something to rip later after he was all hot and heavy from watching the mistress fight his daughter or something? Or did she have to change later? (For the record, the third movie doesn't answer these questions at all.) And then there's the infamous "outrunning the sun" scene, and the sun is going backwards, but that's neither here nor there.

One last thing before I move on to what this movie's actually good for: why do we need two bad guys? I understand the plot has the lynch pin of killing one of them to assume control of that one's vast supernatural army, but surely this could've gone about in a smarter way. For instance, in The Mummy, I'm pretty sure they made it so the priest couldn't come back, but lo and behold, here he is again. Is he really so cursed as to never gain passage to the Underworld? Ever? If you eliminated the priest, you also eliminate the reincarnation storyline which makes no sense given the mythology we're dealing with here, and it would've saved a lot of problems, eventually. You could've brought in someone entirely new to match the Scorpion King, for example. What I'm trying to say is there are several smarter ways to go about this than what the movie tried to and didn't quite pull off. They had a good idea, I give them that, but again, execution was poor.

However, this movie is, if you can get past the beginning third or so, a good way to shut your brain off, just as the last one was. It may be a little bit harder to do this time around, but it is doable. There's lots of action, adventure, comedy, emotion, shirtless guys, making out, shirtless guys, making out, shirtless guys, making out... By no stretch is this intended to be an ageless classic passed on to grandchildren in Humanities class film units, but it is still possible to enjoy the ride.

...Until you break suspension of disbelief. For different people, that means different things, but for me, being the ancient Egyptian myth nerd that I am, part of it is the portrayal of Anubis as Satan, as if this is an attempt at a morality tale (which it's not), and part of it was the utter schlockiness of the picture. For example, there's one moment where the priest, and I shit you not, runs into the shot, kneels, holds up his hands, and screams "NOOOOOO!" in the most overly dramatic fashion possible. He caters to a camera which shouldn't even exist from his view and then purposefully makes something horrendously over the top out of it. For no good reason. And this has the insult-to-injury element of putting him in a dangerous position near a bottomless well of lost souls, where he later *SPOILERS* falls to his doom, which he wouldn't have done if he hadn't been so horny for the camera anyway (a camera which he shouldn't even know exists due to the very nature of filmmaking). An utterly nonsense moment like that is a guaranteed suspension-breaker, at least for someone like me.

Final verdict, having said all of that: not as good as the first one, makes very gaping, obvious mythology mistakes, but still half-decent. Maybe make a drinking game out of it.

P.S. Other random notes on this movie:

-The kid is a genius; he builds sand castles, makes little models of things, whatever he can to cause trouble and leave breadcrumbs for his parents. It's brilliant. Good on you, little British kid.

-This movie, its prequel, and even the 1930s Mummy with Boris Karloff all feature some evil "foreigner" British guy/wealthy man of leisure in a fez, whose sole purpose is to be evil and help resurrect the mummy.

-"The sands of time are racing against you." What, now you're bringing Prince of Persia into this?

-If this reincarnation thing is a thing in universe, how come the priest didn't think of it in the first movie?

-How does the mistress/prostitute/sex slave know how to fight?

-The entire Scorpion King in the climax has been CG'd, even when he's half human.

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": And now, for something completely different! Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

Countdown: 286 Days to NATM 3

Night #85 - The Mummy - My Take

The Mummy Trilogy is one of several of my cooperative/subordinate muses to NATM, Yu-Gi-Oh! also being ranked in that category. And surprisingly Mummy and NATM are a lot more similar than NATM and Yu-Gi-Oh!, but I'll get to that later.

The first Mummy, released in 1999 simply called The Mummy, is a remake of the 1930s version of the same name, by the same studio, and I've seen both (there's a '50s version with six sequels, all of the form of The Mummy's X, but as I've never seen those, they won't be discussed; also there is an Abbot and Costello version, which I'll get to as soon as I've seen it, possibly in a bonus round of what I hope shall fondly be remembered as Mummy week). The basic premise of the 1990s version is this: there's a priest in ancient Egypt who likes to get frisky with the pharaoh's mistress (a woman covered in body paint for no apparent reason, because everyone around her wears normal fabric, but I'll address that later), and once they get caught, the lovers kill the pharaoh and she kills herself in hopes that the priest will resurrect her. He makes the attempt, gets caught, gets punished by mummification and burial with flesh-eating bugs, and is left alone for three thousand years. Cut to the present-ish (c. 1925), where we meet our hero, heroine, her doofy brother, and an assortment of others all out looking for the city of the dead, not knowing that that's where the priest is buried. Hijinks ensue when they all try to get to the site and unearth it's treasure, resulting in the resurrection of the mummy, and that's where the real fun begins.

I don't tout this as a classic, not by any stretch of the imagination. My liking for it, and I do like it, is as good summer fun and a great way to kill a couple hours. There's no shortage of action or comedic relief, and thank God the horror is toned down (The Conjuring has forever changed me, sadly, and I didn't even finish it), but the structural elements of the story are somewhat lacking. To begin with, there's the mistress in the body paint. For one thing, how does this woman scratch an itch without the pharaoh suspecting her of adultery? For another, why is it she has to be in body paint in the first place, if not to serve the pharaoh's pleasure? Clearly it isn't because of the sweltering heat, as everyone else around her wears fabric. Is it a means to satisfy his jealousy? Doubtful, because from what we see in the first five minutes, it looks like it only made things worse for her. She can't hide her affairs as easily now, for starters. So my best guess is the body paint is a way of gratifying the pharaoh's lusts while still making her look decent for the public, which means she's basically his sex slave. Which makes me wonder why he would be so possessive in the first place if that's the case. She could easily be disposed of and replaced, after all, if she holds such a lowly position.

That entire situation is just entirely too sketchy for my tastes.

And I actually looked this up. The plagues which make their appearance in the movie, as the priest is now said to be able to call forth the Ten Biblical Plagues, are out of order. The order of the Bible is as follows:

1. River of Blood
2. Frogs
3. Lice/gnats
4. Flies
5. Dead livestock
6. Boils
7. Hail
8. Locusts
9. Darkness
10. Death of First-born sons

In the movie, for the plagues that do appear, the order is this:

1. Locusts
2. River of Blood
3. Hail
4. Darkness
5. Flies
6. Boils

I'm not quite sure if the priest is doing this on purpose to unsettle the protagonists and clue them in to the fact that this isn't at all like the story they're used to, to remove that option of wiping him out, or if that's a genuine error on the part of the story writers, but I'm sure some sectors of society will find this somewhat off-putting.

Other interesting notes are the death scene of the warden, which I received as played for comedy during my latest viewing (the guy knocks himself unconscious trying to escape from a flesh-eating bug inside of him, for the love of Christ!), why does the priest's face desiccate when he kisses the heroine when he is nearly fully formed (which just makes more work for him in the long run and really doesn't make sense considering everything)? And this Easter Egg: the waxwork behind the heroine's brother as they're standing around in the museum, talking to some of the Mysterious Desert People Who Know Everything About What's Going On, bears a striking resemblance to our very own Ahkmenrah. That's found at the minute fifteen mark most definitively, if you want to go through the movie to find it.

Out of the three Mummy films, this is the most cohesive and least insane. As a result, it's the one I recommend the most highly out of the three.

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": The Mummy Returns, or, the point where I start wondering why.

Countdown: 287 Days to NATM 3

Night #84 - Blogger Commentary Part 5

So a few days ago, I learned this was a thing: Night at the Museum 2 Trailer. I found it in a quest for blog posts for last night, and like a good NATM fan, I was both psyched and shocked that I had no idea this thing existed, and it's already March 2014! Where the hell have I been? Some fan I am.

Anyway, this blog is of similar format to Night at the Museum 3 Trailer (where you may find a link to the real thing), and both are hosted by Teaser Trailer. It also does everything NATM 3 Trailer does and more: a clip (of Larry trying to stop the rocket launch), the trailer twice, sneak peek pics, a brief overview of the plot, posters in English and French, even an interview with the director. Like NATM 3 Trailer, this is designed to be a focused lens keeping the reader updated on BOTS, and it's in my understanding at this point that Teaser Trailer does the same thing for nearly every movie under the sun (as an aside, I wonder if they have one for Divergent or the Hunger Games, but that's neither here nor there). The threads I've been able to find so far are lead-up-style, guiding the reader effortlessly (or as effortlessly as possible) to the release of the movie in question, after which they are dropped.

This is a great way to prep for upcoming releases, so if you're ever so inclined, search Teaser Trailer for your favorite upcoming releases and see what they have to offer.

"Next on For the Love of Night at the Museum": Under the now-full realization that this blog is slowly morphing into an Egypt-themed magnum opus, I am plunging into another movie series. Stay tuned as I review the Mummy trilogy and, just as I did with Yu-Gi-Oh!, compare it to Night at the Museum on the three criteria: use of magic, use of Egyptian themes, and character journey.

Countdown: 288 Days to NATM 3

Night #83 - Blogger Commentary Part 4

Wherein I go into some of the several reviews for either of the two NATM movies currently in existence, with the restriction that they are posted somewhere on Blogspot, as this is the Blogger/Blogspot commentary series. Having clarified that, let's begin.

Opinions on Blogger run the gamut: we have takes from average Joes and Janes, movie reviewers, and even a tourist or two, but for the case of the Night at the Museum movies, a large portion of reviews I've been able to find and decided to cover without going on too long are, not shockingly, from movie reviewers. Another note: given the complete success of the second movie over the first, a lot of people are reviewing that one instead of NATM 1. However, The Voice of Silence: review of film (see the review here) has gone the extra mile. The author opens with a detailed cast and crew list and a string of quotes (for a quiz for yourself, see if you can guess which character said which (somewhat paraphrased) line from the film) before going into the review, styled like a passage of action in the script of an over-the-top action film. A synopsis takes up about 80-90% of the space, with the rest of it being the author's take on the film. However, here's also what he does with the latter half of his post: he describes the list of special features on the DVD and summarizes some useful information to be learned from some of the features, such as the commentary tracks and behind the scenes featurettes. If you want a quick overview not only of BOTS but what goes into the making of it, but you don't want to sit through hours of commentary, check that link out.

If, however, your cup of tea is detailed but not a lot of emphasis, you may instead want to read this Blogger's take at At the Back. The author has a lot to say on the first Night at the Museum film but describes it as a busy, chaotic mess (which has to be the first time I've heard that about a film which, in my opinion, seems to take its sweet time meandering through the setup of the actual plot). He speaks in praise of the subplots (the friendship developing between Octavius and Jedediah, and the romance between Sacajawea and Teddy) but disparagingly of the "underdeveloped" central characters, some of the (admittedly numerous) plot holes (one man guarding an entire museum, for example), and considers the central premise, that exhibits come to life, "ridiculous" (please note that this may be in a light-hearted fashion, as it is later on used, but it may not, which was how I first took it). He did, however, predict a trilogy out of the matter, and lo and behold, at this point he was right. Good on you, good sir! ...or...ma'am.

We also have this tourist's take, when she actually visited the American Museum of Natural History and found that, not surprisingly, the interior looks nothing like depicted in the film. The Moai does feature, as does Rexy (albeit on the fourth floor), but the real thing also houses a herd of elephants, a pair of shrunken heads (imagine those come to life), and, at one point, a gift store selling food-shaped Christmas ornaments. Somebody please let me know if that's still there, because I'm stuck in the middle of Podunk, WY, without cash and can't ascertain for myself! Please?

We have this Short and Sweet of Night at the Museum 2, essentially a short snippet listing several things, ranging from "what caught my attention" and "why I finished it" to items relating to "what I liked about it." For those with the attention spans of goldfish or in the mood for a digest-digest-digest, check it out.

And then there's the Pop Culture Junkie, who gave his take on Night at the Museum here (and apparently didn't watch the sequel, as there is no review of it to be found anywhere on his blog). The Pop Culture Junkie seems really bothered by the plot holes, one of which stuck out to me: how did the Neanderthals ditch the people videoing their antics on camera phones to later post on YouTube? This isn't even explained in the sequel, PCJ, and I never noticed before, so thank you for pointing that out, and I'll file it away until I come up with a headcanon which satisfies me on the matter. I would like to point out in turn, however, that maybe this is one of those movies where Fridge Logic sets in. To define, according to TVTropes.org: Fridge Logic is that thing where after the movie/show is over and you can start thinking about what you've suspended your disbelief for, you begin to wonder, hey, how did that make sense? Some people are very, very good at stowing such things away and coming up with headcanons to explain them and still make sense of the movie at the same time. So maybe it turns some people into near vegetables, but maybe it serves the same good of developing critical thinking skills which it seems to profess in your view. I'll leave you to chew on that, and you may message me or comment below if you have anything to say.

And we'll finish with an average Jane and her take on Battle of the Smithsonian. She titles her blog Writer @ Home, so I assume movie reviewing is a pastime for her, rather than a career or anything to become an internet star at. She enjoyed BOTS "despite the fact that a few of the jokes fell flat and the entire plot was completely unrealistic", and even throws in the personal touch that she likes her movies to give her something to think about (good on you, good ma'am). So she regards BOTS as one of those movies where it's perfectly okay to shut your brain off for a while and enjoy the ride, whereas PCJ would find it...comatose-inducing.

In any event, tune in for a surprise fifth episode in the Blogger Commentary saga! That's tomorrow night.

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": Something I just discovered was a thing: "Night at the Museum 3 Trailer".

Countdown: 289 Days to NATM 3.