You genuinely feel sorry for Imhotep and Ankh-su-thingy and I especially love her line as she kills herself – ‘My body is no longer his temple’. One of the many great things about this movie is the strong backstory given to the Mummy himself. The connection with pyramids and, therefore, mummies and with the meeting of human and divine makes his name rather suitable for The Mummy, though of course the real Imhotep was not thought to be undead, nor a demon-creature – he was a god of wisdom, writing and medicine. Imhotep, named for the mummy in the 1932 The Mummy, is the name of a very, very early Egyptian architect who designed the first Egyptian pyramid, the Step Pyramid of Djoser, and was later one of very few non-royal Egyptians to be deified. John Hannah still can’t quite master any accent other than Scottish, but his Jonathan is so endearing, we don’t care. The whole thing looks fantastic (yes, even the CGI, which may look ropey now but was groundbreaking way back in 1999) and reminds me of how much I want to visit Egypt some day (I’ve wanted to see Egypt ever since I saw Death on the Nile when I was little). The setting is a brilliant move, as being limited to 1920s technology makes escaping across the desert that much more difficult, and provides an opportunity for some lovely costumes. This film is a loose (very loose) remake of the 1932 original, which is why it’s set in the 1920s. I don’t know much about the history of Mummy-stories, but as far as I know in their current form they date back to the horror movies of the 1930s, themselves inspired by the opening of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922 (though of course stories about the undead and zombie-like creatures in general are much older). This is also the film that includes the classic line ‘I’m proud of what I am – I’m a librarian!’ which is fun to quote, with optional substitution of ‘archaeologist’, ‘classicist’, ‘historian’ etc for ‘librarian’. I’ve read a lot of reviews that see it as derivative of the Indiana Jones movies, but since I saw The Mummy long before I saw any Indiana Jones, that doesn’t bother me and I much prefer The Mummy (it probably helps that, unlike Indiana Jones, I saw The Mummy in the cinema). It’s a perfect action-adventure film, with lots of humour, gorgeous set design, extremely attractive leads (not to mention the supporting cast) and a story that, despite a certain inherent silliness, is rooted in strong characters and well-structured plotting.