[Sumaleth]

For everyone going to see The Mummy Returns (which is a crap film but everyone's going to see it anyway), first have a close look at these two images of Loki's;
http://www.vigilante.net/~loki/pages/gallery_pages/lodge3.htm
http://www.vigilante.net/~loki/pages/gallery_pages/lodge.htm

There's a scene in the film which MUST have used those for inspiration. No joke, the scene is pretty spot on.

(Loki: they didn't pay you did they? )

Row.

[ilmi]

yeah.. seriously.. firstime i saw that scene, immediately it reminds me of the images that loki made..

[Loki]

Seriously Sum? Shit - now I've got to go see that piece of crap!
Oh well - if it's true I better get an attourney and make a lot of cash!

[gowansy]

roflmao @ Loki............hehe

[black_fish]

Actually I thought exactly the same when I saw the movie. I even thought Loki could have been a concept artist on it
The movie sucks big time (and I really like the first one) and the few matte paintings that are in there are just TERRIBLE. Same with CG....yuk!

[Painted Melody]

funny, I thought the same exact thing when I saw the movie Assumed Loki helped with the concepts....

~PM

[ May 12, 2001: Message edited by: Painted Melody ]

[waylon]

Yep, thought the same thing here. Err, well, actually, I was thinking "Man. Loki's version looks so much cooler!"

Their airship sure was cheesy. But yeah, same basic scene, dirigible flying through a canyon, same gray gloomy atmosphere. (Though they didn't have any houses perched on the cliffside. )

[Dryfire]

YEAH! haha i just saw the movie last night, that scene reminded me of loki's artwork, but the mood of the scene in the movie was quite different than loki's drawings... although i do see the resemblence ;-) jeez, i love those little flayer (the blowdart and big knife doods).. they were so small and cute

[Etah D'Te]

Loki, I think the art director was Alex Laurant (ILM's visual arts thief/director), got nothing on the concept artists tho. Nail the bastards to the wall for this Loki!

[Loki]

Thanks man ... first I'll go see the movie, to be sure there's really something up - I totally trust Sumaleth's eyes - but I have to make sure ...

I'll keep ya guys posted ...

[gowansy]

wow.......never realizied how seroius this matter is, i hope u get summit from this Loki

[TheMilkMan]

Man you people are all sheep..that film was great..especially from a digital stand point..if you are a digital artist and you dont see that movie there is something wring with ya..

I guess Loki was the first artist ever to paint a dark cliffy passage way...good work loki!!....

[ May 12, 2001: Message edited by: TheMilkMan ]

[Dryfire]

ah got milk? glad we do

[black_fish]

Milkman: I went to see this movie with about 5 other professional CG artists and they all agreed that the CG sequences ranged from so-so to really bad. Sure they have a lot of shit flying at your face. That doesn't make it good. Their water and smoke effects were especially bad. I mean we're talking about what should be the best CG shop around here, ILM, and they're definitely not up to par with small but creative studios like Blur or Rhythm and Hues.
That's just what I think and you don't have to agree
On the other hand this movie totally blows: worst script in a long time.

[EviLToYLeT]

Loki:: just make sure your picture was made BEFORE the production of mummy 2 even began.... that why, the movie bastards can't turn the tides on you saying you copied them.... but then again, hehehehehe, you couldnt have! (but hell, they'll try i tell you.)

anyway, really hope that you get the issue hammered out, and hey, maybe you'll be the first...semi-richy artist

[Anthony]

Combine a bad schedule, bad design(their air ship looked like it was supported by a potato-my friend and I, both 3dcg artist, said "oh brother"), and only 1/20th of ILM's staff on it, and you have trouble. Matte paintings not matching(haven't seen that since the black and white days of special effects), composited creatures that aren't shaded like the bgs, a horrible Rock face, eyh. Must have been fun to make though. I'm just happy it beat out Knight's Tale. ^_^

[Darklighter]

or just tell'em you won't take'em to court if they h00k u up with that 24" sony monitor =P

[Loki]

I'm actually quite underwhelmed that I've got to go see it now. haha.
I won't sue anyone, btw - first I want to know how close it is. So, let's see how it looks. I want to keep this low-key (pun not intended) - so no more talking about 'thieves' and such - thanks

Milkman: aw god - that kind of movie is probably all you are going to see in the movies, huh? Ever seen "All quiet at the Western Front" ???

I'm just slamming you here, because EVERYONE I know who has seen it, says it sucks really hard ...

One of my friends was so upset, that he wrote this review down there. It took him 3 HOURS to write - and he NEVER wrote reviews before. So, boy, he must have really disliked that one. Oh, and he has been in visual effects for six years.

Disclaimer:

[This text contains quite some PROFANITY]
[If you're easily offended, please do not read this. I hereby warned you ...]

[SPOILER ALERT - also gives away the movie]
*
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\/ down we go \/

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What can I really say about The Mummy Returns? Not much other
than it's made me come up with a whole new rating system:

Chunks of corn in a lump of shit.

On that scale, they actually shit out an entire ear of corn for
this film.

The first 30 minutes of the movie are actually decent. They
tell the story of the Scorpion King, a man who tried to take over "the
known world" in ancient times. The "plot" holes start to develop right
off the bat. The Scorpion King is defeated as a mortal, he wanders the
desert for a bit, and makes a deal with the god Anubis to take over the
world for him. The King's army now consists of a bunch of Anubii (the
black dogs you see in the previews) who over run the city and kill
everyone. Apparently, Anubis is a very focused, narrow-minded God as he
takes back the King's army after taking over one city instead of the
world, and we cut to present time with no real explanation. Not that we
wanted to see anymore since it was like watching one giant video game.

Present day finds our completely one dimensional heroic family
digging up the Scorpion King's bracelet. Which also happens to be the key
to his tomb latter in the film. Oh, it's also a giant 3d projector on how
to find his tomb. In fact, it has no other relevance other than to free him
in the end. If we threw it into the ocean instead, the movie credits could
have rolled within the first 10 mintues. Brendon Fraser and his wife
find the box with the bracelet in some random tomb because she is having
"flachbacks and nightmares" to her previous life as an Egyptian Princess
who also was the guardian of bracelet. They pull it out, and the whole
temple starts to self destruct. You'd think that treasure hunters would
know that 5000 year old structures always crumble when you take the
treasure out. Of course, it also fills with water from the Nile.

Their brainiac 8 year old son complete with
English accent, doesn't realize this is going on because he's distracting
the "bad guys" who have come to rob the temple. He is fending them off
with a slingshot, and once the temple really starts to fall apart, we have
a series of 15 columns around a giant square room topple over into each
other like dominoes. The bad guys flee, and the kid tries to hold up
these 4 ton columns himself as his parents come crashing through a wall
flooded with water. Of course this is the perfect opportunity for the
cute little bastard to speak up and say "Mom. Dad. I can explain all of
this" as if he was in trouble. Awwwwww, he's so fucking cute.

At this point, we see a random archeological dig going on where
they dig up the "Book of Life" and the "Book of Death". The book of life
is useless. It shows up in the scene and we never hear of it again. They
dig up The Mummy from the last movie and later use the Book Of Death to
bring him back to life. Then the Book of Death is also useless, but the
main evil chick is told to "hold onto it" for the rest of the film. She does
for no reason whatsoever except that it too brings about her downfall in
the end. When The Mummy is back, he'll want the Scorpion King's
bracelet. If he defeats the Scorpion King in combat, then he'll get the
King's armies and take over the world. I'm not sure why he'd really want
it though since it didn't work all that well 5000 years ago, and Hemotep
(The mummy in human form) was there when they defeated the Scorpion King
way back when. So, they have to go get the bracelet from the family.

The bad guys break into the house and the first of the fight
sequences breaks out. Every character is instantly paired up with their
nemesis to defeat later in the film. Aribesi (a large black man from the
OZ prision show) shows up with his sword and lets his minions ransack the
place while our heroes run from room to room dodging machine gun bullets
and fighting with swords. Aribesi's nemesis shows his face and he is the
watchman priest from the first film. He draws his sword and everyone
fights. The final member of the family also shows up and is
the greedy brother-in-law from the first film. He owns nothing except one
gold scepter which is "my only posseion in the entire world". We know
this because he says it a good six times during the movie. Of course,
much like the soon to be video game from Activision, the scepter will
also be instrumental in winning at the end. The bad guys run off with the
box and bracelet. They also kidnap the wife for no apparent reason. But,
ha ha..., the little genius 8 year old has outsmarted them again and is
now wearing the bracelet. He puts a baseball trophy in the box instead and
the bad guys make a whacky face when they open it later on. No one knows
where the wife was taken, but once again, the kid saves the day. The
watchman priest pulls out a photograph of one of the kidnappers (out of
thin air as far as I can tell). The kid takes the picture and says
"that's Mister Blahblah... the curator at the museaum". At this point, I
felt like I was watching a live action version of Scooby Doo.

Off to the museaum. There is some horrible dialouge about the
"oh.. the end of the world again..." and all the heroes roll their eyes.
The dialouge throughout the entire thing is really flat. It's like
getting tiny needles shot into the balls over and over. They get to the
museum, The Mummy is brought back to life, they resuce the wife, they
flee in a giant double decker bus, the kid is screaming for comic relief,
the brother-in-law is screaming like a white Chris Tucker, and finally the
four mummies you see in the preview start scaling buildings to catch the
bus and get the bracelet from the kid. More fighting ensues on the bus,
suspension of disbelief is pushed to the max when the mummies can tear the
steel panels clean off but can't tear Brenden Frashiers arms off,
and lastly, the kid makes some more cute comments about "getting a room"
when his parents kiss. The kid is kidnapped off the bus (how many films
do you know that have TWO kidnappings to drive the story... that's great
filmmaking) and taken away.

And all of that, was the "good" stuff in the first 30 minutes.

>From here, it's all downhill. They should have used the Book of Death to
ressurect the timing and editing of the film. What the hell, bring back
the plot and characterization as well!

Here is where the movie becomes one big video game catering to the
lowest common denominator, no attention span audience. The rest of the
film is a journey from point A to B to C to DEFEAT BOSS AT END with no
relief in sight. I almost left the theatre twice but white hot hatred
kept me in my seat. Very few films ever invoke any real response in me,
but I was actually getting pissed off during this movie. It was just one
bad story point after the next, with useless characters, useless fights,
and a ton of holes. The script was horrific. Which goes hand in hand
with the look and direction. Big surprise... the writer and director are
one in the same person! He should be banned from filming immediately. I
can't believe he made the first movie and then this one. There must have
been ghost writers and directors for Mummy I.

Let me fill you in on the journey:

Point A - the family knows the first spot the kid will be at with
the bracelet since he tells them what he saw (remember... its a 3d
hologram map also) when he put it on. They all head to Carnak to see
where the bracelet tells them Point B is. The kid is on a train with the Mummy
and he even breaks free of the train by ripping a toilet off it's mounts
with his herculean 8 year old strength. Like most of what the characters
do, it doesn't really matter becuase his escape attempt is ill-timed and
he just breaks free to run right into Carnak anyways. It's like being on
the autotopia at Disneyland. The characters feel like they are driving,
but they're really on this mindless track. He builds a sand castle (I am
not kidding) of the next place he saw (point B) so that his parents can
find him later on.

Point B - just shows the family looking at another sand castle of
point C. At this point, they introduce a pilot from Brendon's past. He's
another goofy character who flies around in a blimp instead of owning an
airplane. Hands down, these are the worst sequences ever put to
celluloid. It's a boat with a big airbag attached. But the boat also has
some surprise rocket engines strapped to it. It never occurs to anyone
that if he fired those rockets, they'd all be ripped right off the deck.
We completely depart from any reality here and see the blimp carry our
heroes into the air. They even cross (backlit) in front of the moon ala
E.T. and we see way too many sequences of bad dialouge with actors who
clearly wanted to be talking to their agents about other roles. They
eventually get so high up that it looks like they are in fucking space.

In here pilot even tries to defend using the blimp because
"it's quiet and stealthy" and they can sneak right by the Mummy. It's so
quiet in fact that...

Point C - The Mummy walks into a river and makes it shoot up into
a giant water wall which attacks the blimp even though it is nowhere near
him. The rockets fire and a perfectly controlled blimp races through
the canyons dodging the water wall. Once they escape, the movie has
nowhere to go so... the Mummy makes a second wall to knock them down.
They fire the rockets again. Hillarity ensues as the rockets fail and the
pilot makes a face, and then the water hits them and the blimp comes apart
at the seams and PLUMMETS to the ground. I want this to be clear... the
thing smashes into the ground and comes apart. They are all standing on
the deck and THEY ALL LIVE and are unharmed. In fact, the blimp even
comes back at the end of the film (a day after the crash) to carry them
off into the credits.

Point D- KILL THE BAD GUY! Finally they get to the end. For no
reason, a bunch of Mini-me Mummies/Pygmies attack EVERYONE as the head to
the temple. They attack the bad guys and the good guys. This is a good
opportunity to have everyone scream and run around and trip over things.
We have the pygmies fighting over a lit stick of dynamite and explode, etc
etc. It's a great rip off from the raptor scene in jurrassic park II.
Tall grass, people getting pulled under and torn apart. There's nothing
like ripping off one shitty film for another.

They get to the temple and the wife is killed. However, the kid
gets the Book of Death and brings his mom back to life. His mom then goes
and defeats the evil chick who had the book. The Mummy and Brendon wake
up the Scopion King with is the Rock's upper body slapped on some giant
scorpion legs. You can't imagine what a bad idea this is. They all fight
and run around until Brendon finds hiroglyphics that have three easy steps
to defeating the King. Take the sceptor that the comic relief is holding.
Make it into a spear. And then stab the Scorpion King with it. I could
just envision the temple makers asking their King... "Sire... what would
you like on this wall?" The King would reply "Please, engrave the only
method to kill me on there".

Goddamn.

[ May 12, 2001: Message edited by: Loki ]

[Loki]

I'm investigating across all my connections right now. This is a serious matter. I will go see the movie asap. I'll jump on those guys if it turns out to be true.

Has anyone found a listing of full credits for that movie - I need to find out who the art director was and who the conceptual artists were.

[snip!]

Any help is appreciated, guys!

Thanks Sum for pointing that out!

[ May 12, 2001: Message edited by: Loki ]

[synj]

i hope i dont get on anyone's bad side here.

i thought the movie was fine. No, I didn't think it was great or anything but there is NO need for such slamming of the CG in it. Storyline, maybe, but those pigmy things were cute hehe (yes, i agree that 'the rock' did look plastic, and he missed the main guy somehow time and time again with huge claws, but that was the only part that bothered me)

I see some similarities about the floating balloon, but personally I think the Mark Twain claymation balloon was alot closer. Then again I saw that when I was like.. 7 or something hehe btw Loki those two pieces rock. Probably my favorites by you.

[sacrelicious]

Hehe synj, that Mark Twain bit was cool. I wish I remembered it better. As for the Mummy Returns: I had hoped for so much more. In every respect. I read somewhere that ILM was doing hurry-up work for most of the development, which explains the somewhat sub par effects work. The rest of the movie, though...

[waylon]

loki: That review is dead on, except for one thing. He pointed out all the things that make the film great! As long as you go in expecting something on par with "Battlefield Earth" anyway, it's a pretty amusing movie.

Except for the CG. Which, I don't care what anyone says, stunk. (Sorry synj. Your opinion is WRONG!)

[KrassOtti]

hmmmmmm, haven't seen the movie yet and thought the first one was so-so.

From the review it sounds like a "fun" movie that you only hate if you take movies too serious :P Though I'm scared now, I'll probably wait till a friend gets the DVD or something

[Loki]

Well, Pyro - as I said before - I'm just gonna go see it and move from there. I was just upset at first (as it is my trade - be upset first, think about the whole thing later and find out there was no reason to be upset).
In no way do I , have I and will say that the idea with airships in canyons is my original idea. But - when I came up with the first lodge image I didn't look at anything like it before ...

Movie good - movie bad - who cares? People have different taste. I posted that review because I thought it was fun to read. And I slammed milkman a little bit just because I like slamming people a little bit - baaaad loki!

[CapnPyro]

yap, the review was pretty funny being in the special effects field i could see where he'd have gripes with it.

from what ive seen the lodge in the canyon is an original idea, just in the movie there wasnt a lodge. they were in the canyon and mr. imhotep threw some water at em, with the aid of their rocket assisted balloon thing they got out. god that was lame.

[pixualize]

I'll have to admit when I saw TMR opening day, the whole baloon thing through the canyon reminded me of Loki's stuff also. And when I went back later and looked at the Digital Illustration Outpost again I thought, man it would be cool if someone would do a 13th Warrior-like flick with Loki as the concept guy doing all the airship stuff.

As far as the film goes the only thing that was any good was watching the Army of Anubis kick the crap outta stuff. Great jackal dudes! They shoulda left out all of the Scorpion King crap and saved it for the next one. Kidnapping the kid as plot device-should never ever be used in any movie ever again.

This was kinda worse than The Phantom Menace meets Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and convinces me that the new tag for ILM may be:
"Just because you can;
doesn't mean you should.

[CapnPyro]

Off a recent news post from my site-

"Of movies that are out, The Mummy Returns was a really cool fun movie I'd recommend unless your one of those people that over analyzes movies and would nit-pick it to death. Although, I must say the Rock's head in that last scene was spectacularly lame. The flashback Sai fighting scene in the movie was incredible. All the gold tones in that scene were great."

i love loki's work but it's not a wholly original idea. actually in the cartoon tailspin didnt they make generous use of narrow rock passageways and cliffs, and waterfalls and all sort of unusual flying machines.. like blimps alot of the time. im sure the creators of that cartoon got the idea from somewhere else which was ripped by someone else. if they did swipe your stuff though, then thats just wrong, although yours has a more realistic plausible look to it. in the movie it was garish and over the top.

[synj]

"Your opinion is WRONG!" -waylon

oh, you're right! How could I not know my opinion is wrong?

[Muzman]

The trouble with this movie and the "You took it too serious!" argument is that it's so dull it forces you to take it seriously.
A film can get away with a lot if its fun. But this one just wasn't, particularly in contrast with the first film. The "ethnic contingent" (that is: Patricia Velasquez, from Venezuela; Arnold Vosloo, from South Africa; and Oded Fehr, from Israel I think) were pretty cool though, despite having not much to do and some crappy lines to deliver. The english black guy as "comedy knockabout role #2" gave me the most laughs also (despite having the stupidest most tacked on part I've ever seen).
The CG budget was spread so thin you could see through it at every instance. I'd guess synj sympathises with what it takes to create such detailed scenes and animations. True enough, but the matching was thoroughly sub par in this day and age.
Oh well. I'll probably be rolling up for third one, massaging my temples and groaning "Again with the resurrection schtick!"