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How ‘The Mummy’ Became the Greatest ‘Indiana Jones’ Movie Without Indiana Jones
Sep 16, 2026
In 1999, 10 Years after Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, filmmakers wanted another shot at an action/adventure story that took place in the early 1900's. The Mummy starring Brendan Fraser was their answer. When The Mummy finally hit the big screen, fans realized this was the Indiana Jones sequel we've always wanted. Yes, Last Crusade is amazing, but The Mummy immediately took us back to the inspiration that got Indiana Jones off the ground.
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I don't know
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Let's be real. If this scene had been in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, we'd all have been a lot happier
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And that's because The Mummy is secretly the best Indiana Jones movie
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From its impressive special effects to its clearly delineated characters, The Mummy serves as an impressive calling card
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for the film's writer-director, Stephen Summers, and writers Lloyd Fonville and Kevin Jarre
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Sure, you're probably thinking, but how is it the best Indiana Jones movie ever made
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That's a ridiculous claim. Well, let's start at the beginning. The original Mummy, released in 1932
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was part of the initial wave of classic universal horror films that took the cineplex by storm in the 1930s and 40s
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The film served as a vehicle for the already larger-than-life Boris Karloff
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who had just risen to fame and fortune off of his turn as the nameless monster
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and James Whale's enduringly beloved Frankenstein. The Mummy was highly successful, spawning four direct pseudo sequels and a spoof film in The Mummy's Hand, The Mummy's Tomb
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The Mummy's Ghost, and The Mummy's Curse. After a 10-year break, The Mummy appeared again in
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Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy. Regrettably, Karloff did not return to any of the franchise's
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less-than-stellar sequels. Instead, Lon Chaney Jr. appeared in Tomb, Ghost, and Curse as Carice
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the Mummy. Despite enjoying something of a sizable popularity during the height of the
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Monster Madness in the 30s and 40s, The Mummy never gained the widespread popularity and
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dedicated following that Frankenstein, Dracula, The Invisible Man, and Wolfman generated. It wasn't
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until 1997 that producers found the winning combination. Kevin Jarr and Stephen Summers
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re-envisioned a production of The Mummy as a grand, rollicking 1930s adventure picture
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As opposed to the idea of leaning into the horror angle, Jarr and Summers repositioned the film as
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a family-friendly roller coaster of thrills with a horror edge. With that North Star in mind, they put their heads together
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What movie that's been made before has succeeded at that formula They arrived at it simultaneously Let make an Indiana Jones film a film made on location in faraway locales set in the 1930s starring a rugged hero with loads of charisma and high action
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A throwback to pulp adventure novels and the emotional highs of the cliffhanger serials of that era
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This might sound like something of an underhanded move, attempting to recreate a film that would function as a pastiche of another highly successful entity
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with iconic characters and almost complete genre dominance. How could they so nakedly copy something that came before
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Most modern movie-going audiences are probably unfamiliar with the source material that inspired
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Indiana Jones, and thereby unaware of the simple fact that Indiana Jones himself is a pastiche
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of 1930s pulp heroes, like Doc Savage, Alan Quartermain, or Terry and the Pirates
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I mean, they even gave Indy Savage's ripped shirt thing. Like, it's not subtle at all
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For those not in the know, Clark Savage Jr., aka Doc Savage, is a globetrotting adventurer
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who has starred in literally hundreds of novels, countless comic books, and even got the big screen
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treatment in 1975 with Doc Savage, Man of Bronze. He's a do-gooder raised on a secluded island and
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genetically modified to be the world's first perfect human. And that's exactly what Summers
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and company wanted to accomplish with The Mummy. They wanted to create an Indiana Jones-style
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franchise for the 1990s. Remember, in 1999, almost 10 years after Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
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everyone thought that was going to be the end of Indy. He literally rides off into the sunset
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at the close of the film. The key to both Indiana Jones and Mummy is a compelling lead
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You need an exciting personality at the center of the story in order to galvanize an audience
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That job fell on Brendan Fraser as Rick O'Connell. Fraser's combination of comedic timing
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and action hero persona instantly work as the bedrock of the film
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The character's tragic backstory as an orphan raised in Cairo and then enlisted
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in the French Foreign Legion doesn't get explored as much as we all would have liked, but it makes him
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an interesting character from the start. The whole cast functions this way
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Rachel Weisz as Evelyn Carnahan and a supporting cast composed of Oded Fair, Arnold Vaslew, and John Hannah
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provide a multi sense of texture to the film similar to the always idiosyncratic and unique casts of the indie films The main attribute that firmly catapults the mummy into the next level of would adventure revival films
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however, is the scale and spectacle of the piece. From Imhotep conjuring a sandstorm
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that shifts into a depiction of his face, to the nerve-rattling scenes with the scarabs
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to the grand finale of the film, it has a near-pitch-perfect execution of the idea
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that they originally set out to do. A high-stakes action-adventure film set in the 1930s. The issue being that, much like the Indiana Jones films themselves
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the franchise floundered in balancing the right level of threat with the right level of
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interpersonal drama. Indiana Jones barely escaping the arc of the Covenant's spiritual laser bolts
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Great. Indiana Jones surviving a nuclear blast because of a refrigerator? Not so great
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Rick O'Connell battling a reanimated mummy with an avalanche of creepy scarabs? Awesome
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fighting yetis and going toe to toe with a weirdly plastic CGI The Rock? Well, your mileage may vary
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But let's not hold the faults of the sequels against the majestic heights that the initial
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installments of either respective franchise. The Mummy has the aesthetics of a fun adventure film
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and it had a cast with real chemistry and an iconic movie villain. It has an action sequence
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that holds tension and fully transports the audience to a time and place. It has heart
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charm, and a real sense of danger for the characters. And it has what every movie fan
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wants, the ability to fully transport you to a place you've never been, both literally and
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figuratively. To really drive the point home, though, in an Indiana Jones movie, you want
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globetrotting, Indy solving some sort of problem with his wits, and a slightly larger-than-life
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mystical element. The Mummy has all of that in spades. And you know what it doesn't have
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inherently democratic monkeys, or Mutt Williams. The Mummy executes the standard act beats and
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genre tropes of the indie movies with deftness and skill, and it also gives real stakes to the
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adventures, compelling characters, and dazzling visual sequences. Inarguably, the best part of
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Raiders of the Lost Ark is the opening sequence with Indy avoiding booby traps and skulking around
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the ancient temple right Well The Mummy is ostensibly an entire movie of just that temple running but with the added benefit of monster fighting Indiana Jones movies also have an emphasis on character and his flaws and shortcomings typically play into the movie He also
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always surrounded by a cavalcade of colorful supporting characters. The Mummy does that in
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spades. In fact, Oded Farr's Ardeth Bey feels like a character that was ripped out of an indie book
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In many ways, this scene in which the criminally unreliable Benny is trapped in the compressing
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Temple is what Indiana Jones was building towards as a franchise, but never accomplished. The
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choreography of the actors sprinting through the space, the compressing rooms straight out of the
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Temple of Doom, and sand pouring into the antechambers. The fact that this is all one
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gigantic booby trap. It's just so quintessentially Indiana Jones. Goodbye, Benny. Even Rick O'Connell's
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Goodbye, Benny feels like the perfect Indiana Jones line. To say nothing to the fact that The
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Mummy has the one thing none of the Indiana Jones films actually possessed, a real villain
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That's what sets The Mummy apart, propelling it to surpass most of the Indiana Jones sequels
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The film has an interesting and charismatic antagonist. Raiders? You got some Nazis and
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Rene Bullock and anti-Indy. He really is just a shady version of the good doctor. There's no
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greater depth there. Temple of Doom? The evil priest guy? Sure, the heart-rending scene is
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iconic, but do you actually remember anything about that guy? Last Crusade? Nazis again
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not exactly reinventing the wheel. I hate these guys. And Crystal Skull
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Well, you know, Cate Blanchett is cool. Too bad the movie made her character into a cardboard cutout
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The Mummy has everything the Indiana Jones films have, and it fixes their one greatest weakness with the titular mummy
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Overall, The Mummy is a film that feels like it earns more respect with every passing day
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Brendan Fraser's recent resurgence, Rachel Wise's enduring star power, and Stephen Sommer's exciting direction definitely helped the movie's legacy
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But more than that, The Mummy has something that's decidedly underrated in today's cinema landscape
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It's both a competently made film and genuinely fun