Stephen Sommers’ 1999 movie The Mummy and its 2001 sequel The Mummy Returns maintain a very vocal fan base, largely in part to the chemistry between leads Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz. One thing that is still talked about with the films, but perhaps with the polar opposite amount of enthusiasm, is some of the visual effects shots from the movies, in particular when Dwayne Johnson‘s The Scorpion King appears in The Mummy Returns. Now a giant half-man/half-scorpion the effect didn’t work at the time and has only begun to look worse in hindsight as the film continues to age. One person who agrees? Alex Laurant who worked as a visual effects artist on the film.
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A Senior Visual Effects Art Director on The Mummy Returns twenty years ago, Laurant sat down with the VFX-focused YouTube channel Corridor Crew to go over some of the effects from films he had worked on across his career including Saving Private Ryan, Minority Report, and yes, The Mummy Returns. Referencing that Corridor Crew had previously made a video “fixing” the shots of The Scorpion King from the movie, Laurant said that their assessment of what went wrong at the time was “pretty spon on.” He adds, “(It) really points to the limitations of the day. Like many effects from this whole era in the ’90s we can’t expect to look back at them and expect them all to hold up to today’s standards.”
When asked to point to the thing about the effect he felt didn’t work as a whole, he stated the obvious, the face.
“It was the face and if I recall we committed to a technique of facial capture which was extremely underdeveloped at the time. We all knew that this was falling short of what we would like it to be. When you’re confronted with a situation like this, where you’re best hopes and dreams aren’t quite panning out, it might time to call for the old ‘less is more.’ I know we tried to use lighting to be our best friend.”
Laurant went on to praise the abilities of bot the animation team and the art department however, showing off some concept art for the character in the video (found at about the 7:30 mark above).
“Man the artwork was gorgeous. The whole process of building it was super exciting, it’s just that little bit of getting the face right.”
(H/T Screen Rant)
