I like the original Mummy. I think it's a solid, fun popcorn movie without too many plot holes (although one can't help but wonder what reasoning would compel the ancient Egyptians to make their worst criminals into pissed-off immortal god-men, but I could probably retcon it if I put my mind to it), which is more than I can say for most summer movies, including Sommers' own subsequent fare. He's made some of my most hated films (VAN HELSING and, lately, G.I. JOE), but I've got some love in my heart for THE MUMMY.

It starts unravelling fast once you get to MUMMY RETURNS, though, and they start just making up powers and backstories left and right.

The Mummy Returns changed the way the sun works to suit the plot. I found it pretty tough to buy that one.

The sun was doing its thing until Barry Bostwick struck it.

I heard they named a street after Barry Bostwick and then had to change it. Nobody crosses Barry Bostwick and lives.

I liked the first Fraser Mummy movie okay, but hated the one Egyptian comedy relief guy. The second one was a bit too much for me, but I did really like the fact that they kept the two leads together. It irritates me to no end when sequels throw away the female lead so they can start over with a different romance. However, it was a weird choice for them to have a grown child already.

In National Treasure 2, they kept the female lead but had her estranged just so they can have the leads fall for each other all over again. Ugh. But the worst is Austin Powers 2, where Vanessa turns out to be a fembot—five minutes after the end of the first movie.

In the old (I mean 1930s) Bulldog Drummond films, Drummond meets his lady love in the first one and in each of the sequels gets a bit closer to marrying her. The running gag of his running out does get stale, but the progress is satisfying. Compare the old (I mean 1940s) Dick Tracy movies, where Tracy is just a jerk who keeps Tess waiting all the time.

Meanwhile, in the superb Thin Man movies (1930s and '40s), Nick and Nora have just been married in the first one and proceed to have a fine time solving mysteries together in the sequels. Baby makes three in the third of six movies.

/deep movie nerdery

Ones I'd like to see you guys do are:
V for Vendetta, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, Ocean's 11 & 13, LOTR Extended editions, Star Trek: First Contact, Frankenstein (1931 version) Psycho (the one directed by Hitchcock himself, of course), Hunt for Red October, Spartacus, Dante's Peak, Ralph Bakshi's LOTR (for contrast, if nothing else), James Bond (any one or more from Dr. No on), Robin Hood (NOT Prince of Thieves or any movie with Kevin Costner, for that matter), Gladiator.
I think that's enough of a wish list, at least for now.

Oh, and hi. I'm new.

Welcome to the forum, Ickyugg!

I'm trying to talk the folks into doing a marathon live show of all three LOTRs in one day, with each part to be released as its own commentary. So after the big day, LOTR would roll out over six weeks. My thought is we'd have pretty much all the substitute panelists on hand too, so we could tag-team out, and do it on a holiday weekend so even people who don't normally join the live chats could set aside a few hours to join the fun.

But I have encountered some probably sensible resistance to the idea and we may just do them piecemeal like our other franchise entries.

This week I watched all three extended editions, for unrelated reasons, and am still concerned.

What the fuck do you say after the seventh hour? Think about talking for an hour. Then doing it again, and saying entirely different things this time. Then do that sequence of events two more times. Then talk for another hour. That brings us to "after the seventh hour." And there's like twelve hours total.

My god, people.

See, the thing is that the things onscreen continue to happen and change as the hours go on, so there are new things to talk about.

If we were talking about something like Warhol's EMPIRE I'd totally see your point.

Yes, I've seen Kevin Smith do his bit about the movies, too. I don't find it an accurate characterization of them, though.

For Teague was easily swayed by the ancient meme that the LOTR movies were "all about walking".   And in the end, it consumed him...

[Seriously, get Cate in here to do these voiceovers.]