Centuries ago, the evil Emperor Han was cursed with his army by the sorceress Zi Juan and transformed into a mummy. In 1946, the explorer Rick O'Connell and his wife Evelyn O'Connell are invited by the British government to take the relic The Eye of Shangri-La to China. The ancient stone is capable to resurrect the Emperor Han and to point the way to Shangri-la and give eternal life to Han. When the couple reaches China, they meet their son Alex O'Connell, who has discovered the tomb of Han, and Evelyn's brother Jonathan Carnahan in his night-club. However, they are betrayed by their friend Prof. Roger Wilson, who is associated to General Yang that wants to serve Emperor Han. He resurrects the mummy and the guardian of the tomb and Zi's daughter Lin tells them that the only way to destroy Han is avoiding that he reaches Shangri-la and stabbing his heart with a dagger cursed by her mother. They travel to the Himalaya in the beginning of another adventure of Rick and his family.