The Mummy (2017)

I'm going to run you through the timeline of my experience with The Mummy. I only saw the first Brendan Fraiser film and that was only after this film was announced. I saw the trailers for this film and I was actually a little bit excited for it. When it came time for the movie to come out I got busy and I wasn't hearing great things about it. When I heard about this whole Dark Universe, I figured I would give this movie a little bit of time before actually watching it to see if this Dark Universe was actually going to happen. Recently I've heard some rumors about the Dark Universe being cancelled and I thought, regardless, I need to figure out what the deal was with this film.

The Mummy overall is a frustrating film because the honest truth was, I wanted this movie to be good. While a classic monster universe sounds weird and just Universal's attempt to get in on the franchise building market that Marvel is swimming in right now, I actually think a connected universe where not only classic movie monsters exist in the same universe, but they're played by some really talented actors. The Mummy attached one of my favorite actors Tom Cruise and seemed to be an action film with a supernatural twist. This could have been interesting.

As confusing as the whole thing is, this picture actually got me a little bit excited. I enjoy all of these actors and I wouldn't mind watching something surrounding the classic movie monsters involving them.

But the whole Dark Universe concept just comes off as very forced and not inspired. I would love to believe that someone at Universal has an idea for this universe that makes sense, but nothing about it seems that way. It just seems like a studio that doesn't have the rights to any superheroes trying to create their own shared universe only to make a profit. I mean the next film that was scheduled for this universe was The Bride of Frankenstein... Why?!? I mean sure if the rumors are true and they got Angelina Jolie for it that's kind of cool but I still have to ask, Why?!? How does the bride of Frankenstein fit into a larger universe that, from the Mummy trailers seems like an action franchise?

But maybe I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm going to talk about The Mummy, how it stands as an individual movie, and what it means for an apparent larger universe.

The Mummy stars Tom Cruise as Sergeant Nick Morton. And I'm sorry, right off the bat, Tom Cruise is a very confusing character in this film. I could go into a whole rant about how he looks like he's at best in his forties and way too old for his particular rank. I know there are Soldiers in their forties who are Sergeants in the Army but for this particular character it doesn't make sense. But I'm going to push that aside because that's more of a nitpick for me personally.

But Nick Morton is supposedly a dishonest thief. This is kind of established in the beginning but I'm sorry, nothing about Tom Cruise says dishonest, slight of hand thief. I have no doubt that he could play that kind of role because I think Cruise is a better actor than people give him credit for. But everything about him in this film portrays Cruise as the typical cocky but good hearted action hero he's played a billion times over. There's a part where of course he has his shirt off and he looks like an action figure. I mean good for him, age is obviously not taking Tom Cruise down easily, but again it doesn't totally make a lot of sense.

But I'll get back to this cause this is just the start.

Morton and an Archeologist named Jenny Halsey (played by Annabelle Wallis) find a buried Egyptian sarcophagus buried in Iraq and start to bring it back for study.

However, Morton starts seeing and feeling an uneasy feeling which he soon figures out is a curse the resident of the sarcophagus, the Egyptian Princess Ahmanet (played by Sophia Boutella) casts on him.

As explained in a flashback in the beginning... and also half way through the film... Ahmanet was a princess destined to rule Egypt until she made a deal with the devil for power and killed her family. Part of her deal with the devil was to foster the devil's spirit into a human male vessel and the two would rule the entire world with their evil power. That plan was foiled in the past and now Ahmanet has chosen Nick Morton to be her new vessel.

The movie for the most part is Nick running from the cursed Mummy and with the help of Jenny and a secret organization, that I'm sure wasn't planned to be the secret SHIELD-like organization throughout the Dark Universe, he must find a way to rid himself of the curse and vanquish the cursed mummy.

Now, I told you the plot of the movie and reading that, I realize that that doesn't sound that crazy of a story. It's not that different from the successful Brendan Fraiser movie but it has enough differences so that it can be shaped and molded to be something new and exciting. And I'm gonna try and limit my mentions of the Brendan Fraiser movie for a couple reasons but mainly because I want this movie to try and stand on its own... and it's been a hot minute since I've seen that version so the comparisons wouldn't be fair. The only thing I will mention is that Fraiser's Mummy felt like an adventure horror film. It felt like a scary Indiana Jones and that worked really well.

Now this version chose not to be an Indiana Jones style adventure film, and that's okay. I didn't feel at the end of this I was going to see Tom Cruise looking for treasure in other exotic places of the world but for the most part it's a pretty simple straight forward plot. It provides for a movie that could potentially be pretty dark, have some good action in it, and potentially, without over doing it, could lead to a larger universe and I'll be honest, at the start of this movie, I was on board. There were a lot of things that seemed cool and the story was simple enough that I could enjoy it.

Now there are a couple of things that they add onto that plot that I really need to talk about but first I want to talk about the things in that pretty simple plot that they messed up and the first is Nick Morton's love interest, Jenny.

She adds absolutely nothing to this film. ABSOLUTELY nothing. She is the damsel in distress and nothing else. She barely has any kind of personality, she does nothing but be in danger so Tom Cruise has to save her. She contributes nothing.

And this does add into the whole complaint I had with Tom Cruise from the beginning. Their relationship, while not essential to the movie's success does put the spotlight on Nick Morton's evolution (or lack thereof of his character). She says at the beginning that she could never fall for a guy like Nick because he's a thief. Well if he's not a thief, not really dishonest, and is nothing but an action hero the whole time, it's really hard to believe he's had much of a change.

Everything she does that even resembles contribution could be done by somebody else in the Prodigium, the secret organization that I'm sure wasn't intended to be the SHIELD of the Dark Universe.

Enter Dr. Jekyll (played by Russell Crowe). Now this is actually a really interesting idea. The Prodigium is a secret organization bent on fighting evil in the world. The ironic part is that it is lead by Dr. Jekyll, a man who literally has an evil side that he constantly has to keep at bay.

Now I'm sure they were planning a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde movie and I'll be honest, if that movie comes out starring Russell Crowe, I'm on board. That sounds awesome still. But notice how that has absolutely nothing to do with The Mummy?

I get it, they're trying to create a shared universe. It's fine if you want to start early and have little Easter Eggs alluding to future movies. That is totally fine. And at first that's all it was. Half way through the movie, Nick is brought to the Prodigium and he sees a find from the creature of the black lagoon, and Dr. Jekyll almost turns into Mr. Hyde but he is able to fight it off. If that's where they would have left it, that would have been a great teaser for future films to wet the appetite. It keeps the plot going and serves as an in-movie advertisement.

But then they literally stop the movie dead in its tracks to have this.

And no this was not a spoiler because it was in the trailer. Mr. Hyde shows up out of the blue and they have a gratuitous fight scene.

And the worst part is, at the end of the day that is the only thing Russell Crowe did. Sure they allude to how he could potentially help and he gives some exposition for the people who maybe came into the theaters late and didn't catch the opening exposition that was the same thing, but he literally was in this movie to turn into Mr. Hyde and get knocked the fuck out.

Everything he did in this film, minus Mr. Hyde could have been done by Jenny and it probably would have made her character more interesting. But instead they might as well paused the movie and had that Dark Universe logo swing around the Universal globe for 5 minutes.

Remember in Ant-man when that movie was trucking along just fine and suddenly there was this random and totally pointless fight between Ant-man and Falcon that was meaningless and didn't lead to anything? This is exactly what The Mummy did and it's the reason Marvel movies are starting to get a little bit old as of late.

Easter Eggs are fine. Hell even an end credit scene is out of the way of the story enough to point towards the next movie in a franchise. But when you stop halfway through the movie to promote your franchise, that just isn't good storytelling.

And that's not the only thing that this movie stole from the Marvel franchise.

You know those moments where something serious, or sad, or creepy is happening in a Marvel movie? Probably the best example is at the end when Ronan is threatening to destroy the world and Starlord stops his pretty serious moment to challenge him to a dance off? Yeah, The Mummy does that. But while the Marvel movies only sometimes do those humorous moments in the wrong place, The Mummy didn't get any of them right.

I'll give Sophia Boutella probably the most credit in the film. This was kind of a creepy Mummy. She creeps around very ghoulish, she sucks the souls out of people. While there's no need to turn this into a horror film, you can still use that creepiness to your advantage.

But at an essential part where the Mummy is trying to perform a sacrificial ritual on Tom Cruise for the first time, they go with the direction of having Nick be ticklish and other humorous choices. Not only is it not really that funny, but it takes the air out of these genuinely creepy scenes set in dark alleyways and empty churches.

Yes Tony Stark is a goof ball and is snarky, but when he's at the mercy of Obadiah Stane in the first movie and about to die, there isn't any quippy remarks or mood killing jokes. They hold off on appropriate timing for jokes and let the sad, serious, and creepy moments be just that, sad, serious and creepy. The Mummy doesn't do that so I can't really take it seriously.

And probably the worst culprit of ruining the entire mood of the movie is Jake Johnson.

HOLY CRAP I hated every single scene that Jake Johnson was in. Every single one of them. And I like Jake Johnson! I think he's a funny actor. I love him in New Girl. I actually liked him in Jurassic World believe it or not! I hope he gets more work in mainstream movies but please make his future characters written better because nothing about his character was right in this movie.

Without getting too much into spoilers, his role is supposed to be a little bit creepy and part of the curse that haunts Nick Morton. But he does this really half baked comedy routine every time he shows up all while saying that Nick is doomed to eternal damnation. I think I get what they were trying to do with this character but man did they fail. He was so unfunny and so annoying and so inconsistent. There was a good portion of the movie where he just doesn't show up, so I forgot about him. And then he pops up again and I vocally complained because I thought he was gone.

Like Jenny, he adds nothing to the film and only brings it down. His role could have been consolidated in and eliminated, and I think the film would have been better because of it.

I think this movie's main problem is the fact that it just doesn't have it's own identity. It's trying to be a serious action film with some light hearted comedic tones like Marvel, but it throws in way too many comedy moments while dealing with a subject matter that doesn't really lend itself to being an action film.

The Mummy is an immortal being who at no point is matched. This was something the original Mummy understood. There was no way to take down this monster so while it was an adventure film, taking us to exotic locations like Indiana Jones, there was no way to defeat this monster through action sequences alone.

Maybe it's because I just watched Alien but I thought for a while at the beginning that it was going to play out like an Alien film. They go to a hidden burial site but pick up a monster that terrorizes them until they defeat her within an inch of her winning.

But instead we get this very odd, confusing, and rather frustrating film with a lot of unnecessary scenes, humor, and performances. Which is a bummer because whether I've made it clear in this review or not, I do think there is some hidden potential in this film and a larger universe surrounding these classic movie monsters.

When I see Tom Cruise in this movie, whether it's there or not, I see a regular guy (maybe a little better than regular) being exposed to a larger darker world. As Russell Crowe says, "Welcome to the new World of Gods and Monsters", I actually get a little bit excited about a supernatural series giving a new take on these classic monsters. While I don't think they're executing it correctly, I also don't think whoever had the idea of creating a larger universe like this is totally out of their mind. There is some creative stuff here, they just need to allow for creative writing and not focus solely on a studio's agenda.

I think the best comparison for this movie would be Suicide Squad and the DC cinematic universe. Suicide Squad is not a good movie. I've come to admit that. I think there's a lot of potential there. I wouldn't mind seeing some of those characters in another movie, but overall, too much actual story is thrown out for world building.

The unfortunate truth for Universal is, DC can afford flops like Suicide Squad and they still have other movies that did well and an established universe to go back to and mold into something that works better, hence how Wonder Woman put DC back in the shared universe conversation. The other difference is that Suicide Squad felt different enough that it didn't feel like DC was just trying to desperately copy Marvel.

 The Mummy feels like a bad Marvel rip off all the way up to the end credits when they are playing this triumphant but generic music you would hear at the end of an Avengers movie.

If The Mummy felt like it was trying to create its own tone and just had a couple of misteps, I would give the movie more credit. If it had some firm plans for a follow up that I was excited for and not the Bride of Frankenstein, I would give the movie more credit. If it had performances and writing that maybe wasn't that good but held promise for future movies and wasn't just confused, I would give this movie more credit. But unfortunately, this movie just had too many missteps and overall was just not good.

The jury is still out in regard to whether or not the Dark Universe is officially dead. The Bride of Frankenstein is postponed and there hasn't been any mention of when the next installment in this franchise is coming out. While I won't be surprised if another film comes out in 2019 with the Dark Universe logo at the front end, I also won't be surprised if Universal abandons ship for something more profitable.

But hey who knows, it didn't not make money so I could be full of crap. Those are my thoughts on The Mummy, what did you think? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

I'll leave you with this. I'll give Universal credit, they seemed pretty confident with the release of this film. They put the logo out in the front of the film and released this promo. Enjoy!