The Mummy is the beginning of something non-existent.

They made a Dark Universe logo. They believe.

Ant
Ant
Aug 24, 2017 · 4 min read

Over the last few months I’ve been pretty over big franchise movies. I skipped Spider-Man: Homecoming at the theatres. I didn’t watch War for the Planet of the Apes, despite being a big fan of the series. And even though it looked entertaining in all the wrong ways, I didn’t get around to watching the first installment in the Dark Universe — The Mummy. Until now.

An Egyptian princess who is heir to the Pharaoh's throne gets upset when her baby brother is born — he becomes the heir instead of her. So she makes a deal with the demon god Set, gaining powers so she can kill the baby with a knife while everyone sleeps (wait, couldn’t she have done that without the demon pact?). But Set wants the princess to give birth to a baby that will unleash Set himself on the world. Before that happens, she’s wrapped in bandages and ritually buried alive.

Flash forward to present day, where Tom Cruise is a US Corporal in Iraq. He’s a bit of a scoundrel, and when a hellfire missile uncovers an ancient Egyptian tomb (in Iraq, so kind of curious) his first thought is robbing it. Of course it’s the tomb of Princess Ahmanet, submerged in a pool of mercury to keep it safe from the world.

Not too safe though, because for some reason the ancient Egyptians rigged a system of pulleys to easily extract the sarcophagus from the mercury. Rather than, I don’t know, not doing that and piling rocks on top of it. Seems like a terrible idea, but you do you, ancient Egyptians in The Mummy.

Tom Cruise and his ex, an archaeologist named Jenny (Annabelle Wallis) make off with the sarcophagus in a military plane. It’s attacked by birds and crash lands in London, killing Nick (oh, that’s Tom Cruise’s character). But then he wakes up. He’s undead, and unconsciously following the bidding of Princess Ahmanet.

Then some mummy stuff happens, then Russell Crowe turns up as Dr Jekyll, then there’s lots of fighting, then Tom Cruise becomes the mummy. We even see a glimpse of his hand wrapped in bandages for some reason at the very end.

And they defeat The Enchantress.

They’re trying really hard with this movie to set up something bigger. Russell Crowe’s Dr Jekyll is basically Nick Fury, trying to bring everyone together. The trouble is, I’m not sure exactly who they’re bringing together. They’re fighting the monsters, but the only thing recognisable from the Universal monsters are… the monsters. So who will the heroes be? Kay Lawrence? Abbott and Costello?

There’s also that sequence. You know, the scene in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 where we see that Oscorp has created all of the tech used by Spider-Man’s rogues gallery? Or in Batman v Superman, where we learn that Lex Luthor has not only discovered all of the members of the Justice League, but he’s designed nifty logos for them too?

In The Mummy, Tom Cruise is walking through Jekyll’s headquarters and sees preservation jars. One containing a Gill-man arm, another a vampire skull… hey look, why not start by making a good mummy movie?

Russell Crowe is surprisingly good as Dr Jekyll. He has a bit of a slouch and a bit of a belly, so he works nicely as a genteel scientist. His Mr Hyde doesn’t quite work, though. He puts on a Northern gangster accent and cracks nasty jokes, but his appearance is that of an out-of-control person possessed by a demon. I think Hyde should either be fully out-of-control demonic, or fully aware of his actions but a nasty psychopath. This one tries to cut both ways.

Tom Cruise is spectacularly miscast in this movie. Usually he’s pretty good at picking roles that fit his talents, but this is a misstep of almost DiCaprio-as-J.-Edgar-Hoover proportions.

Ultimately, the movie just feels like it’s in the wrong genre. There’s nothing wrong with bringing together old monsters and making an adventure series out of them. Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is great (though the movie not so much)! But turning it into a blockbuster action epic just seems so misguided. Is Nick our new cool action hero? No. Is Princess Ahmanet the next big iconic villain? No.

I guess we’ll have to see where they take it next. I think that Johnny Depp’s The Invisible Man is the next Dark Universe movie planned. Which, I assume, will feature a lot of floating scarves and blue-tinted sunglasses.

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Ant

Written by

Ant

Every Day Is Movies

I watch a movie every day in 2017, then write about each one. It seems like a good idea here in 2016.

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