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Lacking the campy fun of the franchise's most recent entries and failing to deliver many monster-movie thrills, The Mummy suggests a speedy unraveling for the Dark Universe.Read critic reviews
Watch The Mummy with a subscription on Peacock, Netflix, rent on Apple TV, Vudu, Amazon Prime Video, or buy on Apple TV, Vudu, Amazon Prime Video.
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Nick Morton is a soldier of fortune who plunders ancient sites for timeless artifacts and sells them to the highest bidder. When Nick and his partner come under attack in the Middle East, the ensuing battle accidentally unearths Ahmanet, a betrayed Egyptian princess who was entombed under the desert for thousands of years. With her powers constantly evolving, Morton must now stop the resurrected monster as she embarks on a furious rampage through the streets of London.
Rating:PG-13 (Partial Nudity|Action and Scary Images|Some Suggestive Content|Violence)
The beginning is actually quite promising. Cruise works great in what feels like an "Uncharted" adventure and the following plane crash is almost on a Mission Impossible level of intensity. Unfortunately, as the Dark Universe opens up, the tone of the film oddly jumps from horror scenes to humor and back in rather gloomy and underwhelming settings. That continues all the way through the mediocre showdown. And it turns out that sometimes a face can be too familiar for a certain kind of film.
Super Reviewer
Jun 26, 2018
Egyptian mythology is so interesting. Much like its Norwegian and Greek counterparts, there's many stories that can be told using those worlds and those writings. Which is why it's so frustrating that, realistically speaking, Hollywood, at least recently, hasn't used these elements really all that successfully. Creatively speaking, at least. Since the first two Mummy flicks were very successful. What I mean by creatively is exploring these characters in depth, not that these are bad movies. But considering the breadth of stories to tell with these mythologies, that they've been used, essentially, for summer blockbusters is highly disappointing. Now that I've said all of that, let's talk about the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Personally, while I'm not in love with the universe itself, I've gotta give credit to Marvel for knowing how to successfully ensure that all its characters exist in the same universe, even if they're doing things separately. It's one of the great achievements Hollywood has had in a long time. Marvel's patience in slowly building its world and the characters that inhabit it has paid dividends for them. But you know how the story goes. Once something is massively successful, countless other people try to copy it without understanding why it worked and why the company originally behind this successful concept took their sweet ass time setting everything up. Case in point, the DC Cinematic Universe. DC Comics has more iconic villains than Marvel and some of the most famous characters in MEDIA belong to them. And, yet, you could say that their attempts at creating a cinematic universe has been an utter failure, outside of the Wonder Woman movie (which I've yet to see). Basically, DC Comics was caught off guard by the success of the MCU and they've had to play catch-up ever since. The only reason the DCCU is even a thing is because Marvel made it successful. If their execution of these movies are to be believed, this wasn't planned out this way. It's just their attempt to close the gap in quality, and financial, success between the two brands. It hasn't worked. I think even Hasbro, a company that makes FUCKING TOYS AND BOARD GAMES, was attempting to start its own cinematic universe. This is madness. All of this brings us to Universal and their, supposed, Dark Universe. Here's the thing, if Universal want to build your own cinematic universe surrounding famous horror characters, that's fine. Universal monsters were some of the first to terrify audiences in the 20s. Frankenstein, Dracula, Invisible Man, Bride of Frankenstein, Wolfman, Creature from the Black Lagoon, (obviously) The Mummy and that's just off the top of my head. Think about it, creating a cinematic universe using all of those characters could actually be a cool idea if handled correctly. Let's just say that this movie didn't get off to that hot of a start. First thing first and this is even before you see one second of the actual movie. But they branded this movie as part of the Dark Universe, complete with its own logo after the Universal intro. Again, this is before you even see one second of the actual movie and already they're beating it into you that this is meant to be something larger than just this movie. Which is, really, a tough start to any universe. You're already telling me that, really, this movie is just the introductory piece for all of these characters to come together. So why should I care about what I'm seeing? Secondly, the whole idea of telling us that this is meant to be a connected universe is so forced. Everyone's attempting to catch up to Marvel, I get that, but just don't openly brand this as the start of your own cinematic universe when you don't even know if it's gonna be successful. Just play it by ear and if it takes, it takes. Then you can start branding it as a cinematic universe. But, even then, Marvel, prior to their movies, doesn't put a logo proclaiming that this is part of the MCU. It's just kind of silly to do so. Now that we've got all that out of the way. What is there to say about this? You know how I mentioned, in my review of Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, that even the mightiest of box office draws have their fair share of mistakes. You could say that this is Tom Cruise's biggest mistake. At least his most recent one. It's difficult to say that about a movie that, while critically reviled, made more than twice its budget. This made $405 million on a budget of an estimated $125-195 million. But, even then, at the same time, given the high marketing costs for this movie, which don't figure into the budget for filming, this was considered a bomb. It lost Universal around $95 million. Even Tom Cruise's appeal with audiences couldn't save this movie. I think one of the biggest mistakes they could make was branding this as some sort of summer blockbuster. Yes, the previous films in the franchise branded themselves as such and they were very successful. But, in my opinion, the last thing this movie needed to do is invite comparisons to the previous films with Brendan Fraser. The reason I say that is that while they may not have been phenomenal movies, there was a tongue-in-cheek charm to them. They were movies designed to be fun, in spite of having some horror elements. I think, at first, this movie tries to capture some of that with Tom Cruise's character, Nick Morton, being a composite character. He's Indiana Jones, Nathan Drake and (parts of) Jack Sparrow all rolled into one. He's the lovable rogue thief. He plays fast and loose and it's such a boring character, honestly. Indiana Jones and Nathan Drake are great characters, but, again, you have to understand why the worked. Jack Sparrow was a great character the first time out, until Disney ran him into the ground. But Nick Morton character was designed, from the ground up, to be like these other, and better, characters. But, at the same time, that side of Morton doesn't last long. They, eventually, switch to it a more typical, generic, heroic man that Cruise is used to playing. Essentially, Cruise's character releases this banished Egyptian princess onto the world. This princess made a pact with the God of Death, Set, in exchange for her rightful place at the throne. Doesn't work and she's mummified alive by her father's men, whom she murdered along with his newborn son and his wife. Part of the deal with Set is that she would sacrifice a chosen one in order for Set to inhabit this sacrifice's body. She failed to do this as well. Of course, Tom Cruise being our hero, naturally, he's the one she has chosen to bring Set into this world to cause chaos and destruction. Our heroes have to put a stop to this. Nick has a romantic interest, of course, in Jennifer, an archaeologist who works for a secret organization responsible for destroying monsters of varying degrees. This organization is led by Dr. Henry Jekyll (yes, that Jekyll) and they sort of act as S.H.I.E.L.D does to the MCU. I don't know where to start with this, as it's a lot to take in and process. The movie, at its core, is better than I would have expected. To be fair, I wasn't really expecting much, but that low bar was cleared here. That is not to say that I thought this was a good movie, because it's not. I had no problem watching it and, really, if handled a little more adequately, this could have been a fun little B-movie disguised a summer blockbuster. But, and that last term is one that I need to come back to. While the idea to build a cinematic universe is not a new one, of course, neither is the idea of framing this cinematic universe as an action-adventure. The easiest way to sell this is to follow the same exact route that Marvel has followed and craft an action movie first with everything else second. Not saying that Marvel is the best at making action films, because they're not, but that's something that people have seen and they've seen done very well. So, tell me, why would they invest in a knock-off version of that? I understand why they took this direction, but it was the wrong one. If you want to set your universe apart, it has to bring something different to the table and, honestly, this movie didn't offer anything new at all. You could say that Amunet is a an actual figure in Egyptian mythology, but at the same time there's nothing that really differentiates her from, say, Enchantress from Suicide Squad. There's nothing all that different and, again, considering that this movie is steeped in Egyptian mythology, you'd hope that Amunet would be a more effective villain. That's not to say that Sofia Boutella didn't do a good job, in fact, I thought she was a more than welcome addition to this franchise. It's just that the character itself did nothing for me. She's just a villain for the sole reason that the movie needs one. Her character isn't developed past the introductory piece that's done telling us why she made a pact with Set. I'm not saying that this had to be a full-on horror movie, but I felt that would have given it a different identity than just another Resident Evil-lite (since RE at least has blood and gore) where the action is first and foremost and the horror elements are kept to a minimum. The world does not need another action movie. It really doesn't. You know what it needs less than an action movie? It doesn't need substandard action movies. Because, again, if you're going to make sure that you get as many eyes on this as possible and that framing this as an action movie is your best course of action, then at least give me a better movie than the one we got. The movie just doesn't click, in the slightest, because it suffers from severe identity issues. It wants to be the start of a major cinematic universe, it wants to be a fun, summer blockbuster, but it also wants to retain some of the horror elements from the original Mummy movies (the really old ones, not the ones with Brendan Fraser). There's no reason it shouldn't be able to do this. It's gonna take a lot of work, but it was doable. But, really, they just didn't succeed at this. It's got too many things it wants to be and, therefore, lacks the focus it needed for it to be a successful endeavor. I finished watching this about four or so hours ago and I can barely remember much from this. There's some cool scenes, to be sure, but I just can't, for the life of me, remember them. I guess that's how cool they were, huh? This just fails to have its own identity and that's, really, the key for long term success in this type of universe building. You need to give people a reason to say, hey, I want to see more movies in this universe. And, realistically speaking, did this movie do that? No. I'm sure some people still want more, but I don't really know why they would. Nick Morton, basically, becomes Set, but there's still enough of him in there that wants to find a cure to this disease. He runs off by the time the movie ends and that's the tease of there being a continuation. Nick is still out there and, given that he's just become a living god, you don't know what he's gonna do with that power. Is he gonna use it for good? Or is he gonna use it for EVIL? That's the only remotely interesting bit about the movie, what Nick is gonna do with his newfound powers. I suppose that could be the hook for some people. What else can I say? I don't know. This feels like an incomplete review, like I feel I'm not covering something. But that's just how it is, I don't really care to continue this review. As a standalone experience, this isn't a good movie by any standards. As the start of the Dark Universe, it's probably worse. If the DU is still gonna be a thing, I hope more care and time is taken to ensure that they put out high-quality movies that are also different enough from everything that Marvel puts out for this to have a chance. I wouldn't recommend it, but I've seen far worse recently. Bye Bye Man, I'm looking at you!!!
Obviously it's bad in a lot of ways but what's interesting is how often the movie sets up things that should work (dark humor, playful banter between the characters, and inventive action sequences) but blows it each time through poor pacing and even worse performances.
Super Reviewer
Jan 11, 2018
Universal launches their Dark Universe (again) with a rather mediocre and uninspired remake of The Mummy. The story follows a corrupt Army recon officer who discovers the tomb of a lost Egyptian princess who made a pact with Set, the god of death, and after her casket is excavated she breaks free and attempts to perform a ritual that will resurrect Set in a new body. Starring Tom Cruise, Sofia Boutella, and Russell Crowe, the cast isn't too bad; though Cruise and Crowe pretty much phone in their performances. The writing is also weak, particularly the dialog which comes off as forced and unnatural. Still, the special effects are incredibly well-done and make for some dynamic and exciting fight scenes. Yet while The Mummy has a bit of adventure to it, without compelling characters it's just noise.
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