Review of The Mummy (2017) by Jim C — 13 Jun 2017

Hollywood is so incensed with creating worlds and franchises and universes these days, it's quite difficult to find movies that focus on a beginning, middle, and end of ONE specific story. The most recent entries of Marvel, DC, Fast and the Furious and others have fueled this genre, so when everyone heard a remake of The Mummy was in the works, one could only assume sequels were soon to follow. Enter the Dark Universe. While updated CGI, higher-profile actors and a more modern take on the previous iterations, The Mummy of today fails to establish a story (or universe for that matter) worth caring about due to caring more about future installments rather than the one currently on the screen.

Tom Cruise rarely makes flops, but I suppose once in a blue moon, even the best can falter. I have revered Cruise as one of the top and most consistent action stars of our time with his continued box office hits like Oblivion, Mission Impossible and Edge of Tomorrow. Surprisingly, science fiction has been a strong suit of his. However, when asked to play more of a dupe who's unsure of his own skill set rather than knowing exactly what he's capable of, Cruise can seem as flabbergasted as the character he's portraying. "What the hell?" was uttered a few times by Nick Morton (his character), but I honestly believe that was mostly Cruise wondering what was going on over the two hour run time. I don't know if I ever thought I'd say this, but Brendan Fraser totally outclassed and out-funnied Cruise when looking back.

Which is another point to make. Jake Johnson is thrown in as the lackey and sort-of-side-kick, but with so many tones running through this film, he's never given a chance to establish himself as a humor presence. His interjections feel forced later on in the movie after the first five to ten minutes did such a fine job of setting the scene. It just went off the rails once The Mummy was found, which is a shame.

Annabelle Wallis was great to see in a major role after her TV fame from Peaky Blinders and The Tudors, but we know as much about her at the beginning as we do at the end, and that doesn't say much. Russell Crowe's Dr. Jekyl/Mr. Hyde reveal was underwhelming, though we did get some nice easter eggs running through his secret facility to what I assume is the continued franchise we will see with added characters already revealed (Javier Bardem, Johnny Depp, etc). Lastly, Sophia Boutella as The Mummy herself. Having a gender-swapped bad guy is all well and good, and while I can't fault her personally for the mediocre performance (she was as good as can be), I can say the writing for her character was clunky and pretty one note.

While the action was fun and the CGI, though somewhat choppy, was played up tenfold, The Mummy got buried under its own weight of trying to establish the entire Dark Universe instead of crafting a fun adventure, which is what the previous entries did such a great job of doing.