Review of The Mummy (2017) by Freddylives99 — 15 Jun 2017

This is a poor start to a new cinematic universe, and I went with low expectations and was still disappointed. There are some well-shot action sequences, and I do like what Universal is going for here, setting up a world where many different monsters coexist, like Cabin in the Woods, but what we get with this are a bunch of tired PG-13 action cliches.

Oh, and I should also mention that the film is not scary at all, so that's a fail. Let's talk about the comic relief. Why is it needed? This is the "Dark Universe", so the tone should be kept serious, but screenwriters seem to always think that audiences want this, so we have to endure bad joke after bad joke.

Of course we get the wise-cracking sidekick who seems to be trying too hard to get a laugh, but all characters get some line that's supposed to be funny but comes off as awkward, and it ruins any suspense that a scene may have been building toward.

Humor especially ruined the scene where Tom Cruise wakes up in a body bag after coming back from death. What should have been very dramatic was just supposed to be funny because he woke up naked. PG-13 humor at its finest! Now I'd like to address the flashbacks to The Mummy's origin story.

The flashbacks were way overused, and they begin probably no more than ten minutes after we see them originally. This is when I felt that the director thought his audience had very short attention spans and had to be constantly reminded of plot elements throughout the film.

Now, as for The Mummy herself, she looks great, has a creative design, but she's hardly menacing like she's supposed to be, and her zombified minions are not much better. She doesn't have a world domination plan like Imotep from the 1999 Mummy franchise, she just wants Ethan Hunt, and that's it.

Also, ripping off the face-in-the-sandstorm scene from the '99 movie was so unnecessary, and there wasn't even a good reason for it. If Universal is going to continue with a universe based on horror films, they need to put effort into actually scaring us.