After the flop of Dracula Untold, Universal has decided to reboot their attempt at a modern franchise that relies on their horror classics with The Mummy, which also reboots the series after the 90s/00s Brendan Fraser movies. With a big box office name in Tom Cruise and a new name for the series – the Dark Universe – attached to it, The Mummy wants to set up a series that combines horror and action. Unfortunately, The Mummy suffers from a number of problems that make the chances of this launching a franchise more improbable than Dracula Untold.
Cruise plays Nick Morton, an American soldier who also wants to find archaeological artifacts that will make him rich. In his pursuit of this goal, he accidentally awakens Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella) from her slumber, which in turn makes Nick her target to bring a long-dead deity back to life. Compounding things is the involvement from a mysterious organization headed by Dr. Jekyll (Russell Crowe), which has its own plans for Nick.
So…Dracula Untold wasn’t good. But at least that film had a rough idea of what it wanted to be. Tonally, The Mummy is all over the map. It plays out like an inferior Mission: Impossible film with a dash of supernatural elements that are also (very lightly) tinged with horror. The film fails to develop any of its characters, particularly anyone who’s not Cruise. This is particularly disappointing with Ahmanet, the first time the Mummy has been female in one of Universal’s films. The idea is interesting, but Ahmanet basically uses sex as her weapon, which is both insulting and boring. One can only hope this will flop, so Universal will either reconsider where it wants this franchise to go, or end it entirely.
Outtakes Atlanta 