Starring: Tom Cruise, Sofia Boutella, Annabelle Wallis, Russell Crowe,
Director: Alex Kurtzman
I want to like anything that Tom Cruise does, because I really like him. He’s been a huge force in cinema my whole life, and some of his films are amongst my favourites. In more recent years, his feels like he does more action than drama, but it’s been a long time since I’ve seen him in a fantasy or adventure type film. Here he stars in a film that’s a remake of The Mummy, not the recent Brendan Fraser outings, but the original films that did so well from the 30’s to the 50’s.
It sounds like a great concept, but the issue is that franchises are so attractive to Hollywood these days that rather than make a film based on the old stories of ancient Egyptian curses and daring explorers, it focuses more on creating a franchise world. At the expense of story and character development.
Tom Cruise is Nick, a morally ambiguous fortune hunter who finds and sells artifacts on the black market. When he accidentally uncovers a mysterious tomb, he unlocks a curse and releases an ancient evil, but Jenny (Wallis), an archaeologist, is on hand to rein him in and help him life the curse. In the background, A mysterious man (Crowe) is the head of an even more mysterious organisation that may be able to help him, or may have it’s own agenda…
Sofia Boutella plays the evil mummy, and although her costume design is quite striking, she feels… well, like a lot of things in this film, there’s not a lot of tombs and iconography. It doesn’t really have that Egyptian vibe, which was a real shame for me because I love that stuff. It just feels like a creature feature.
There are some good set pieces in this film, some action, and as we know by now, Tom Cruise is good at that stuff. But while he’s meant to have a love/hate thing with the girl and banter with a sidekick, there’s nothing there really. There’s no chemistry between any of the actors, and their dialogue doesn’t really leap off the page and help them out. It all just feels rather flat.
I feel like that’s a problem with a lot of franchise films:they’re so busy thinking about the next film and setting up things that they forget to tell us an entertaining story now. So it’s flawed and doesn’t really gel, disappointing on the whole, but personally,… the real kicker for me is that there’s barely anything of Ancient Egypt in this films style or story.
And be prepared for more creature features as the Dark Universe films start to be rolled out.
See It If: you are looking for a fantasy/action film, or love Tom Cruise. It lacks meat, but has some entertaining moments.
Wildfire Movies 
I still preferred the old Brendan Fraser films for the THE MUMMY SERIES, though Tom Cruise is perhaps a better choice for the leading man. John Hannah’s character and performance was superb in the Fraser series – stole the show.
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Fantastic Review!
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Thank you!
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I actually liked the first Brendan Fraser “Mummy” film. The special effects were good for its time and the story had a fun, throwback feel like they were trying to conjure “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”
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Yes, I totally agree. Both were drawing on old adventure films from the 1920s and 1930s. Serial films.
This version is actually drawn from later cinema, from monster movies from the 40s and 50s, so nothing to do with the old Brendan Fraser Mummy films. I think they should have used a different title to avoid that confusion.
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Second on the first “Mummy” film. Still a fun one to watch. I think Benny made that movie better than it would have otherwise been.
Sadly, the rest of the movies in the series ended up on the wrong side of the river.
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I think the new mummy movies, need more undead mummy animals, it lacked anything from cats to dogs, the orginal mummy movie showed us he was afraid of cats, but in the new movie their was not even one cat in it that I can memory otherwise again it was an great movie, but lacked undead mummy pets stuff like that maybe added to next movie, it had a lot of birds, but most people don’t own birds as pets, since some types of birds are mean to people, I think dogs and cats are more common even for Egyptians or Egyptian mummy’s , again I had a blast seeing this movie, it was Great 🙂
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Great Movie, really like it saw the movie today at the theaters , had a lot of action, I think it could of used some sort of chase seen besides when he run from the mummy in a car, I hope in the second movie if they have one, he gets to race against the mummy in chariot racing around the Nile River, maybe something like that, I had a dream once that I was in an old style chariot race with horses , you know in the dream wearing sandile shoes and think either I used the back of my Sandals Shoes to stop the chariot or I feel off the chariot in my dream since at that point I had woken up from the dream , sorry that offtopic,
I hope the next movie could have an chariot race with horses around the egyptian nile river like they may of done in the old days, but him again her in an chariot race with horses or undead mummy horses, I think that may be an great idea for it, again I loved this movie 🙂
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Well, this is one that I missed in the theatres, because quite frankly there is so much on offer these days, that I honestly can’t go to everything lol 😊 It’s not a big surprise this review though. This film has so far been receiving pretty negative buzz, and while I never let myself be guided solely by that, I did already lower my expectations for this one. I still will see it when it’s out on dvd as I am a Tom cruise fan, and as you say there are bound to be a couple of interesting things featured in it.
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I know! It’s my job and I can’t even see everything! lol. Yes, I lowered my expectations too, based on everyone’s critical responses. But you never know, right? I’m a Tom Cruise fan too.
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Very diplomatic 🙂 I myself have not yet seen this but the reviews aren’t helping me go see it either!
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This is so disappointing to me. I had such high hopes for this movie, for the whole franchise really. I will still watch it but probably on Netflix eventually
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Yeah, I think watching on Netflix is a good thing, rather than paying for a ticket, but I was the same. I love this kind of movie normally.
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Gotta love Netflix
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Absolutely!
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Personally I did not enjoy this movie at all. The action was good but that’s it. Quite disappointed for this one but still looking forward for the next movie.
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It had so much potential… I wonder where they’re going to go with it next?
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