Hello everyone! 🙂
Welcome to ‘Bradley’s Basement’ blog and I’m Tim Bradley!
Yes, you are reading this correctly. I’ve seen the 2017 film ‘The Mummy’, starring Tom Cruise. Usually, I don’t go for horror films such as this, but it is an action-adventure film too, and since Tom Cruise is in it, I thought it’d be worth checking out. This film has received a lot of hate over the years.
I was intrigued by this, as it was meant to start off a ‘Dark Universe’ series of films.
Yes. That Dark Universe. I can’t claim to know a lot about ‘The Mummy’ movie franchise, since I haven’t seen ‘The Mummy’ films featuring Boris Karloff, Christopher Lee and Brendan Fraser yet. I decided to judge the 2017 film on its own merits to see why it didn’t work in the eventual outcome.
And after seeing it…yeah. I get why people became angry. But it’s not really a surprise to me. I mean, the film was directed by Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci was an executive producer and an uncredited writer on the film. That makes a lot of sense. If you follow my blog, you can tell I’m not a fan of their work.
Whilst I like ‘Mission: Impossible III’ and quite like ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2’, I’m not a fan of the first two ‘Transformers’ movies directed by Michael Bay and the first two films of the ‘Star Trek’ reboot trilogy. There are characters in the movie that are initially unlikeable, including Tom Cruise’s.
It’s strange, because two of the film’s writers are David Koepp and Christopher McQuarrie. I’ve enjoyed their films, particularly with David Koepp’s script for the first ‘Spider-Man’ film with Tobey Maguire, and Christopher McQuarrie as the writer/director of the recent ‘Mission: Impossible’ films.
In 2017’s ‘The Mummy’, Tom Cruise plays a US army sergeant named Nick Morton. He accidentally unearths the ancient tomb of the entrapped Egyptian princess Ahmanet. During the course of the film, Nick Morton uncovers a universe teeming with monsters that are to be unleashed on the world.
At the time of this film’s release, Universe Pictures was trying to create their own cinematic universe to feature a series of monsters, including Frankenstein and Dracula. Even Russell Crowe makes an appearance in the film playing Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Sadly, the intended universe was scrapped. 😦
Like with ‘Batman v Superman’ (both versions), ‘The Mummy’ tried too hard in terms of setting up their own cinematic universe before it had even started. It’s like the production team involved were rushing to get the ‘Dark Universe’ started before forgetting to check how ‘Iron Man’ did the ‘MCU’. 😦
I will admit, there were some tense and scary moments featured throughout the film, especially when the titular Mummy and her minions was coming to attack our heroes, including Tom Cruise. But it felt quite underwhelming, especially with characters you’re not engaged with from the start. 😦
As well as Tom Cruise and Russell Crowe, the film also features Sofia Boutella as Ahmanet, the titular Mummy. There’s Annabelle Wallis as archaeologist Jenny, who becomes Tom Cruise’s love interest, and there’s Jake Johnson (from ‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’) plays Chris, Tom Cruise’s friend.
Courtney B. Vance plays Colonel Greenway, Marwan Kenzari is Malik, Jekyll’s chief of security, and there’s Javier Botet as Set, the ancient Egyptian god of death. With the scenes of Egypt featured in the film, I couldn’t help wonder if Apocalypse from ‘X-Men: Apocalypse’ was going to appear in this. 😀
2017’s ‘The Mummy’ isn’t a film I would want to see again and again, but I’m glad I’ve seen it to satisfy my curiosity and at least it’s available to watch on Netflix. The ‘Dark Universe’ film series is likely to be only one film, but I’m not that bothered, as I’m not that keen on horror movie monsters.
My Mum didn’t care for this film either. 😀 I’m pleased that Tom Cruise has found his recent success with ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ compared to 2017’s ‘The Mummy’. I hope he does well with the next two ‘Mission: Impossible’ films that are coming. 🙂
Thanks for reading!
Bye for now!
Tim 🙂
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