The Mummy 2017 Review

When Universal Pictures very prematurely announced that The Mummy would be the first in their cinematic universe named, ahem, Dark Universe, my eyes – like many others’ – rolled. I’ve nothing against shared cinematic universes. Hell, I’m all for it. Look at the incredible job the MCU has done, with the DCEU being taught lessons by Wonder Woman and her lasso, and even this year’s Kong: Skull Island breathing some much-needed fire into Warner Bros. and Legendary's new monster franchise. But those guys? The Wolfman, Swamp Thing, Frankenstein, Dracula et al? Really? But if the filmmakers really think it’s going to work – and they surely do given such an early promise of a shared universe, and it’s got Tom Cruise - I’ll make the effort to go watch this new reiteration of The Mummy even if it does seem overly action-focused and starring a very out of place Tom Cruise, and see what it is they've done. And that’s just what I did.

Oh God.

With a promising opening sequence between Cruise’s Nick Morton and Jake Johnson’s Chris Vail in Iraq, feeling like it the film is about to venture most welcomely into Unchartered territory (for those not familiar, that’s the video game franchise that works as something of an awesome Indiana Jones-Tomb Raider hybrid), you’re almost convinced that there’s some justification in the existence of yet another Mummy flick. But once Nick and Chris descend into a newly-opened hole in the earth along with Annabelle Wallis' archaeologist Jenny Halsey (who Cruise's character has of course already nailed before the movie starts), wherein lies an evil tomb, so does the script.

While Cruise’s character is the reason the hole is blown in the earth in the first place, is also the reason why The Mummy (a strangely sexy Sofia Boutella) is awoken from what should have otherwise been an eternal slumber, which also results in the deaths of his best friend and entire squad, as well as the several deaths of police officers in London once The Mummy starts sucking CGI life forces out of them, Cruise is at least there to rescue the film. But please don’t misunderstand me. Cruise seemingly hijacks the film from its own director Alex Kurtzmann. The nonsense really gets going when we’re introduced to The Prodigium; a London-based institute where Russell Crowe’s Dr. Jekyll (both ironically and brilliantly-cast, in a hilarious way), heads up a program that sees the capture and study of, well, need I say more? 

A violent alter ago is hardly something Crowe has been able to Hyde throughout his career

Come on, Sofia. Let Tom get in front.

Before the film is even established as a Mummy one, it’s overshadowed by its own desperation to do some unasked-for world building, circling a concept which just feels so outdated, like it has no place among its very superior competitors. Not only that, its intentions as a wider franchise are blurry, like you're standing in the middle of some cinematic sandstorm. 

Naturally Cruise swiftly inherits some rather vague super powers which at least work well as a plot device, given someone needs to fight The Mummy. But it soon becomes evident that it’s merely a way of Cruise trying to justify his return to every flick (that hopefully won’t exist) in the Dark Universe. I’m normally a fan of Cruise, but this is the actor at his worst; his ego consuming everything around him in what is nothing short of a vanity project, whether that was the intention from the get-go or not. Either way, the end result is a forgettable, CGI-drenched fart in the wind that in hindsight makes Brendan Fraser’s camp-capers look like masterpieces.

With more aeroplane and hand-to-hand combat action than you can shake a stick at, the filmmakers (also known as Tom Cruise) may as well have gone the distance and named it after one of his actually successful franchises. But with a dwindling box office performance and an underwhelming critical one, it looks like establishing the Dark Universe might just be an impossible mission.