There was a time when Tom Cruise was believed to be unstoppable at the box office, and with his highest-grossing film of all time having hit in just the last few years (Top Gun: Maverick, for those asking), it seems there is a film on his resume that many want to forget. Never mind that The Mummy is a fun, hilarious outing all on its own.
It simply happens to be the remake (second, actually) of an incredibly popular film starring Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz. It’s possible that there was no winning when it came to The Mummy (2017), but nobody can deny that it wasn’t financially successful – yet, to Hollywood, that is exactly what it was.
I often cite The Mummy as one of the films that, from the outside, should have been considered a financial success. How Hollywood studios market their films and handle the budgets for them, though, complicates this matter to an insane degree. I was taught that films will utilize up to half of their budget to calculate marketing expenses. That clearly wasn’t the case for The Mummy. I also ask questions when a budget is given a range rather than a definitive figure. After all, how can a company not know if they spent $125 or $195 million? That’s a pretty big discrepancy, after all. Still, even if we use the higher-end budget, it should have come in at a final price tag of around $292.5 million. An insane amount of money, but well below its ultimate reported box office earnings of $410 million. But I digress.
Behind the scenes, from some of the actors to the writer, to the director, there is no shortage of complaints when it comes to the production of this film. I have often said that it is difficult to tell what will make a good film, but it can be too easy to tell what a bad one is. I wouldn’t go so far as to outright dismiss The Mummy (2017), but that could be because I don’t measure films in the same vein as others. I thoroughly enjoyed it for its comedic elements, especially the banter between Tom Cruise and Jake Johnson. Unfortunately, as the film was intended to be a straight horror film, it doesn’t make it clear whether these moments should be outright hilarious or only unintentional. I prefer to be kinder and accept that it is more of a dark comedy.
Tom Cruise plays Nick Morton, a U.S. Army Sargeant who, with the help of his friend Chris Vail (Jake Johnson), robs the graves of historical figures before the artifacts can be found and cataloged by the real heroes: the British Museum. Or, rather, archaeologist Jennifer “Jenny” Halsey (Annabelle Wallis) who works for an organization known as Prodigium. Annabelle Wallis previously starred in King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, with reports about her performance hinting at her role being drastically reduced to the apparent detriment of the film. Whether or not that is true can be saved for another review. Here, Jenny and Nick must work together to prevent the titular Mummy from rising to finish what she started millennia ago.
Nick Morton spends most of the film running from one elegantly extravagant set piece to another, fighting for his mere survival after he is forced to play host to a chaotic essence that draws in Ahmanet. His best friend doesn’t even make it out of Egypt alive, but Jake Johnson was far too hilarious to set aside. We watch as an apparition of Chris toys with Nick’s mind, seemingly trying to draw him to his darker impulses. On the other side, Jenny is Nick’s moral compass, a position that greatly threatens Ahmanet and her own plans. This duality was one of the deeper themes in the film, and I wish that Sofia Boutella and Annabelle Wallis had been given more time to breathe life and power into their respective roles. This duality was exquisitely portrayed between Rachel Weisz and Patricia Velásquez in The Mummy Returns, and it felt as if that was the relationship that this version was attempting to emulate. All the pieces were there, but they didn’t have enough time to gel together.
Courtney B. Vance plays Colonel Greenway, Nick and Chris’ superior officer, who briefly appears to chastise the pair for their inability to follow his orders. Unfortunately, his character is not long for this world, but Greenway does not disappoint with the limited screen time he has. Another interesting face who showed up was Marwan Kenzari, who would later star in films such as Aladdin as Jafar, The Old Guard as Joe, Murder on the Orient Express as Pierre Michel, and Black Adam as Ishmael Greggor/Sabbac. Here, Kenzari plays Dr. Jekyll’s chief of security. He leads the efforts to catch Ahmanet partway through the film, only to end up getting knocked out by Jenny when Mr. Hyde makes his grand debut.
Like Dracula Untold before it, this film was intended to start a massive franchise revolving around the Universal Monsters in a new interconnected film series styled The Dark Universe. Sadly, just like Dracula Untold before it, this film killed all possibility of jumpstarting a massive franchise. Before that happened, though, a massive marketing campaign had begun, centered on Johnny Depp as the Invisible Man, Javier Bardem as Frankenstein’s Monster, and, potentially, Angelina Jolie as the Bride of Frankenstein. An edited-together picture – officially taken of the actors independently and then melded together – featured Russell Crowe, Tom Cruise, and Sofia Boutella, Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, and two Mummy’s respectively. Only Crowe, Cruise, and Boutella could take on the mantles of their characters, and it offered a pointed reminder that a film series has to lay the groundwork before it can reap its rewards. The same happened to Sony with its Spider-Man series starring Andrew Garfield.
Russell Crowe played Dr. Henry Jekyll in a world where the story never existed, allowing a bit of dramatic irony to play across the screen when he was finally named. As the head of Prodigium, he sees it as his life mission to identify, contain, and study the supernatural.
Even as Dr. Jekyll, his methods are less than kind, but he truly gets to eat the scenery when he takes on the visage of Mr. Hyde, who wants nothing more than to rule the world in evil with Nick as Set’s host.
This potential plot thread was an interesting idea of where the film series could have gone. It certainly would have been different to watch a series of films solely through the lens of the villains.
Sofia Boutella, on the other hand, was who the film presented as the title character until very late into its runtime. The daughter of a Pharoah, she was raised to be her father’s successor until a son was born.
Driven mad with envy and unwilling to let her grips on power go – which requires us to ignore so many problems – she takes matters into her own hands and assassinates her family before calling on dark magic to get what she wants. Now, in the present day, after her sarcophagus has been rediscovered, Ahmanet is determined to complete her plans and intends on using Nick Morton to play host to her partner, Set, the God of Chaos. I was never quite clear on whether or not they were intended to be lovers, but with how she treats Nick throughout the film, there is a possibility.
The action sequences were intense, and with Tom Cruise in the leading role, I never had any doubts about that facet. Sofia Boutella, an exquisite dancer, had already proved her credentials with Kingsman: The Secret Service, where she played sword-legged assassin Gazelle. Despite being chased by rotting corpses during the cemetery scene, the humor of that fight could not be downplayed, no matter how terrifying the creatures were. There’s a moment where Ahmanet has her hands on Nick, alongside her revitalized minions, and Jenny interrupts their ritual to imbue him with Set’s essence. The look that they give her during that scene is absolutely hilarious.
The Mummy (2017) was not groundbreaking. It could have improved its overall story in many ways, and some of that lies with how it utilizes its various characters. It feels like the film was trying to do everything at once and ended up doing very little. Ignoring the greater scope of the failed Dark Universe, it is an interesting glimpse into a fun, chaotic world. At the end of the day, that can be a good thing. We don’t have to ask or answer deep questions with every story. Sometimes, we can just sit back and watch a plane fall out of the sky, and a magical dust storm threatens London as the undead runs rampant in a cemetery trying to catch up to a speeding car.
It’s called balance.
Lloydd Marshall Books 