By Geno McGahee
I know this film has been really shit on by most that have seen it, especially those that are big fans of the Universal monsters. Now, I’m not a big fan of those old films with the exception of THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON. If they fucked with Gillman, I would have been pissed for sure, but they left him alone…for now. THE MUMMY I’m not so sensitive about, but I felt that the formula was pretty good and it was hard to screw up. You get some dead guy from Egypt and he comes back as a pissed off mummy and fucks shit up. Well, that didn’t happen in this one. This film was very strange and different than anticipated.
THE MUMMY had 6 writers. That seems a bit much and that might explain just how muddled it gets. It begins with Nick Morton (Tom Cruise) in the desert with his friend and fellow soldier, Sgt. Vail (Jake Johnson), looking for treasure and getting ambushed. They are rescued when bombs are released on the bad guys, but it reveals an ancient tomb. That attracts Jenny (Annabelle Wallis), an expert in ancient stuff and also a woman that slept with Morton and quickly notes that he’s a two pump chump.
Part of the initial problem with this film is that Tom Cruise is not right for the role. It’s just hard to believe that he’s a treasure hunter and soldier. He does his best, but it just doesn’t seem like a role for him.
In the ruins, they find a coffin and raise it up. Inside is the corpse of Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella), a female mummy. What? I didn’t know that female mummies went ape shit too and it’s definitely a big change from the original and every other mummy movie. I like the idea of a mummy with tits. Ahmanet starts to wake up and gets the hots for Nick. I bet Tom Cruise demanded that. If the mummy was a dude, he would have been walking around with a hard on saying “I want Tom Cruise” I bet. That may have been the initial plan and why they changes to a female mummy. Tom Cruise is weird guy. It’s documented.
They load the mummy onto a big cargo plane, but it doesn’t go well. Vail is possessed by Ahmanet and starts stabbing people, leading to Nick shooting him. The plane goes down and it is soon learned that Nick is the chosen one and will be the vessel to bring in Ahmanet’s king. This generates interest from Henry Jekyll (Russell Crowe), a scientist that wants to study evil and such. I’m not a Crowe fan. He’s one of those actors that bore the shit out of me. I can’t think of one movie he was in that I walked away saying “wow, he was exciting to watch.” He especially sucks at Jekyll and when he turns into Hyde, it’s worse. Isn’t Hyde supposed to be a monster? His face turns a little grey but that’s it, but he does make mean faces. That may be enough for some Hyde fans.
Ahmanet is looking for a stone to go into her knife so she can bring back her king and rule the world. Jekyll and Jenny are looking to stop this from happening and they actually were able to capture Ahmanet and get her chained up. They also brought Nick along and have him trapped too. Jenny turned out to be a liar, but Nick forgave and still wants to prove that he is not a two pump chump.
Even though she is chained up, she is resourceful and can possess people, like people that operate the devices that keep her chained up. You’d think that Jekyll would have figured that shit out and came up with a plant to stop that. He knew that she possessed people. Jenny knew it too. Why would they not prepare for her possessing the guy that runs the chains?
Now Ahmanet gets loose and gets the stone for the knife. There are some rather cool visuals with her destroying the city but there is also some very bad CGI in this. The rats that run all over Nick in this are terrible CGI and it doesn’t help that Cruise is overacting and not reacting to the CGI rats. The CGI guy must have been uninterested in the project and didn’t time the rats to the swatting movements of Cruise.
Zombies attack Nick and Jenny as they try to stop Ahmanet and, once again, it’s pretty shitty CGI. Why not just hire some extras as zombies? I prefer that and there are plenty of jobless people out there that would jump at the chance for a free meal and to become a zombie. Maybe Cruise didn’t want anyone touching him and demanded fake zombies that they put in later on. I don’t blame him. You get the wrong extra next to a celebrity they may do something wrong, including a crotch grab. So, despite real zombies being better, CGI was probably the way to go.
The big showdown occurs and Nick (spoiler) gives his life to save Jenny and kill Ahmanet. We end with Nick becoming some sort of super being that can resurrect people and the potential of a sequel somewhere along the line.
THE MUMMY with Tom Cruise is far better than THE MUMMY with Brendan Fraser. I’ll give it that. It doesn’t feel at all like a Universal monster movie and the heavy bad CGI takes away from it. Russell Crowe sucks in this too and the Hyde character is not one that I want to see again if they get Crowe to play it.
This film is a take or leave sort of film. It’s not as bad as most people say, but it’s not good either. It’s very forgettable in the end and it’s not surprising that it underperformed.
