(From our Guest critic, The Movie Knight). Princess Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella) was once the Pharaoh’s sole heir who would one day rule all of Egypt. Until a son is born… Ahmanet now stands to inherit nothing. She turns to the dark gods for help and in doing so commits unspeakable crimes. As punishment, she is mummified alive, buried away for eternity. That is until Nick Morton (Tom Cruise) uncovers her tomb and inadvertently frees her. Now she is set to lay her fury across the land unless Nick and a very mysterious group of people can stop her.
The Mummy is more than a mere re-boot, this is the first entry into Universal’s Dark Universe. In the coming years the studio plans to bring back all their classic monsters including Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and The Creature from the Black Lagoon, just to name a few. The hook here is that all these characters will be part of the same universe, much in the same way all the Marvel superhero movies tie-in together. In fact, one of the above named monsters makes an appearance in this tale.
Unfortunately, this new Dark Universe is not off to the strongest start. Many of the action sequences will hardly leave you ‘at the edge of your seat.’ Ironically, many of the moments feel quite dead at times as we are waiting for something to happen. It could be attributed to the movie having six writing credits and a director who has not worked in this genre. Tom Cruise doesn’t bring anything to the table and appears miscast for this new franchise. Russell Crowe and Boutella are the stands outs and help this from completely falling apart along with a very good third act.
The next entry into this new universe will be The Bride of Frankenstein to be released in 2019 with Javier Bardem in the role of Frankenstein’s Monster. Nothing is going to stop Universal from making these movies, not even a bad box office, but it remains to be seen how many people will be clamoring for this Dark Universe after this first outing.
1.5 tiaras