In fairness to Tom and his director, Alex Kurtzman, they tried to make their version different by making the mummy a woman and not the traditional one started by Boris Karloff in 1932. But it is so badly written you’d wish the mummy has remained mummified and not revived at all.
Too bad for Universal Pictures, who envisions this movie as the first installment of what they call their Dark Universe, which will be some sort of a DC or Marvel umbrella franchise of its various heroes. Only this time, it will showcase their classic movie monsters, like Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolfman, Jekyll & Hyde and The Invisible Man. It sounds like a brilliant idea, but the problem is they started it with a botched up job like “The Mummy”. Talk about starting on the wrong foot. We don’t know how they can recover from this.
The story then jumps to the present in Iraq and, later, modern day London. Tom Cruise is Nick Morton, an opportunist who robs tombs to make money out of stolen antiquities. He and his friend causes an explosion that opens up a big hole in the ground and as you might easily guess, it contains the tomb of Ahmanet.Tom is one of the biggest and most charismatic stars in Hollywood today so you’d think he’d be enough to save the movie from its idiotic turns of plot. But no, Tom seems to be miscast as the reckless Nick. We’d rather have Ethan Hunt of “Mission Impossible” anytime.
But Nick is not even a Jack Reacher. Nick is the chosen one of Princess Ahmanet to be Set personified and she somewhat possesses his consciousness. But for her to be able to fully let Set get into Tom, she needs a special dagger which has a special gem stone, both of which are missing.
Of course, it’s but natural for Tom to hate the idea of being the toyboy of a mummified princess, so the rest of the movie shows him trying to run away and avoiding Ahmanet, with the help of a beautiful archaeologist, Jenny (Annabelle Wallis), who works for a secret society headed by Russell Crowe, who seems to be aware he’s doing crap.Every now and then, they offer action set pieces with good CGI special effects to liven up the proceedings. There’s a big plane crash scene where the sarcophagus of the mummy is ejected and crashes in England. There are many scenes where zombies chase Tom ala-Walking Dead. (Yes, there’s only one mummy, but there are lots and lots of the undead coming up to life showing their allegiance to the mummy for some unspecified reason.) The final confrontation between The Mummy Princess and Tom is underwhelming, to say the least, really lacking in any kind of impact.
And the final sequence doesn’t make much sense, showing Tom with his wisecracking undead friend Chris (Jake Johnson) suddenly springing back to life and riding into the desert as if they expect to return for a sequel. Honestly, the projected Dark Universe is now more of a Black Hole.
