That's right, Lee Moo here back with a movie rating in which I believe you will enjoy. So recently, a few of my friends were talking about movies and they didn't think that the new Mummy, starring Tom Cruise and Sofia Boutella, wasn't a bad film. In fact, they think that the movie captured the tone of the themes. I dropped everything I was doing and started to re-watch the film and have came up with 7 reasons why I believe this film failed its audiences. Trust me people, I bet you will agree with every single point.
1. Where are the Egyptians?!
When you think of The Mummy, the first thing that comes to my mind is Egyptians. In this film, not so much. Don’t get me wrong, the term “mummy” is used in different cultures besides Egypt, but the context of what they presented in this film is just downright dumb.
What do Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, The Last Airbender, The Last Samurai, Exodus: Gods and Kings, Death Note, and The Great Wall all have in common? I am not going to sugarcoat this. Hollywood loves to whitewash. I wouldn’t be surprised if Hollywood wanted to cast Mel Gibson as Musa I of Ali in a biopic. Whitewashing is so normal these days, people don’t even bat an eye on what he or she are even watching.
There was no reason why this Mummy was filmed in London, for 3/4ths of the entire film and only “supposedly” in Egypt for in maybe three to four scenes? Like Randy Jackson said it best, “That will be a no from me, dog.” I understand why the director and writers chose the route they went, but in the end, it was garbage.
2. What is the plot?
Man this was one tough film to watch. At one point, I forgot that I was watching the Mummy. I am not even lying. You have Tom Cruise who's doing research in the desert then you have Russell Crowe's character who's trying to hunt this ancient mummy.
The plot gets really confusing at parts because you start to question whether or not if you are watching The Mummy or watching a film that’s trying to set up a monster film. Certain things happen in the film that aren’t even answered, some scenes look as if other directors directed it, and certain actions happen in which you wonder, “Why on earth was that even in the film?”
I was in shock once the credits came on and saw that more than four writers were apart of the script.
3. Why is Tom Cruise always running?
I am not sure why this is a daily occurrence with Tom Cruise. A movie featuring Tom Cruise has to have running in it.
Think about it, in every movie that Tom Cruise has been in, have you not seen him run? Let’s get something straight. In the Mummy, there is a scene in which they have Tom Cruise and Annabelle Wallace running for about a minute straight with no interruption in the scene. Just them running. I couldn’t believe what I was watching.
This film actually paid money to have Tom Cruise run. It’s not that I don’t wanna see him run, it’s that the film made it obvious that Tom Cruise was indeed running.
4. Russell Crowe, what in the hell are you doing?
By far takes the biggest L out of everyone in this movie is Russell Crowe. Yes, this is the same guy who plays Maximus in Gladiator. Every time Russell Crowe was on the screen, I wanted to hide my face from the embarrassment of seeing him on screen.
This is one of the things I absolutely hated about this film was that whoever wrote for Russell Crowe’s character made a huge mistake with having him portray his character. There should have been two outcomes of his character in the Mummy: to present this new “Dark Universe” by aiding Tom Cruise or to even play as a minor threat to Tom Cruise when it comes to searching for this dagger.
Besides that, I thought his role was absolutely unnecessary.
5. Where is the set up for this so-called "Dark Universe."
I had no idea that this Mummy was actually an introduction to the Dark Universe. If you don’t know, the Dark Universe is basically Universal’s way of having all the monsters (Frankenstein, Dracula, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Wolfman, and many more) come together to face an ultimate evil. It’s something that hasn’t been touched in an extremely long time and don’t think it should.
Sadly, we live in a time period where some directors feel the need to remake films that aren’t even ten years old. This Mummy would have been a good film if they used Tom Cruise character as an assistant to Russell Crowe's character; having him hunt down monsters of the unknown. I just made that plot up and I bet it would have been a blockbuster.
Since the Mummy did so bad, even Paramount has put the whole production on hold. The only movie to somewhat capture that was Van Helsing (2004) with Hugh Jackman.
6. Every movie shouldn’t be a comedy folks.
In my honest opinion, the jokes in this film were God awful. The jokes were supposed to be for comedic relief but ended up making me feel just uncomfortable. Jake Johnson was clearly the comedic relief of the movie.
Every time he spoke, he basically was a walking corpse who told jokes. I even glanced at my girlfriend at one point and asked, “How is that joke relevant to the story?” It’s the little things like this that make people dislike any type of movie.
It wasn’t just Jake portrayal but rather much Tom Cruises as well. It was as if the actors were pressured to act a role that they were not used to, and agreed to do so. There’s a time and place for comedy, both of which should have never been in the movie.
7. Why in the world was this even a remake?
If you look on IMDB, you can see that the 1999 Mummy has a 7.0 rating. A 7.0 rating in my book is about a good B almost A type of film. No one is perfect but sometimes critics like to take things way too far, which is why those types of ratings are perfect for me. The new one is a 5.5. That tells you something. I watched this film because I gave it a shot.
I was thinking, “You know what, I am going to go in not knowing anything and just see if I like it.” was soon faced with reality that this movie was just bad. That’s not even the worst part though. I found out that this was an actual remake of the 1959 version. That Mummy has a 6.8 rating.
You can’t make this stuff up folks. Time and time again, people will voice their opinions on what should or shouldn't be made. I really believe that Universal heard with all the negative reviews and complaints about this film.