La mummia

I get it, it's not a reboot of the Brendan Fraser Mummy of 1999 onward. It's an attempt to create a whole new cinematic world, or rather cinematic universe. Populated with super beings, over which none will claim rights from Universal Studios. Beings that Universal own already. It's an interesting idea with some financial wisdom behind it. It could've been a real stroke of genius if it was done with the right amount of levity. The Brendan Fraser style of humor is badly needed here, but he's not here, neither is anybody else who can take himself lightly. So instead we get a dark, pompous serious attitude debating which way is it we should use to triumph over evil altogether.

Cinematically it means tons of CGI, and every kind of monster the script writer could find in the archives of Universal St. and some from other cinematic archives too. It was a bit much when they tried it on 2004 with Van Helsing. And Hugh Jackman never repeated that mistake. So Tom Cruise is here to take his place. Truth is, we should've seen it coming. Tom Cruise must've wanted to be Superman all these years, but even he knew he wasn't physically suitable so he relented into an endless list of action heroes that were borderline super beings but not actually super. Thing is, he's not getting younger, and the idea of doing his own stunts is getting less and less practical, so Tom Cruise found the ultimate solution, he went in and made himself a god.

Yes if you do want to watch it, you need to do more than just suspend your judgment. You'll have to kill it and make sure it doesn't come back to haunt you.

Based on all the bad reviews I was worried this would suck, but I have to say that while it wasn't as good/charming as the 90s mummy movie, it wasn't bad either. Cruise's character was likable, and while his arc wasn't that deep, it didn't really need to be. The mummy actress impressed me more than I expected, since I didn't really like her that much in Kingsman. People said that this spent too much time setting up the following movies, but I didn't think that was the case. There were small seeds planted, but save for the ending and lack of background for Jekyll, this felt self contained enough. Overall the movie had some fun action sequences and decent characters, and made for an enjoyable popcorn flick. I do not regret watching it.

I'm a fan of this "type" of movie, i.e. Indiana Jones, clean cut fun. I liked the '99 Mummy version (Brendan Fraser & Rachel Wiesz) a lot, but this movie is not in the same vein. It is not meant to be campy, but it still light hearted.

I like the stories arch, and how it was told. Though Sofia Boutella, Ahmanet, was actually quite good in her role.

Maybe people we expecting a remake of the '99 version, or maybe people didn't expect this from Cruise. Whatever the reason, count me as someone who wasn't disappointed.

"When this movie came out, there was an awful lot of fuss from people. I honestly don't think it's as bad. This was supposed to be a new trilogy series that Universal was making called the Dark Universe, and they were remaking all the original Universal horror movies-The Mummy, Frankenstein, The Wolfman, and Dracula. I'm honestly more disappointed because of the bad reception this got that they shut that down.

I definitely think Tom Cruise was not exactly the right pick for the leading actor in this movie, though. Not saying he wasn't terrible, but all I could think about was it feeling like a Mission Impossible movie.

The one thing about this movie I would have loved to see more of was Russell Crowe as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; he was fantastic!

To wrap things up, personally, this is nowhere near as good as the Brendan Fraser remake, and everybody knows that, but I certainly don't think this movie deserved all the criticism it got."

This movie is a classic case of design-by-committee ruining a production. What makes it special is... you get the feeling that everyone understood this. They didn't even try to make a serious product. This movie makes choices that are so bafflingly silly there's no way the people signing off on them didn't know. They didn't care, and this lack of seriousness opens up the space for some decently fun moments. This is a bad movie of the enjoyable kind.