The Mummy (2017)
June 10, 2017 2:52 PM - Subscribe
Though safely entombed in a crypt deep beneath the unforgiving desert, an ancient queen whose destiny was unjustly taken from her is awakened in our current day, bringing with her malevolence grown over millennia, and terrors that defy human comprehension.
It must be bad if Roger Ebert came back from the dead himself to give it 1.5 stars
posted by briank at 5:56 AM on June 11, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by briank at 5:56 AM on June 11, 2017 [4 favorites]
I'm not gonna jump on the Tom Cruise hate train. He's clearly a very strange little fellow, but he's also a pretty good actor and he's literally saved some lives. (Also, we should all be so lucky to look that "desiccated" at his age.)
So, I get no schadenfreude seeing his latest blockbuster tank... but I can't help noting that if they'd just made another Mummy movie starring Brendan Fraser, it probably would have done a lot better. It's not like Fraser is a big draw these days, but everybody liked those goofy movies well enough and if they put another one out now people would probably be like, "Oh hey, haven't seen one of those for a while. Sounds fun."
posted by Ursula Hitler at 4:33 PM on June 11, 2017 [7 favorites]
So, I get no schadenfreude seeing his latest blockbuster tank... but I can't help noting that if they'd just made another Mummy movie starring Brendan Fraser, it probably would have done a lot better. It's not like Fraser is a big draw these days, but everybody liked those goofy movies well enough and if they put another one out now people would probably be like, "Oh hey, haven't seen one of those for a while. Sounds fun."
posted by Ursula Hitler at 4:33 PM on June 11, 2017 [7 favorites]
I just saw it and, seriously, it wasn't bad. It wasn't great, and probably wasn't as good as you'd want something you spent $100 million + on to be, but 17% on RT? C'mon, that's fucked up.
I think a lot of people were overreacting to the hubris of the dramatic Dark Universe intro. Hey, the MCU and DC verses started out with mediocre properties too. Yeah they also were a bit more humble in those early days but then they had to be, because nobody knew whether it might work.
As a standalone movie it would have been a bit shaky, but it was setting up the groundwork for at least three future films. I have to admit I liked Jekyll/Hyde, a lot more than I liked the over the top version in League of Extraordinary etc. For a standalone movie it would have been cruft but as framing device for a series it wasn't too horribly obtrusive and got the job done. They have actually done a pretty economical job of laying the groundwork for several more movies, none of which will really require you to have seen this one, but all of which might be a bit enhanced by having seen this and the others.
Rumors of its demise at the box office seem to have been premature, since overseas ticket sales have brought it back from the dead.
One thing I think Universal is getting right is that this is a horror genre, and horror is personal. The big problem with the DC Bats and Supes films was the sense of anonymity, or even nonexistence, of the people who weren't Bats or Supes. For all its flaws the Mummy projects horror at the idea of its big bad sucking the life out of the ordinary people she assaults. She isn't your building falling down and nobody finding your body for months, she puts her lips to yours as you are helpless and sucks out your life force. We see her doing this close-up, several times. And for all his flaws Tom Cruise manages to affect believable horror that this is happening because of him.
posted by Bringer Tom at 7:16 PM on June 11, 2017 [1 favorite]
I think a lot of people were overreacting to the hubris of the dramatic Dark Universe intro. Hey, the MCU and DC verses started out with mediocre properties too. Yeah they also were a bit more humble in those early days but then they had to be, because nobody knew whether it might work.
As a standalone movie it would have been a bit shaky, but it was setting up the groundwork for at least three future films. I have to admit I liked Jekyll/Hyde, a lot more than I liked the over the top version in League of Extraordinary etc. For a standalone movie it would have been cruft but as framing device for a series it wasn't too horribly obtrusive and got the job done. They have actually done a pretty economical job of laying the groundwork for several more movies, none of which will really require you to have seen this one, but all of which might be a bit enhanced by having seen this and the others.
Rumors of its demise at the box office seem to have been premature, since overseas ticket sales have brought it back from the dead.
One thing I think Universal is getting right is that this is a horror genre, and horror is personal. The big problem with the DC Bats and Supes films was the sense of anonymity, or even nonexistence, of the people who weren't Bats or Supes. For all its flaws the Mummy projects horror at the idea of its big bad sucking the life out of the ordinary people she assaults. She isn't your building falling down and nobody finding your body for months, she puts her lips to yours as you are helpless and sucks out your life force. We see her doing this close-up, several times. And for all his flaws Tom Cruise manages to affect believable horror that this is happening because of him.
posted by Bringer Tom at 7:16 PM on June 11, 2017 [1 favorite]
I found the endless trailers for this movie super tedious. I feel like I've seen the best parts of this movie already, but divorced from any character development that would make me care.
Also shouldn't the mummy have some bandages or something?
posted by chrchr at 9:44 PM on June 11, 2017
Also shouldn't the mummy have some bandages or something?
posted by chrchr at 9:44 PM on June 11, 2017
she puts her lips to yours as you are helpless and sucks out your life force. We see her doing this close-up, several times
So Lifeforce with less nudity and more heiroglyphics?
posted by Grangousier at 12:53 PM on June 12, 2017 [2 favorites]
So Lifeforce with less nudity and more heiroglyphics?
posted by Grangousier at 12:53 PM on June 12, 2017 [2 favorites]
So Lifeforce with less nudity and more heiroglyphics?
And more sequels, apparently.
posted by Bringer Tom at 6:53 PM on June 12, 2017 [2 favorites]
And more sequels, apparently.
posted by Bringer Tom at 6:53 PM on June 12, 2017 [2 favorites]
Transcript of the Pitch Meeting for the Mummy
posted by Naberius at 12:23 PM on June 13, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by Naberius at 12:23 PM on June 13, 2017 [3 favorites]
Also shouldn't the mummy have some bandages or something?
She does. They cover her nipples and other areas of her body that might have given Universal trouble getting a PG-13.
posted by tomorrowromance at 1:09 PM on June 13, 2017
She does. They cover her nipples and other areas of her body that might have given Universal trouble getting a PG-13.
posted by tomorrowromance at 1:09 PM on June 13, 2017
MeFi's own vibrotronica gives you A bedtime story about Tom Cruise and a swimming pool full of money.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:16 AM on June 15, 2017
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:16 AM on June 15, 2017
This was less a movie and more a list of trope checkboxes that had to be ticked off. The plot made no sense. Cruise looked like he was trying to ignore the smell of dogshit he accidentally stepped in on his way into work. It was an assemblage of already-stale bits of other, marginally less-bad movies.
Jekyll/Hyde was a huge disappointment and missed opportunity. They simply made Crowe gray and gave him yellow eyes. They had a team of designers and filmmakers inventing this stuff, and that's the best they could do. What a failure.
Jake Johnson was annoying af.
The modern-day opening painfully tried to inject lighthearted humor into a situation that was really shitty. I guess we were supposed to be on-board with the "charisma" of Cruise's character to balance his inherent assholishness so we'd have some stake in his redemption, but all they did was cement the fact that he's a piece of crap person. The whole tone of that part of the movie seemed to be badly miscalculated. I felt insulted that I was apparently supposed to find it funny and charming when all I could think about was the destruction and suffering this character was causing.
In fact this whole movie suffered from being completely calculated, compounded by the poor quality of the calculation. There was not a single frame of delight in storytelling, no apparent connection between the filmmakers and anything resembling humanity. There was no life in it at all. Every element of the film was mediocre because it was not made by anyone who thought they had a good story to tell, it was all manufactured by numbers guys in offices who think they know what the public wants from a movie, but have no ability to identify, create, acquire or utilize anything approaching the x-factor or magic that makes a story interesting. That magic is unquantifiable, so they cannot conceive of its existence, let alone its value. Their process is such that even if it existed anywhere among their staff it would be crushed.
There were a couple moments that almost got creepy enough to hint at something worthwhile, but the movie quickly backed away from them. The best parts were when it leaned toward weirdness and horror, but the suits don't trust horror as much as they trust action, so it was really a movie about an action hero trying to use action tropes to escape from a horror movie that barely existed. If they had leaned into the horror aspect and made it creepy and weird they might have had something, but that would have required a hop (not even a leap, just a hop) of imagination which the filmmakers have proved is entirely outside their domain.
The ending, with Cruise and Johnson heading off on a new "adventure" was embarrassing. It was like the end of a date with an insufferable, self-important bore whom you'd prefer to forget existed, who says "I'll call you!" No. Please lose my number.
This movie deserved to tank worse than it did. Watching it is a complete waste of time. To say Alex Kurtzman directed this movie is a lie. He merely repackaged a bunch of worn-out, used parts he got off Craigslist and slapped a shitty paint job on the resulting object.
If this is what the rest of the Universal Dark Universe has in store for us, count me out. It deserves to be snuffed out.
posted by under_petticoat_rule at 9:25 AM on June 21, 2017 [4 favorites]
Jekyll/Hyde was a huge disappointment and missed opportunity. They simply made Crowe gray and gave him yellow eyes. They had a team of designers and filmmakers inventing this stuff, and that's the best they could do. What a failure.
Jake Johnson was annoying af.
The modern-day opening painfully tried to inject lighthearted humor into a situation that was really shitty. I guess we were supposed to be on-board with the "charisma" of Cruise's character to balance his inherent assholishness so we'd have some stake in his redemption, but all they did was cement the fact that he's a piece of crap person. The whole tone of that part of the movie seemed to be badly miscalculated. I felt insulted that I was apparently supposed to find it funny and charming when all I could think about was the destruction and suffering this character was causing.
In fact this whole movie suffered from being completely calculated, compounded by the poor quality of the calculation. There was not a single frame of delight in storytelling, no apparent connection between the filmmakers and anything resembling humanity. There was no life in it at all. Every element of the film was mediocre because it was not made by anyone who thought they had a good story to tell, it was all manufactured by numbers guys in offices who think they know what the public wants from a movie, but have no ability to identify, create, acquire or utilize anything approaching the x-factor or magic that makes a story interesting. That magic is unquantifiable, so they cannot conceive of its existence, let alone its value. Their process is such that even if it existed anywhere among their staff it would be crushed.
There were a couple moments that almost got creepy enough to hint at something worthwhile, but the movie quickly backed away from them. The best parts were when it leaned toward weirdness and horror, but the suits don't trust horror as much as they trust action, so it was really a movie about an action hero trying to use action tropes to escape from a horror movie that barely existed. If they had leaned into the horror aspect and made it creepy and weird they might have had something, but that would have required a hop (not even a leap, just a hop) of imagination which the filmmakers have proved is entirely outside their domain.
The ending, with Cruise and Johnson heading off on a new "adventure" was embarrassing. It was like the end of a date with an insufferable, self-important bore whom you'd prefer to forget existed, who says "I'll call you!" No. Please lose my number.
This movie deserved to tank worse than it did. Watching it is a complete waste of time. To say Alex Kurtzman directed this movie is a lie. He merely repackaged a bunch of worn-out, used parts he got off Craigslist and slapped a shitty paint job on the resulting object.
If this is what the rest of the Universal Dark Universe has in store for us, count me out. It deserves to be snuffed out.
posted by under_petticoat_rule at 9:25 AM on June 21, 2017 [4 favorites]
To say Alex Kurtzman directed this movie is a lie.
Late to the party, but I hear through the grapevine of friends working in movies in the big studios that this really is a lie. Kurtzmann has written a bunch of schlocky movies and produced even more, but his directorial expertise is drawn from a 2012 comedy that lost money and which I can't say I have ever heard of before today, and one TV episode. Handing him $100 million and the biggest movie star in the world is maybe part of the learn-on-the-job appproach the president* ushered in. Anyway, rumour has it that Tom Cruise, a veteran of many blockbusters, took over halfway through.
Between a directorial approach that is at best muddied and nondescript and six credited screenwriters, there are a lot of thumbprints on this movie, which was tired when it wasn't noisy. Things it was not included "exciting" and "entertaining."
And is it just me, but was Russell Crowe, in dapper suit, with plummy accent and thick midsection, not playing a role that demanded Stephen Fry?
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:01 PM on July 3, 2017
Late to the party, but I hear through the grapevine of friends working in movies in the big studios that this really is a lie. Kurtzmann has written a bunch of schlocky movies and produced even more, but his directorial expertise is drawn from a 2012 comedy that lost money and which I can't say I have ever heard of before today, and one TV episode. Handing him $100 million and the biggest movie star in the world is maybe part of the learn-on-the-job appproach the president* ushered in. Anyway, rumour has it that Tom Cruise, a veteran of many blockbusters, took over halfway through.
Between a directorial approach that is at best muddied and nondescript and six credited screenwriters, there are a lot of thumbprints on this movie, which was tired when it wasn't noisy. Things it was not included "exciting" and "entertaining."
And is it just me, but was Russell Crowe, in dapper suit, with plummy accent and thick midsection, not playing a role that demanded Stephen Fry?
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:01 PM on July 3, 2017
Very late to the party but oooof this was bad.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 11:21 AM on June 13, 2021
It's not like Fraser is a big draw these dayspreviously on MeFi
The modern-day opening painfully tried to inject lighthearted humor into a situation that was really shitty. I guess we were supposed to be on-board with the "charisma" of Cruise's character to balance his inherent assholishness so we'd have some stake in his redemption, but all they did was cement the fact that he's a piece of crap person. The whole tone of that part of the movie seemed to be badly miscalculated.This so much, and particularly when the most direct comparision to this movie is the Brendan Fraser Mummy movies in which he is very much the lovable rogue. Cruise in the beginning of this is straight-up asshole, and why should we be rooting for that?
Jekyll/Hyde was a huge disappointment and missed opportunity. They simply made Crowe gray and gave him yellow eyes.And a laughable gor-blimey-guvnor accent.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 11:21 AM on June 13, 2021
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posted by happyroach at 11:24 PM on June 10, 2017 [30 favorites]