THE MUMMY (2017)
Blogtober Qualifications: Mummies, death, zombies, mythological innacuracies
In Crusades-era London, a Templar knight is laid to rest, and with him a large red gemstone.
Immediately we flash to modern-day London, where a municipal transit project unearths a secret Templar catacomb. A mysterious man (Russell Crowe) surveys the find and exposits in voiceover about the story of Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella), the only child of a pharaoh in ancient Egypt.
Ahmanet is heir to the pharaoh's throne. That is, until the pharaoh has another child, a boy. In revenge for this great slight against her, Ahmanet murders her father, his concubine, and their newborn son, all as part of a somewhat vague ritual in honor to Set, the Egyptian god of death (oh, I'll get to that, don't worry). This ritual (and the murders too, I guess) is discovered, and she's buried alive for her efforts.
We take another quick jaunt back to the modern day, over in Iraq, where we meet soldier/treasure hunter Nick Morton (Tom Cruise) and his buddy Chris Vail (Jake Johnson.) These two have more or less deserted their posts, following a map to what Nick believes to be buried treasure. After an action scene that culminates in an air strike, the two, along with archaeologist Jenny Halsey (Annabelle Wallis), discover the tomb of Ahmanet, setting off a chain of events that puts the entire world in danger.
Okay, so before we get into the review, I just want to address something. Everyone hates this movie. It flopped at the box office, and is currently sitting at a Metascore of 34. But here's the thing: I genuinely don't understand why. Don't get me wrong, it's not great. It's not even quite up to the standard of being called "good" (although with a few changes I feel like it could be.) But I don't get the hate people have towards it.
For starters, the story at least tries to do something different with the mummy mythos, and this leads to a few creative ideas that I appreciated. I'm a big fan of people having weird eyes, and Ahmanet's whole "double iris" thing is pretty sweet. There's also the method of her burial. Jenny explains that, in ancient Egypt, mercury (the chemical element) was believed to weaken evil spirits. Whether that's true or not, I couldn't tell you, but it leads to Ahmanet's sarcophagus being submerged in a pool of mercury, which is a nice visual, so I'll take it. There are other unique additions, some of them being quite creative and well-thought, but I won't go into all that here.
I will, however, mention the action scenes, which are, again, creative. I don't usually get pulled into tense moments in action movies, since ultimately you know things will be okay. But I admit, there were a few times where I noticed that I was wondering how the characters would get out of some scrape or another, and at least once I was convinced, very briefly, that Tom Cruise's life was genuinely in danger. That takes some doing.
Speaking of Tom Cruise, let's discuss him for a moment. I know he's pretty divisive as far as actors go, and some of his offscreen antics are difficult to ignore. However, none of this means that he isn't talented. If I had to describe it, I would do so thusly: you never believe that he's not Tom Cruise, but you also never believe he's acting. And that certainly holds true here. You don't buy that Nick Morton is going through all these harrowing adventures, but you do believe that Tom Cruise is. It's a unique dichotomy that I don't think any other actor creates.
His friend, played by Jake Johnson, is annoying, but doesn't weigh things down too much. He's also the source of one of the first little shock moments, one that I had to go back and play again for my wife, who was doing other things at the time.
It goes without saying that this movie attempts to do a gender flip on the whole "mummy/thrall" dynamic, with the mummy (Ahmanet) being female and the thrall being male (Nick), but I guess we aren't to the point where we can follow through on that completely and flip the gender of the action hero love interest. Nick still gets to be the action hero (more or less), and Jenny is just the love interest who knows some stuff about Egypt. Anabelle Wallis does fine in the role, I guess, but, after the first half hour or so, she doesn't do much besides stand around and tell Nick how great he is.
Ahmanet herself, is pretty intimidating as a monster. She's wrapped in bandages (bandages that perfectly conform to her body and reveal just enough skin), and does make an attempt at strangling someone, but overall I thought her powers were pretty cool, and unique as far as mummies go. Of course, there's also the other side of the coin: If you took the bandages off her (not like that) and changed where they found her (which wasn't even Egypt anyway,) she could just as easily be a vampire. The only real mummy thing she does is control sand (because Egypt is sandy you guys), though in fairness the sand explodes from all the glass windows in London, which is both cool and smart.
Russell Crowe is Russell Crowe, so he does a passable job and expects you to worship him for it.
Where the movie most falls flat is in its attempts at world-building. For those not in the know, this movie was intended to be the first in Universal's new "Dark Universe" shared cinematic... universe thing. Basically what Marvel did with superheroes, Universal wants to do with their classic movie monsters. And ho boy, this movie hammers it in. At roughly the halfway mark, we're told that this whole mummy business isn't the first time something like this has happened, and there's a special organization that deals with these kinds of problems. You could've cut it out, shaved twenty minutes off the movie, and probably made the whole experience better, with just a few little references here and there to the larger "Dark Universe." Plus, we wouldn't have to see Russell Crowe.
The Dark Universe is not a bad idea in theory, but it's looking less and less like it's ever going to take off. Originally Dracula Untold was meant to be the beginning of the series, but that failed at the box office, so they changed plans and made it the Mummy. The only other movie, as far as I know, that was officially planned to follow it up was the upcoming Bride of Frankenstein, but now Universal's official stance on that is apparently "Nah, they're unrelated." So essentially what we have is twenty minutes of exposition meant to make us interested in something Universal is never going to follow through with, especially now that the movie was a failure. I love the Universal monsters, and would be thrilled to see a world in which they all take place, updated if need be, but I'm starting to believe it's never going to happen. Maybe action movies aren't the way to go.
Now, before I sum up, I want to point out the thing that irked me the most about this entire movie. I'm no Egyptologist. I'm fairly familiar with the concept of the mythology, and I know a bit here and there about the gods in the pantheon. Therefore, I know full well that Set is not the god of death. As far as I can tell there isn't even a god of death, unless you count Anubis. Sure, his domain is more specifically mummification and the afterlife, but for the sake of simplicity we'll say he's the god of death.
WHY does this movie CONSISTENTLY refer to Set as the god of death? Set is the god of chaos, destruction, the desert, and a few other things. I had a moment where I assumed that maybe the whole world has been wrong all along, and Set actually is the god of death, and this movie chose to re-right the course of things, damn what popular perception says. But no! It's just a dumb change for no reason.
To the best of my understanding, death wasn't even an evil concept to the ancient Egyptians, so, even if he were the god of death, why is he evil? Why is he trying to take over the world? The movie itself says that "death is a doorway," so why is it supposed to be the ultimate evil? Especially when "God of chaos, destruction, and the desert," his actual domain, sounds much more unique, and actually ties into all of the powers Ahmanet displays?
This is 2017, you can't just go taking creative liberties with things that are not only common knowledge, but a quick Google search away.
But anyway, this grates on me personally, but maybe it doesn't anyone else. In all honestly it doesn't really drag the movie down, it just seems like a pointless inaccuracy.
All in all, though, the movie is fine. Decent, even, and it moves along at a fast pace, despite the fact that it could stand to be shorter. There were things I'd never seen before, and I don't regret the time I put into it.
And with that, we bring the "Mummy-thon" to a close. Overall I enjoyed it, but I'm not too sad to be on the other side of it. It'll be nice to see something other than mummies for a while (although I do still have some mummy-related reading to get to), and I'm excited for a lot of the things coming later this month.
Join me tomorrow where, barring any unforeseen complications, we'll be trading in the American version of London for the British version of New York.
Until next time!
Current interests:
Listening - Rush: A Farewell to Kings (1977)
Playing - Golf Story (2017)
Reading - Rumble: What Color of Darkness? (2015)
Watching - Thunderbirds are Go! (2015)
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