By Maria Lewis
At the start of 2017 if you would have told me I would love The Mummy reboot more than Alien: Covenant I would have a) politely asked you what you were smoking and b) could I have some, because that shit must be bananas. Yet here we are, entering the biggest movie release season of the year and all I’ve been talking about to anyone who will listen is how bloody good The Mummy is. Whereas Alien: Covenant on the other hand … it’s still too soon to talk about it *makes the sign of the cross*. It’s not a complete surprise, however. As someone who has Universal movie monsters tattooed on her body and writes a book series about feminist werewolves (loosely inspired by both The Wolf Man and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde) for a living, The Mummy is made exactly for a person like me. At the end of 2016 I put it on my list of most anticipated horror films in this very column, but even going in with such high expectations The Mummy exceeded them.
The plot begins much as you would expect, with Tom Cruise playing that asshole-with-heart type he has played so well for the past 30 years as the world’s biggest movie star. His character Nick Morton is a soldier of some variety, with his wisecracking sidekick played by Jake M. Johnson, and the pair are on a mission in the Middle East. Hijinks ensue and they inadvertently discover an ancient tomb for an Egyptian princess erased from the history books. Archaeologist and lady-Indiana Jones type Jenny (Annabelle Wallis) has been looking for this same tomb and coffin, which they promptly ship back to London. Yet wherever this death box goes, evil seems to follow and the wrath of mummy Princess Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella) is unleashed.
Set in present day, we learn this isn’t the first Big Bad to be set upon an unsuspecting world, with threats contained and managed by Prodigium or – as I like to call them – Team Supernatural: World Police. Led by Dr Jekyll (played by Russell Crowe, who also delivers his best Ray Winstone impersonation as Mr Hyde), Nick finds himself thrust into the unlikely position of hero as he starts an uneasy relationship with his new allies in order to fight the bigger threat.
The classic bait and switch with the original Universal monster movies from the thirties – including 1932’s The Mummy – was that audiences ended up connecting with and rooting for the monster more than the clean-cut leading man. In the words of The Mummy’s director Alex Kurtzman “you fear and fear for the monster” and that legacy continues here: you enter the movie with one mummy and leave with two, each just as compelling and complex (albeit for different reasons). The great monster movies were all about the underdog and The Mummy does a tremendous job of making you care, amongst the lavish spectacle of desert shoot-em-ups, a supernaturally besieged London and effective creatures. On that last note, Boutella’s mummy is truly something to study with her effectiveness coming from a combination of the performance and the effects, which are largely practical and don’t rest on CGI renderings. It’s no accident that The Mummy winks at Stephen Sommers 1999 The Mummy – with the filmmakers even confirming they’re in the same universe – as both films celebrated their horror elements with gory abandon, had stellar action set pieces and a swashbuckling spirit for a extra garnish.
The Mummy comes with the loaded promise of more, given that Universal have announced their shared cinematic world titled Dark Universe which will see Javier Bardem as Frankenstein’s creature, Johnny (ugh) Depp as The Invisible Man and a Bride Of Frankenstein film directed by Bill Condon coming in 2019 – and that’s just to start. It’s obvious that someone over at Universal has been studying the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) and DCEU (DC Extended Universe) very carefully, in particular why one seems to work and why the other doesn’t. The Mummy is the result of that class assignment: it has the darker palette and lickable sheen of a DCEU film, but retains the sense of humour and spectacle of the MCU. Kurtzman did it beautifully with the new Star Trek films and that understanding carries across in The Mummy, which understands that you can have an extremely dark and even scary subject matter, yet still have moments of levity and genuine joy that make it enjoyable for the audience. Although Dracula Untold may have been Universal’s The Incredible Hulk, The Mummy is its Iron Man and that – for a fan or both monsters and Marvel – is more than I could have dreamed of.
Maria Lewis is a journalist and author previously seen on SBS Viceland’s The Feed. She’s the presenter and producer of the Eff Yeah Film & Feminism podcast. Her debut novel Who’s Afraid? was released in 2016 with the sequel – Who’s Afraid Too? – out now. You can find her on Twitter @MovieMazz.
