By Travis Johnson
Finally, here’s our first halfway decent look at next year’s The Mummy, Universal’s latest attempt to weld their various classic monster properties into one shared universe. Which they already pretty much were, but nobody watches black and white movies any more. Tom Cruise is our hero, Sofia Boutella is our villain, Russell Crowe is Doctor Henry Jekyll (there’s that franchise groundwork), and the modern day is our setting, which is a bit of a surprise – there’s no Backlot Gothic going on this time around. Other than that, details are scarce.
Director Alex Kurtzman, here making his directorial debut after years toiling in the word mills with writing partner, Robert Orci, seems to have his head on straight when it comes to the tropes of the genre, though. “What uniquely defines a monster movie is that, I think, you both fear for the monster and fear the monster. Very rarely do you get an opportunity as a film maker to take a monster movie and do it writ large. Do it in the biggest possible way, with the biggest possible star, all around the world.”
The full trailer drops this Monday, December 5. The Mummy crawls into Australian cinemas on June 8, 2017. Meanwhile, here’s the rather fetching poster:
