The Mummy (2017)

The Mummy movie franchise in all its incarnations, struggles with a serious flaw which none of the films have been able to overcome. The 1932 film, inspired by the success of Dracula and Frankenstein, and the of the moment phenomenon of the opening of King Tut's tomb, was a bit of a hybrid between those two films. While it's plot holds close to Dracula's (ancient evil terrorizes "modern" world) the film makes the monster somewhat sympathetic like Frankenstein. But at the heart of the story are the colonial assumptions of the exotic and other being frightening and threatening to the western protagonists. The mummy here, while we understand his motivations and perhaps even feel bad for him, remains an outright villain and not a tragic figure like Frankenstein's monster. This take is carried through multiple films all the way through the 50s.

Fast forward to the 90s and we get Brandon Fraser's guilty pleasure Mummy series which takes the same basic story with its same basic colonialist assumptions and Indiana Joneses it into a fairly enjoyable and accessible adventure which spawned it's own round of sequels and spin offs. Again, the villain's motivations are relatable but his easterness is used to alienate us from him and it is another film about white people appropriating a foreign culture (taking their artifacts without permission) and remaining the heroes.

Now were in a new century with what we would assume to be a better understanding of these issues. However once again we have white folks saving each other from the brown people they have wronged. This present day set story, with all that we have at our disposal around post-colonial theory, could have been a real opportunity to reinvent this tale into something exciting. But that opportunity was missed by following the same story and falling into the same traps.

Despite this The Mummy isn't a failure. As a straight up action film it actually works fairly well. Writer/director Alex Kurtzman does a fairly good job of staging his set pieces and delivering some solid action. For me it was what stitched it together which didn't work. In Universal Studios' desire to create a "dark universe" of interconnected monster movies, they throw in a bunch of exposition which has to basically be narrated. I didn't feel like it worked as an organic part of the film. But this wasn't the only piece that didn't work.

The humour mostly falls flat. There was not a good balance of tone. Most of the film is melodramatic which allows for the level of action to exist in a believable way. But a great deal of the jokes were more in the line of cheesy action film one liners. It felt disjointed. This is most clearly embodied in the casting of Jake Johnson (a funny man) as the sidekick character. He never fits well with the rest of the film's more gothic tone. Cruise's attempts at jokes are fairly stale and the rest of the film is jostling between the action/horror plot, and the sporadic humour moments. It just never gelled.

So perhaps it is that The Mummy never finds a cohesive vision for what it's trying to do. It is trying to be set up for a new series of movies, laying ground work without being able to successfully tie that groundwork to the first film's plot. It also can't find a way to bring in humour without that pulling us out of the film. Finally it never wrestles with its colonial assumptions leaving a modern, thinking audience disappointed.

Being a fan of the original Universal Monsters oeuvre, there is a part of me that really wants this new take to succeed. What what I've seen so far I am hesitant to think it is going to.

The Mummy
Starring: Tom Cruise, Sofia Boutellla, Annabelle Wallis, Jake Johnson, Courtney B. Vance, Russell Crowe
Writer/Director: Alex Kurtzman