Why The (2017) “The Mummy” Is A Shell of An Adventure

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INTRO

The review produced by Screenrant tries hard to give “The Mummy” movie a bone but ends up killing it even faster. The honest truth of the matter, “The Mummy” tries to be something it’s not and doesn’t even do that well. Giving the audience five reasons why the movie was bad and why it was good.

10. A Disappointingly Small Scale:

Oddly enough for a movie called The Mummy, the story spends very little time in Egypt, or anywhere comparable, and, instead, sets the majority of its action sequences somewhere around Surrey, England. Which doesn’t really spell rip-roaring adventure to most people.

Even when the movie reaches the streets of London for its third act, the sets and locations feel quite limited, and the color palette is remarkably grey and monotonous.

Response: The movie shouldn’t have been set in England in the first place. At least with the last Mummy movie with Branden Frasier, it was based in China with a Chinese mummy. It makes total sense and at no point are you confused. Was the Dragon Emperor a good film like its predecessors? Sort of, but not quite.However, The Dragon Emperor has many redeeming qualities that make it a worthwhile watch.

9. Isn’t: Tom Cruise Has Still Got It

There are few movie actors left in the business who have the star power of Tom Cruise and, at age 54, he still brought some much-needed charm to The Mummy.

Not only could Cruise sell moments of tension and action, but his all-around enthusiasm for the process energizes the wearier aspects of the movie in a way that few actors possibly could have.

Response: I’ll be honest, I don’t really know much about Tom Cruise, and that’s OK. Although I did like him in “Interview with a Vampire”. He was very mysterious in his villainy. Although in this movie, he’s just not the guy for the role or anybody for that matter.

8. Generic Screenwriting

Despite some very talented screenwriters working on the project, The Mummy fails to stand out from the blockbuster crowd and this is mostly its own fault.

The popular MacGuffin of a magic rock is introduced almost immediately in the movie and a predictable course of events feels secondary to the movie’s desire to flesh out a fictional universe that audiences will never actually get to see.

Response: The plot was flat; you don’t need to beat around the bush. This director completely misses the essence and fun of the other films. Branden Frasier, along with the rest of its cast, added too much flavor to the franchise just for it to taste bland.

7. Stunts

Tom Cruise’s dedication to stuntwork on his own movies is well documented and The Mummy is no different. Having the lead actor actually get inside as many of the action shots as they can brings a lot to a movie and it helps this one feel like more of a romp.

Though a lack of originality holds it back, The Mummy is a movie that’s always trying to be entertaining in an almost slapstick kind of way and the physicality of the action adds a lot of personality to the comedy.

Response: “The Mummy” Franchise is not Mission Impossible, a James Bond movie, a spy movie, Jason Born, or Taken. It’s literally a fantasy adventure, and that’s all it ever was.

6. Tasteless Updates to the Story

For a movie presenting so many distinct time periods and cultural icons, you’d think The Mummy would present at least one of them in a satisfying way.

Aside from sidelining Egypt, and needlessly adding medieval English history to the mix, the movie makes the particularly tasteless choice to set its opening action sequence in modern-day Iraq with a force that is, while stereotypically faceless and nameless, essentially ISIS.

Response: Making more vibrant environments would have helped the film.

5. A Combined Monster Universe Isn’t a Bad Idea

While The Mummy often fails to frame it in an appealing way, the central idea of the movie isn’t a bad one. Universal alone had been doing monster team-ups and crossovers for just shy of three-quarters of a century before the movie came out.

The movie’s idea to unify everything through what would almost certainly be its Nick Fury figure, Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde and a S.H.I.E.L.D.-like organization with its own potential to spin-off and become evil, there are some entertaining promises made. Even if they’re only just that.

Response: Creating a creature feature universe from other monster franchises wasn’t a terrible concept. What was a terrible concept was using “The Mummy” as its basis to debut. The titles below are all the movies that would have been in theaters if Warner Bros. hadn’t ditched the project. I think Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde could have been a smash hit!

• The Dark Universe Begins – and Ends. Universal Pictures. …
• Van Helsing. Universal Pictures. …
• Johnny Depp’s Invisible Man. Universal Pictures. …
• Phantom of the Opera and Hunchback. Universal Pictures. …
• Dwayne Johnson’s The Wolfman. …
• Creature from the Black Lagoon. …
• The Bride of Frankenstein.

4. It Borrows Very Heavily from Much Better Things

Arguing over how original the story really is is something that you could do with every version of The Mummy, from the original in 1932 to everything that it’s inspired since. But the 2017 version chooses much more poorly with extra cultural references and they often end up contradicting the tone of the movie.

The Mummy wants to be a horror movie in an atmospheric kind of way rather than by showing anything overtly horrific or grotesque but it also wants to be an Indiana Jones movie, which, of course, balanced its joyful qualities with more graphic imagery. It’s overwhelming visual similarities to the Uncharted series of video games (which were, themselves, already heavily inspired by The Mummy movies) also feels like an aesthetically-confused choice.

Response: Sure….I suppose

3. It Brings Horror To a Non-Horror Audience

Not everyone watches movies in the same way and people don’t always have the same access to movies. The Mummy goes for as wide an audience as it can because it wants to reach the most amount of people and make the most amount of money, yes, but it actually succeeds in bringing classical horror aspects to audiences who ordinarily wouldn’t get to see them.

Aside from Cruise’s name bringing his own kind of audience, The Mummy was a financial hit in China, a country famous for its stringent censorship laws surrounding, amongst several other things, the horror genre and the supernatural.

Response: If you want horror elements but not a horror movie, go watch Pan’s Labrinth.

2. It Puts the Cart Before the Horse

So much of what makes people remember the 2017 version of The Mummy as a bad movie is that it set itself such an unnecessarily high bar for success.

Audiences were definitely holding it up to, at least, the first two Stephen Sommers Mummy movies but the gigantic budget and shared universe were both its own choice yet both feel wasted. They transform it into something that audiences actively root against rather than for.

Response: Were they trying to give this movie a chance? The response says it all regarding the film successs.

1. A Pervading Sense of Humor

Stories of production troubles on The Mummy are easy to believe but, no matter how things really went down, what the cast and crew were able to pull out of the movie is a light tone and some comedic chemistry from its actors.

Cruise is a big star with a knack for making sure his movies are driven by him but not all about him. He creates entertaining dynamics with a wide variety of talented actors that he’s paired with and allows what’s best about them to really shine in the movie, even if it isn’t for every long.

Response: Tom Cruise added nothing to this movie, nor did the humor.

Conclusion

After tentatively rewatching the (2017) “The Mummy” I realized the movie is empty. The characters have no volume, the anti-protagonist is wildly underutilized, comedic conversations are out of place, and the tone of the movie is too dark (the color of the film). The movie is not fun, and it comes off more as a chore for the audience to get through. Ultimately, I was surprised at a few points throughout the movie and bored at the same time.

Good MOURNING

I’ve always thought the saying, “Good Morning”, to be quite funny and also, punny. When I wake up early, the first thing I do is mourn my past self that was blissfully sleeping just minutes ago. Also, my favorite response to “Good Morning” is always the sarcastic, “Is it?”

I have many interests, but a few of the most important are reading, writing, basketball, camping, traveling and even video games. I am pretty political, especially lately; and I try to be bipartisan, but my viewpoints tend to stray to the left. I also really enjoy watching movies, reading movie reviews and screenplays. I love to watch behind the scenes stuff and my biggest goal in life is to write a movie/ direct a film/documentary and using my communications and writing major to bring social change through film.

Anyways, Good morning and good mourning; however you feel about it. It’s nice to meet you all and I hope we have some fun this semester.

Signing off,

Katie

 

Was Vermeer a human camera?

Last night I had the pleasure of seeing the movie Tim’s Vermeer, a documentary about a genius inventor obsessed with creating his own Vermeer painting. Johannes Vermeer was a Dutch painter born in 1632 who specialized in recreating scenes of domestic life in vivid detail. The painting below is a good example of his work.

Johannes Vermeer “The Geographer”

The subject of the film is Tim Jenison, a video graphics specialist who made a fortune as a 3D innovator. Jenison believes the photographic quality of Vermeer’s work would be impossible for a human to paint by sight alone. Instead, Jenison suggests the painter used a specialized “camera obscura” to create a mirror image of whatever he wanted to paint. Then he would blend color on the canvas until it matched the reflection.

Jenison isn’t the first to suggest Vermeer used this type of technology to assist in his paintings, but he is the first person who ever set out to prove it. Since no real documentation exists other than the paintings themselves, Jenison decided to recreate a Vermeer painting using only the technology available at the time the painter was alive. The catch? Jenison had no prior painting experience.

Jenison with the optical tools he used (Tim’s Vermeer)

Through a painstaking process that took over two years, Jenison eventually completes a painting that looks nearly identical to the Vermeer he was imitating. While this doesn’t prove that Vermeer used this method, it certainly shows that it is possible and maybe even likely. How else could the colors and detail in his paintings be so life-like?

Rather than trying to defame or cheapen Vermeer’s work, this film does a great job of showing that art is not always what it seems. It clearly shows the blurred lines between art and invention, painter and tinkerer, and even genius and madness. The movie was directed by Teller (of Penn and Teller fame), and although it was a little dry even for a documentary, I’d still highly recommend seeing it.

Can you tell the difference? Tim’s Vermeer, left, and actual Vermeer, right (The Music Lesson).

A comparison on zombie movies – ([REC] vs Quarantine)

[REC] Trailer – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAnbWCjmOkA

Quarantine Trailer – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoBh5S_aWwk

Sets:
The sets from both films are practically identical. So there’s no noticeable differences/effects there.

Scare factor:
This is a rather subjective topic, though both films do a good job of making the viewer much more involved than the stereotypical horror films we’re so used to. Now you could say seeing Rec prior to Quarantine may have made it seem less scary one might experience while watching Quarantine, but the same can be said for the reverse scenario. Though Quarantine has added a few new scares to the mix. Another thing people seem to be constantly complaining about in Quarantine is the final “infected creature” wasn’t nearly as intimidating as the girl in Rec. But how they shoot that final ten minutes still has everyone’s heart pounding.

Gore:
Neither movie is tame when it comes to the graphic factor, but Quarantine is definitely more extreme. With the camera man mauling a zombie, and witnessing a dog in the elevator succumb to the same fate. The effects in both films are amazing, but if you’re simply  looking for bloodshed Quarantine spills  gallons more.

Characters:
First major difference: In Rec the cameraman never makes an appearance, where as in Quarantine the cameraman is seen at least partially multiple times. In both films, the relationship between the reporter (Angela) and the cameraman (Pablo/Scott) is very established. So in Quarantine the relationship isn’t soured the least bit by having Scott on screen from time to time as so many people say it does. In fact, one could say it adds more depth to their relationship.

Second: The two main firefighters (Manu and Alex in Rec, Jake and Fletcher in Quarantine) are quite different between the two films. In Rec, we are meet them and liking them is a given. But we’re not supposed to feel much sympathy for them. Where as in Quarantine gives us more face time with the two at the beginning at the fire station so we feel more of a loss when they’re taken out of the picture.

Third: The reporter (Angela) is somewhat likable in both films, but in Rec she has a bitchier, more career-oriented attitude. Where as in Quarantine, Angela is younger, less seasoned, and overall a nicer person. Both can characters play the lead role quite well, but Quarantine’s Angela seems to feel the impact of the situation and has a genuine fear. As shown in the scenes displaying her mental breakdown. Neither portrayal is better than the other, they are just two slightly different Angela’s.

Fourth: The residents differ slightly, but does it matter? Everyone dies in the end anyways! However in Quarantine the residents do play a larger role as the group slowly gets picked off.

Story:
From shot to shot, there isn’t much variation between the two films– but there are a few things one would notice on a second or third viewing. Such as added scenes and dialogue at the fire station in Quarantine to make us identify with the main group of characters further. There is also more creature set-pieces in Quarantine, to be more specific the old lady watching television scene, and the “infected” dog in the elevator scenes. One big change between the two is the origin of the infection. Which one is better is something you must decide for yourself.  Personally I lean in Rec’s because it’s the original. When viewing Quarantine be on the watch for the extra scenes as really do add that extra impact when it comes to character depth and relation.

Now on to the real question.
(Since you most likely just scrolled all the way through looking for a snip-it to reply /post your opinion on.)

Which film do you think was better, scared you more, or was more realistic? If you’ve seen both that is. Also how did you feel about Rec 2 and Quarantine 2?