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.

Captain Marvel: Earth’s Mightiest Hero

Warning: This post contains (mild) spoilers.

Yesterday, Rick and I went to see Captain Marvel in theaters.

Strangely, I’d heard almost nothing about it after it was released on March 8th. The only thing that had passed through my social media was some headline about an old white guy upset about the MCU’s mightiest hero being a woman.

Over dinner last week, my dad, who coincidentally is also an old white guy, and who has not yet seen the movie, expressed his own confusion about Captain Marvel being a woman. Having grown up with the kind of Captain Marvel who starts out as a little boy, shouts “Shazam!” and channels the powers of several ancient male heroes by morphing into a well-muscled, fully-grown man, he wondered how all of that was going to work.

First of all, there’s no reason a girl couldn’t channel the powers of male heroes, given the opportunity–their maleness and their powers are not mutually inclusive. Secondly, I’m not sure what the deal is with kids having to grow into adults in order to use their powers (this also confused me when I first read the W.i.t.c.h. series).

But, most importantly, DC’s Captain Marvel/”Shazam” is not the same character as Marvel’s Captain Marvel. And, as I’ve learned from my good friend Wikipedia (because I am in fact not a comic book nerd), Carol Danvers (Captain Marvel’s civilian identity) has been a fixture of Marvel Comics since 1977, when she first appeared as Ms. Marvel, in a new series of that name, after having gained her powers from events that transpired in the Captain Marvel comics. She finally took up the mantle of Captain Marvel herself in 2012 (although it appears there were a couple other women who also held Captain Marvel’s title and/or powers, at some point or another). So, yes, the first Captain Marvel was a guy, but Carol Danvers certainly has a legitimate claim to the role.

And Marvel nailed it with this movie.

It is the most normal movie I have ever seen.

“Vers” (played by Brie Larson) as she’s known when the story begins, is apparently an alien soldier from another planet, fighting a war against another race of aliens called Skrulls. When the Skrulls capture her and take her to 1990’s Earth (this is a prequel), she works with a young Nick Fury to find and defeat the Skrulls before they can infiltrate Shield and steal an essential piece of technology.

It sounds pretty straightforward, for a superhero mission, but along the way, Vers, who can’t remember anything about her past and has trouble controlling her powers (read: obeying; getting things right), manages to discover who she is and what she is really capable of.

I cried watching her self-actualization play out. This wasn’t a story about a woman being powerful despite being a woman or because she was a woman. This was a story about a human being–who just miraculously happened to look and act like me–realizing their full potential.

Brie Larson is beautiful, make no mistake, but they don’t make her up like a supermodel (cough cough, Wonder Woman), and she’s dressed from head to toe in a practical uniform which sufficiently protects her from both the elements and the vacuum of space. She’s fit, like I imagine anyone with military training would be, but she looks like a normal person, not somebody’s ridiculous ideal.

And our hero’s defining relationship? Carol Danvers’s friendship with Maria Rambeau, a black single mother and badass pilot, replaced what could have easily been a meaningless long-lost love interest, if this were a different movie.

Captain Marvel, despite the horrendous line of advertisement I found on this AMC theater page, is not a “(her)o.” What a strange and belittling advertisement for such an amazing and worthy character.

She is a hero.

Captain Marvel is smart, brave, and human, in addition to having powers on par with those of DC’s Superman. I’m excited to see her take down Thanos in Avengers: End Game next month.

In the meantime, go see Captain Marvel. (Go experience it in IMAX, too.)

Take your friends and your children with you.

Everyone should see this movie.

Ranking Fail!

When you want to find information about a subject that you don’t really know anything about, most of us would admit that a quick Google search is their first step now-a-days. And most of us would assume that the pages that rank highest in a Google search would be sites that work correctly and were built by competent individuals. Otherwise, how on earth would they climb to that much sought-after first page?  But this is not always the case. A while back I’d found a 3rd ranked site that, to this day, reminds me that just because Google says a page is worth visiting, doesn’t mean it’s actually worth a damn.

Once upon a time I decided that I needed an office pet. Others had fish, bud I decided that I wanted a snail. So I did what most people would do. Google search ‘pet snails.’ The first two entries were for a site for raising European land snails. The third was this site.

I was horrified! I couldn’t believe that THIS was the best Google could do?

Right off the bat I found myself dubious that I could believe anything this hastily slapped together site might tell me. The header image itself was obviously put together using MS Paint, and badly at that. The snail in the image was a photo that had another photo superimposed on top of it! And the header image was to large for the website’s structure.

Moving down to the site’s menu bar, I found that most of the menu pages are empty or “under construction.” Apparently it has been “under construction” for several years, because to this day they are still not finished. This looks most unprofessional.

The layout wasn’t terribly good or bad. It was simply basic. Though leading off on a front page with 10 facts wouldn’t necessarily be my own first choice. The color scheme of dark blue and primary blue on white was another basic choice. It lends nothing like a personality to a site about snails.

But it was the content that drove the last wavering belief in this site as a place of actual knowledge from me. The images consist of fuzzy croppings from photos and crude MS Paint sketches. Its text was full of spelling and grammar mistakes, it was worded in an unprofessional (even childish) manner, and had factual mistakes.  The final straw for me was the dead links.  At least the ‘under construction pages actually existed.  These inner-page links were completely invalid.

About the only redeeming part of this site was an amusing linked Youtube video of snail racing.

 

At first this hot mess may not seem like too big of a deal, but remember that this is supposed to be an animal care site. It was 3rd ranked for ‘pet snails’ and 4th for ‘pet snail care’ on Google.  It begs the question. Who failed? Did the website creator fail to produce a competent site? Did Google fail to give me the most useful/relevant search results? Did I fail to search the right parameters?

And as I left the page I realized that whoever put this site together actually did me a service.  Knowing or remembering the fallibility of Google (or any Internet search) is important.  Answers aren’t always to be had at the first glance.